Randee Munns fought his first bull when he was 19. Not necessarily on purpose.
A young student at Weber State College at the time, Munns was working a local rodeo, on his horse and working as a pickup man when he was approached by the guy he was helping, Dale Haslam.
“I said, ‘What do you want?’ Dale said, ‘You gotta be the bullfighter.’ I said, ‘Why me? And he says, ‘Cause you’re younger than I am.’”
Back then, bullfighters took on many roles, even acting as rodeo clowns.
“When I started, you were it,” he told the Deseret News. “You were the bullfighter, the clown, you’ve done the (clown) acts, you’ve done everything.”
But the roles changed about 15 years into it, he said, and bullfighters became their own separate category.
But Munns, now 75 years old, continued doing both jobs, a true Renaissance man.
“I could be the bullfighter and the clown, both. And I done that for a long time. That got me a lot of jobs. A lot of work.” He mischievously jokes that the men who choose to only fight bulls are “prima donnas.”
“They’re just bullfighters. There’s nothing funny about them. They don’t do acts.”
Munns finally gave up bullfighting at 53, but at 75, he’s likely the oldest rodeo clown in the biz, with a reputation that follows him along the Western United States.
“Everybody knows who Randee Munns is in this community. It’s rewarding,” he said, noting that he’ll go to clown rodeos in places like Oregon and Montana — where he’s been going for years — and the organizers have special parking just for him and the animals he brings with him.
“The rodeo business has been really, really good to us, you know, because of the rapport with the people, the horses, the animals and the community. You get to meet new ones all the time.”
Patience, kindness and firmness
You might not consider the clown at your local rodeo, dressed in striped stockings, baggy pants, face paint and a rainbow wig, as much of a Renaissance man, but think again.
After his wife Linda said she needed a new home to raise their three boys, he built her one. On their property in Garland, Box Elder County, sheds and barns built with his two hands are filled with saddles, reins and horse bits by Munns’ own creation.
When he wasn’t clowning in the summers, he taught welding to college students for 45 years. He taught at Utah State for nine years, where he started Bridgerland Technical College and worked there until he retired last year.
Now, when he isn’t doing any of that, the Utah rodeo legend is traveling to grade schools in St. George, something he’s been doing since 1985.
“I go and I do a PowerPoint show on all the events of the rodeo. Show them bucking a horse and roping a calf and running barrels and talking to kids about education,” he said. “And then we do a clown act at the end of it. ... The teachers are calling already before school starts wanting to know if I’m gonna come.”
This year, he’s providing the comedic entertainment at 14 rodeos through the summer and fall.
“You know, the clowns nowadays, they just walk and talk. And I guess that’s OK, but I don’t, I’m old school.”
Munns’ performances include stagecoaches, cannons, fireworks and make-shift taxis to entertain with his trademark bull’s-eye makeup and rainbow wig.
And his shows are never complete without his beloved animals.
Snickers the mule does tricks: she smiles, she rolls a 50-gallon drum, she twists her front legs out, she lies down, she sits up on her butt. His ponies, Lucy and Shasta, will guide whatever carriage he chooses for the night.
Rooster, his other mule, will share the biggest grin, and his cow dog jumps through hoops, leaps onto barrels and plays dead after Munns hits him with a finger gun.
When asked how he gets them to do so many tricks he quickly responded, “Patience, kindness and firmness. ... Just like teaching kids.”
He’s already “scheming” about next year’s entertainment.
Life in rodeo
Growing up in Garland, Munns said he was drawn to the adrenaline rush of rodeo at a young age.
“We were raised on the dairy farm, and out of the back of an old chicken coop/calf shed, we built a bucking chute, and me and the neighbor kids, we would ride the calves,” he said. “We started riding calves there, and we were 7, 8, 9 years old, just for practice, just for something fun. And on Sundays, we would haul in bulls out to the fairgrounds in Tremonton, and we would practice. We’d buck them bulls, me and the neighbor kids.”
He met his wife Linda at a college rodeo.
She actually came up behind me and put her hands in front of my face and said, “Guess who it is,” even though they had never met. He’d remembered her barrel race performance, “so I went and found the program to find her name.”
Linda said they were married a year later.
She still runs barrels and he still buys colts and rides them.
Despite the interest that he gets from young kids who see his lifestyle and are attracted to it, “once a bull hits them, fun’s all over. ... Somebody’s got to have real desire, real want to, you know, to do it.”
Though Munns said he’s tormented his body over the years with a variety of aches and pains big and small, he’s never had a serious injury and loves the lifestyle on the road.
“I don’t plan on quitting, per se, but I might cut back a little. I don’t know,” he said. Bottom line: “Be funny, make money.”
