The rodeo entertainer nicknamed "The One-Arm Bandit" is riding high after being named the equivalent of performer of the year for the fourth year in a row.
"Your peers vote on you," said John Payne, of Shidler, Okla. "Being selected as PRCA Act of the Year is the same as being entertainer of the year in pro rodeo."Payne, who performed at the recent 59th Ute Stampede Rodeo, is better known as "The One-Arm Bandit and Company." He has been honored by the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association for the past four years. The top 20 cowboys in each event, the stock contractors, the clowns and the bullfighters select the best act.
He was nicknamed "The One-Arm Bandit" after losing his right arm after 7,200 volts of electricity surged through his body for 10 seconds while he was working as an electrician.
A co-worker saved his life. "I was dead," he said.
Payne was holding onto a wire when the electricity pulsed through his body through his right hand. "While the voltage was destroying the leg muscle, it finally burnt through my fingers, allowing me to fall to my death.
"I tried to be an electrician for a day," said Payne. "The electricity exited my abdomen, leaving intestines showing."
Payne, whose father was a rancher, recuperated for two months and then went back to ranching.
His act, performed midway in each rodeo lineup, features trained quarter horses that jump on the back of a truck and run up a ramp to the top of a trailer. He also has several bulls, four in each act.
Payne said his dogs are extremely important. The Florida cur head dogs, which he raises and trains himself, can trail and keep at bay "the meanest bovine in the woods or plains."
"I trained all my own animals," he said. "The act is all my own creation."
He said he breaks the training of the animals down into small steps. When each step is perfected, the animal is ready to perform. "You have to know and learn the personality of each of the animals," he said. They learn at different rates, for example. "You have to be able to crawl inside their skulls and look out their eyes," he said.
For his rodeo act, Payne holds a bull whip and guides his horses with his body and voice.
Payne said his act began after he viewed a specialty act in a rodeo in his hometown. "It disappointed me that they could bring such a sorry act to my hometown," he said. When he complained, he was given the challenge to do better the next year.
Payne said he prepared the skeleton of the act he now performs and went back to the rodeo in 1987.
In 1988, he was hired to do the act. "At the end of 1988 the act was nominated for PRCA Act of the Year," he said. In fact, it was nominated five years in a row, he said.
He is a stickler for perfection. His son Lynn, 17, curries the horses and tightens the saddle belts. "He needs to look good for the fans," said Payne.
Payne has been a partner with his father and brothers for the past 30 years. He has traveled around the United States gathering cattle. He recently helped Ute Stampede producer Cotton Rosser gather wild cattle near Sacramento, Cailf.