Posted by Tim on 8/15/2004, 9:09 pm, in reply to "Re: Not happy for long" I'm not trying to deny anybody anything, I'm not selling anything but through trial and error, and I've made enough errors to know, I've become quite the expert on what constitutes a productive, effective roping dummy. A poorly designed dummy will teach you bad habits quick, fast and in a hurry and any decent roper will tell you that bad dummy habits transfer from the ground to the saddle and are hard to break. Pracitce doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent. Practice wrong... learn it wrong and become real good at doing it wrong. If your dummy's head is too high, you won't learn to land the loop on the neck just back of the horns and you will bounce many loops off the shoulder over the dropped head. Most broken-in steers will duck just a bit when they hear the loop coming and you'll just frisbee that loop right past him. If your dummy's legs are too short or high off the ground, or too close together, you won't learn how to scoot that lower or trailing strand across the sand and will wrap up many hind legs and will wonder why. 80-90 percent of the professional heelers have gone from setting traps to scooping because it's a more dependable catch. Allen Bach and Mike Beers are about the only two out of the top 25 heelers in the world still trapping. Even if they tell you different, I have studied all of them via frame-by-frame slow motion video through hundreds of runs and have found that even THEY can't tell you exactly what they're doing. You can't practice a scoop on straight, slick, narrow legs. They need a bend and to be spread apart a bit. Being good ropers doesn't necessarily make them good teachers. And to answer your question... No... I haven't used one or tried one. I need only to see one. I don't have to whack myself in the head with a hammer to know that it hurts either. And if you think it's a fantastic deal.... buy yourself one. But when your roping don't improve, come back and read this post and you'll know why. But for me... roping requires way too much effort to be knowingly defeating yourself. And your horse won't appreciate you wearing him out trying to figure out what you're doing wrong. Dally clean
4.230.189.213
I've built and used many dummies. I've built several that weren't great. Some had the head too high and the legs too straight and high but by my tenth one or so, I had all the bugs worked out of it and am currently building one with motorized legs for my own use of course.
Tim
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