Pick up a basketball and drop it in a garbage can.Sounds easy, right
But maybe not when your hand is a 2-foot-wide steel claw, your arm is a 20-foot-long hydraulic boom and the joystick controls of your 8-ton rig respond to an inch of extra pressure with a 5-foot lurch.

Perhaps that’s why more than 100 people turned out Saturday to compete in the first Backhoe Rodeo on the final day of the 59th annual Forest Products, Construction and Equipment Exposition put on by the Sierra-Cascade Logging Conference held at the Shasta District Fair grounds.

At least another 100 or so spectators soaked up the unseasonably strong early February sunshine to watch the backhoe cowboys wrangle fine-motor finesse from their huge machines.

Rodeo competitors had to pick up, swing and set down a balance beam dangling from chains without dropping the baseballs perched on either end. They had to maneuver square and triangular blocks into the appropriately shaped holes. They had to grab, carry and gently drop lettered stumps into an array that spelled “AXNER,” the event sponsor’s name.

And backhoe broncs had to perform these feats of mechanical dexterity in three minutes or less.

Whitmore resident Ron Doelker, who won the rodeo by completing all four events in 4 minutes, 23 seconds, carried away a $1,500 prize.

Jake Guthrie of Redding works for Axner Excavating and has run heavy equipment for 10 years. He’s spent the past five of those years on a backhoe. Even so, Saturday’s competition wasn’t cake for him.

“The controls are different on every machine,” said Guthrie, who had done the balance beam with the four-stick Case rig and had three events to go. “You’re not used to the control pattern. It takes a lot longer than three minutes to learn.”

Backhoe operators trenching in tough soils must wield brute force with a surgeon’s precision. Often, Guthrie said, they dig around gas lines and other underground utilities that cannot be disturbed.

Cottonwood resident Ben Fiscalini is a retired backhoe operator who has dug his share of patios and swimming pools over the years. He watched the competition Saturday from the sidelines but said he would not sign up.

“I don’t want to make a fool of myself,” Fiscalini said, noting the machines were all unfamiliar and new.

Jamie Barrett, the rodeo’s lone female competitor as of midmorning Saturday, does administrative work in her hometown of Colfax. But she’s operated a four-stick Case backhoe — widely considered the most difficult to master. She was eager to try the other machines, which employ only two sticks.

“It’s a little more challenging than I thought,” said Barrett, who had just attempted to drop three basketballs in a garbage can using a joystick-operated Komatsu. “The right is in and out, the left is side to side. At least the Case has a picture telling you what is what.”

On her first try with the alien Komatsu, Barrett grabbed the pylon supporting the basketball instead of the ball itself, and then took a divot from the pavement when she dropped the bucket.

But by her second try, Barrett had figured out how to guide the bucket claws around the pylon and gently scoop up the ball.

“It’s nice to see what talent you have and not get dirty doing it,” Barrett said.

The rodeo featured a Bobcat tractor where youngsters tested their skills guiding the bucket claws to a ring attached to a toy shark, dropping the shark in a sandbox, taking the shark back out and setting it down.

Ethan Hyatt, 10, of Redding carefully executed the move — his first time operating a Bobcat.

“It was hard at the beginning,” Hyatt said. “But after a few minutes, I got the hang of it.”

The backhoe rodeo raised more than $10,000 for the Sierra-Cascade Logging Conference, said Julie Barnes, who works for Axner Excavating.



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