Page 58 - December 2017

The RIGHT Choices
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ames has made have led to a lifetime
with the heart and the mind of the horse. He believes that only through feel can one truly communicate with a horse and that’s what makes someone a good horseman.
“I started with Bobby when I was 10 years old and rode with him until I was in college.
I showed cow horses for quite a while,” said James, who also started colts and showed jumpers for the late Gene Lewis, a legend in the jumping horse industry. James also spent a lot of time around Bill and Rena Howard, who were among the first to introduce Poco Bueno blood to the West Coast.
“I was really influenced by Bobby a lot in my early years,” said James. “Back in those days, everybody did everything. It was much different than it is today. Bobby had kids and amateurs and halter horse and Western riders. He just had everything. But he was always migrating to the cow horses.”
Under Ingersoll’s tutelage, James had his own small string of horses to train. One of the mares he was responsible for was Choctaw Breeze, a “real pretty little mare” owned by Ingersoll’s wife, Sue.
“Sue was getting involved in riding and wanted to have her as a pleasure horse,” James recalled. “She got put in my little group of horses. That’s how the pleasure horse thing started with the good ones. When I went
to college, I was starting to migrate into the pleasure horses a little bit.”
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Life is about choices, and throughout his e, David James’ choices have been guided by
passion for good horses. Those choices led p
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o the development of James Ranch, one of
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klahoma’s premier breeding facilities.
No fewer than 12 stallions will call
mes Ranch home in 2018. The stallion m
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ster includes the likes of World Champion s
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pollitical Jess, the nation’s leading sire in
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2017. He is joined by (in alphabetical order): Blings Smooth Guy, Coronas Fast Dash, CRM Livewire, Duponte, JL Sirocco, Lota PYC, MP Jet To The Sun, One Fabulous Time, Red Storm
Cat, Second Painted Sign and Teller Cartel. Ironically, running a top-notch stallion
station wasn’t always James’ goal. The California native got his start in the horse industry as an aspiring trainer. Growing
up in Pleasant Grove, California, James was 10 years old when he
started riding with Bobby Ingersoll. James couldn’t have picked a
better mentor. Ingersoll’s success as a trainer has made him a member of the National Reined Cow Horse Association Hall of Fame, but he would rather be noted as a good horseman who understands horses and people. Ingersoll’s philosophy – the
one he taught to James – deals
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