Buckaroo Style

If Winnemucca isn’t prime Buckaroo habitat, it’s pretty darn close — especially during Ranch Hand Rodeo. Town fills up with big trucks, big hats, big mustaches, and big fun on the first weekend in March.

Part of the fun is the shopping. Western trade items line the upstairs balconies and front aisle of the cavernous Winnemucca Events Center. Outside, it’s still Nevada winter — gray skies, hard-used snow, and brown dirt — but inside it’s another story.

Check out this booth selling wild rags. (For the uninitiated, these are the generous, billowy, silky scarfs worn by Buckaroos and Buckarettes — and you thought they just wore plain old blue bandanas?!?)  If you lived in a landscape of monotones all winter, by early March, you’d be after color — any color. And patterns? Wild is where it’s at. Don’t worry if the colors clash. This is no time to be subtle.

For you Fashionistas, here’s how you put the style together. This upstart Buckaroo may not have won the kid’s roping contest this year but he sure looked good swinging a loop in his square-toed fancy-stitched orangey-colored boots, plaid sweater, and polka dot wild rag. And looking good is a lot of what being a Buckaroo is about. Although, if your team can win the Calcutta while you’re at it, so much the better.