How To Win Your First Campdraft

Try as you might, the task of winning a Campdraft is harder than it looks. Many great players in the Campdrafting game took years of practice before they managed to win their first open age draft, myself included. However once someone gets that first win they generally seem to stay in contention going forward.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why that is. If this sport is such a game of quote “luck of the draw” then how could it be that people like Ben Hall, Will Durkin and Mark Buttsworth manage to win so consistently and doing so without needing to be on the best horse. One theory is the amount of horses that they have in each event, this for sure increases their odds. However it doesn’t account for the level of dominance portrayed by these sorts of competitors. I’ve tried, in my own way to attempt to understand why this happens, and how we can attempt to mimic what they do to be able to get our first win at a Campdraft.

What you need, to win a Campdraft

“To be great at this game you’ve gotta have some attributes”- Sam Parr, Tech entrepreneur

I’ve devised a way of grading a Campdrafting combination to measure their likelihood of success at an average Campdraft (grassroots). This takes into account the attributes needed to win a Campdraft, these being: Horse ability Camp, Horse ability Outside, Rider ability Camp, Rider ability Outside, Cattle sense and Campdrafting Knowledge. see figure 1.1 for an example.

Figure 1.1

If we give each of these 6 attributes of horse and rider a score out of 10 it gives us a total of 60 possible points, at this point its just a matter of putting the runs together. But the idea of this post is to get someone to their first ever Campdraft win not their first gold cup, that comes later.

So, we need to look at the minimum requirements to win a Campdraft, in my experience the number no matter what way you spin it lands around 42 to win a maiden event at a rate that is greater then 1 in 100 or greater than 1%. This is also provided that there is no attributes below a 5 as this can also be detrimental e.g horse works the house down in the camp but grabs the bit and runs past the cow outside. This means if you want to ride a horse that is a 5 outside and a 5 in the camp you had better be able to ride like Ben Hall or your a donation waiting to happen.

As your combination’s ability score increases it doesn’t necessarily guarantee you will win a draft, because as we know there are others that compete as well and also the cows brain to worry about. However this being said the better your score, the better percentage chance you have of winning.

The chance of winning looks something like this as you move your ability score up towards the golden 60.

Likelihood of winning

Less than 42 points = Less than 1% or 1 in 100 drafts

42-45 points = 1-5% or 1 in 25 drafts

45-50 points =5-10% or 1 in 20 drafts

50-55 points = 10-30% or 1 in 8 drafts

55-60 points = 30%-50% or 1 in 3 drafts

As you can see the win rate of those horse and rider duo’s that are above 55 points are considerably higher than that of even the ones from 50-55. This is why the few elite horse and rider combinations see so much success.

What can i do to get better at campdrafting?

Well I’m glad you asked because there is plenty to be done about it and most of it isn’t very hard.

To get to the point where we can win our first Campdraft we need to first do a quick analysis on our horse and rider combinations, aka our team. This critical step requires absolute honesty, we need to know where we’re at so that we can address it and get to our magic number of 42.

Give yourself and your horse a score on each attribute.

For example we will use a fictional character named Jim, riding Smokie. Jim has never won a Campdraft but finds himself in a final here and there, Smokie is about 8 years old. Jim and Smokie can run a fair lap consistently running 61 or better on a good beast, however they struggle to put up much of a fight in the camp and often drop it back. Our old mate Jim is a hobby farmer and hence spends a fair amount of time around cattle. he has only been drafting for a year or two and thus hasn’t learnt the in’s and out’s of Campdrafting. See figure 1.2

Figure 1.2

“What gets measured gets managed.” -Peter Drucker

Now that Jim knows where he is at, he can actively seek out what he needs to do.

Obviously Jim is lacking in his and Smokies camp ability as well as Jim’s own Knowledge of the arts of Campdrafting. Jim has a score of 37, not bad for a bloke that has only been drafting for a couple years. In order to not exclude anybody, I will go through what I would do to improve any of the above areas not just in Jim’s case.

Note from -Jarred Fitzpatrick

I will seek to provide as much value in the short amount of room I have in this post on the things you can do to get yourself to your first Campdraft win. However I’m currently in the process of creating a course / online clinic to go over every little thing you will need to do to get your horse and rider ability above that magic number of 42 and towards your first Campdraft win. If you’re interested just click the link below and fill in your details to be the first notified when it’s ready (limited spots will be available so register now to save your place).

How To Win Your First Campdraft  

Horse and rider ability- Camp

The camp yard is mostly a game of momentum, the higher scores come from being able to continuously push your cow from side to side without losing flow or momentum. When done well the cow will be running away from you the whole time because you’ve put the fear of God in it, so you shouldn’t ever have to worry about it turning back at you. However “fish swim, birds fly and cows don’t do what they are told”, so we need to have the ability to play defence as well.

Campdraft action points

Get yourself in front of cows and work on keeping your horse interested in them. If that isn’t possible get a mechanical cow if you haven’t got one and use it. The best help you can get in this area is more experience mimicking the real thing.

If you can get your hands on a good camp horse or a cutting horse to have a few rides on that will change your whole perspective on what is possible.

Horse and rider ability- Outside

When chasing a beast to receive maximum points you need to be in its pocket, this is very hard to obtain if you aren’t there to begin with. This means come out of the camp on the correct side of the beast and on its hip in the driving position. For most judges, the points are heavily layered on how well you complete your first peg. So this means you need to attack it or you’ll be moaning at the bar about how you missed the final by one point again.

Campdraft action points

Horse

It’s all well and good to say what you need to do but these sorts of manoeuvres takes timing and skill, all of which is unobtainable if your horse does any little thing to distract you whether it be a toss of the head, a slight grab of the bit, a dropped shoulder or any number of other annoying things. All of these things come back to how well broke and in sync with you your horse is.

The best way to improve this in my opinion is to become addicted to the craft of getting your horse as broke as possible without turning it into a robot. Do any kind of flexion, pushing of hips, pushing of shoulders, softening and counter arcing exercises you can think of until your horse is an extension of yourself.

Always remember “checks get cheques”

Rider

As for the rider, the best way to practice this is with another person on a horse or a bison/ buffalo. practice getting back a few strides and then catching up and slowing down again. it will work wonders for your positioning and the horses check.

One other thing that blows my mind is that people never practice galloping? Is that you? Stop it right now you’re just being silly. You should practice galloping in a calm and controlled manner the same amount you practice anything else.

Cattle sense

This is the one part I struggled with the most in my Campdrafting career and thus have had to spend the most time working on it. An old stockman and friend of mine Norm Barret once said something to me that has forever stuck in my mind about cattle sense, “practice working cattle on foot, if you can work cattle on foot you can work cattle on a horse”.

So the way that I learnt to read cattle without having any of my own at the time was I became the most frequent back yard helper at every Campdraft, every chance I had I was in the back yards working cattle on foot.

Campdraft Knowledge

Campdraft Knowledge has always been a favourite subject of mine as I am of the opinion it is one place that we can constantly learn and grow no matter what level we are at. see my other blog post 11 Fundamentals for Campdrafting for a few of my favourite Campdrafting tips.

End Notes

If this Blog post was something you enjoyed and would like to see more of please leave a comment in the comments section so I know what my readers are interested in or alternatively message me on Facebook or Instagram @cowhorsecollective also don’t forget to register interest and save your spot for the “How to win your first Campdraft course”.