Bulldogging rapidly became a popular cowboy contest that evolved into steer wrestling, one of the standard events of contemporary rodeo. Capitalizing on his fame, Pickett contracted in to perform at the Ranch in Oklahoma. By Bill, as he was then called, had become a full-time employee of the ranch, where he worked as a cowboy and performed with the Ranch Wild West Show.
He moved his wife and nine children to Oklahoma the next year and lived and worked on the much of the remainder of his life. With the show he entertained millions in the United States, Canada, Mexico, South America, and England, and was featured in several motion pictures, the first Black cowboy star. From his earliest days in Oklahoma through the s, Pickett competed in rodeos large and small and might well have amassed a significant record as a competitor if Blacks had not been barred from most contests.
He was often billed as an Indian or not identified as Black in order to compete against Whites. Pickett died on April 2, , after being kicked in the head by a horse. Pickett began working for the Ranch, and according to Cletus Johnson, was later described by Colonel Zack Miller as having "guts, bull strength, and the same peculiar sense of timing that makes art out of dancing. During this time, bulldogging, the sport he had invented, became a major rodeo event.
It was modified because most cowboys did not want to take a big mouthful of a steer's lip or nostrils and because humane societies objected to the practice. Pickett often pretended to bite the animal while wrestling it down and was sometimes fined for cruelty to animals because of this convincing pretense.
At a show at Madison Square Garden in New York City, a steer was frightened by the noise of the crowd, stampeded right out of the chute, jumped over the arena fence and thundered up into the stands. The steer climbed up the seats, as people scattered right and left in front of it. The legendary American humorist, Will Rogers, was Pickett's partner and the hazer for this event. He got the steer to turn around at the third balcony and Pickett rode his horse up into the stands, among the panicked people, and grabbed the steer by the lip.
Rogers then roped the steer by the leg and dragged both steer and Pickett back down into the arena. Some people claimed that Pickett had wrestled a buffalo bull and a bull elk with full horns to the ground. This may have been just publicity, but whether or not it's true, it is certain that none of the animals he threw ever tried to gore him after he got them on the ground.
In , Pickett performed in a Mexican bullfighting ring after one of the Miller brothers bet 5, pesos that Pickett could ride a Mexican fighting bull for five minutes. He stayed on the animal for seven and a half minutes, winning the bet, but his horse was gored and Pickett broke three ribs and was severely gashed. Men from the Ranch ran into the ring and roped the bull. The Mexican crowd, angered by what they saw as disrespect for their bullfighting tradition, threw bottles and trash at Pickett and the other cowboys until mounted police stopped them.
Richard E. Norman used extra footage from shooting this movie to make another film called The Crimson Skull, which also included scenes with Pickett. When the films were released, they were a big hit among African Americans who had heard of, but had never seen, African American cowboys.
In , Pickett retired from performing and lived on a small ranch he bought near Chandler, Oklahoma. When the Ranch ran into financial troubles in , he returned to help.
In March , Pickett tripped while roping a stallion and fell under the horse, which kicked him in the head. For the next 11 days he clung to life with a fractured skull. Finally, on April 2, , he died in a hospital in Ponca City, Oklahoma. Pickett's funeral was one of the largest ever held in Oklahoma.
He was buried high on a hill at White Eagle Monument, where the Cherokee Strip Cowboy Association set up a limestone marker in his memory. According to Frank Billings, Colonel Zack Miller of the Ranch called him "the greatest sweat-and-dirt cowhand that ever lived," and wrote a poem in his honor. After completing a fifth-grade education, Bill Pickett went to work on a ranch. He soon learned to "bulldog" a steer by grasping it by the horns, twisting its neck, biting its nose or its upper lip, and making it fall on its side; this biting technique he had learned by observing how herder dogs controlled steers.
Soon he and his four brothers B. Pickett Brothers Bronco Busters and Rough Riders advertised "catching and taming wild cattle a speciality. Bill Pickett entered his first rodeo in at the fair in Taylor. By the early s he was a popular rodeo performer. Billed as the "Dusky Deamon" [ sic ] he performed with that outfit for more than a quarter-century.
In he moved his family from Texas to the Ranch, near Ponca City, and in the off seasons he worked as a cowboy and also competed against white contestants in hundreds of rodeos around the West.
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