Page 160 - January 2019

DOE BOWMAN
65 Years of Quarter Racing
The story of one of the Southwest’s most famous match racers . . . and his undying love for horses and gambling.
“Seventy years ago, Quarter Horse racing was sure different than it is today,” mused 78-year-old Doe Bowman as he huddled over a bowl of oatmeal in the Horsemen’s Café at Sunland Park in southern New Mexico.
“Horses had to be tough in the old day,” drawled Doe. “We rode or trailed them for miles on end, never thought nothing about it, then we’d turn around and race them over whatever kind of country we had. Sometimes, it wasn’t very much either. Sometimes, nothing but a cow trail.”
Putting the finishing touches on his oat- meal, he continued his drawl, “I’ve ate more oatmeal than any living man, most of it was horse oats, though. Oatmeal, bread and milk are good for ya. I’ve just about lived on ‘em for years.
“Guess I’ve drunk my share of horse medi- cine, too, when you come to think about it.” Obviously, horse oats and horse medicine
have been good to Doe Bowman, for he enjoys phenomenally excellent health for a man his years. A doctor examined him recently follow- ing an accident when Doe was shoeing a horse. He still does his own shoeing, incidentally. The horse kicked Doe half-way across the shed
by Walt Wiggins and Ray Reed
row, and despite Doe’s vehement refusal to go, friends took him to the local hospital for x-rays to check for broken bones. Examining the x-rays, the doctor shook his head, muttering to himself that this was the most well-preserved set of bones he had ever seen on a man Doe’s age. He said that Doe’s bones looked like they belonged to a 45-year-old man. Doe prides himself in neither smoking or drinking.
But there is one vice, if you want to call it that, which has lived with Doe Bowman for more than 70 summers, and it has immeasurably shaped
his destiny. Doe Bowman loves to gamble. He loves horses. He has spent his lifetime combining these two loves and pursuing them over tens of thousands of miles throughout the west.
Bill Hudson of Artesia, New Mexico, well- known horseman and oilman, enjoys telling of Doe’s lust for horse racing. Hudson says that Doe, one of the best well drillers in the country, drilled for him off and on for more than 25 years. He said he’s fired Doe no less that 20 times. It seems that each time Hudson would have Doe drilling, it was anybody’s guess as to how long Doe would be on the rig. Hudson can’t remember how many times he
had Doe drilling . . . with an investment of $15-$20,000 on each location . . . and he’d go out to the drilling rig and find everything shut down tight as a jug. He needed no explanation. Doe had gone off to match race somewhere. “I’d always take him back,” says Bill Hudson. “Doe’s one of the best.”
A quarter of a century later, Doe still can’t resist the lure of a race. The past season at Sunland, after Doe was dogged some by the IRS, he began saving all his mutuel tickets as proof of his losses. By the season’s end, he had over two bushel baskets of tickets ready to turn over to ‘them fellers.’
DOE FOALED IN ARKANSAS
Doe was ‘foaled’ in Boonesville, Arkansas, on May 14, 1891, and along with his parents, five sisters and one brother, headed west in covered wagons in 1899. His father, brother and two sisters each drove a wagon, as did his mother. She drove a trail wagon loaded with chickens. Little Doe and his younger sister herded 25 head of cattle on foot all the way to New Mexico, arriving at Portales in 1901. It’s quite possible that these first few days of his trip
156 SPEEDHORSE, January 2019
LOOKING BACK - AN EXCERPT FROM SEPTEMBER 1969 ISSUE