on January 13, 2026Dewayne Stamper has gone to ride cutting horses in heaven, or maybe judge them. He did both. For instance, he last judged the NCHA open futurity in 2016, and rode champion cutter Dixieland Docs Per in 1991.
I first met Dewayne when he was hauling a cutter for a friend of mine. Dewayne loaded up a big trailer almost every weekend and went to local cuttings where his clients competed and he could school young horses (and the clients) he was training. He had one of the early aluminum trailers back then and we all called it the space ship. It looked like one.
Dewayne was a master at getting along with people, teaching, and making everyone think they could do it – whether they could or not. Wouldn’t have said a cuss word if you held a branding iron to him, but he was a master at schooling gunsels in conversation. They didn’t know he was showing how foolish they were, but if you happened to be in the clubhouse at his barn when it happened, it was priceless to hear. One of the best vacations I ever had was spending the last week of the NCHA Finals in Fort Worth when Dewayne was judging.
Not one to sit in the bleachers, I got to loping cutters at the shows for Dewayne. I’m sure he was watching me ride. He knew I rode at a salebarn. I have had the opportunity to ride several fine horses that would later excel in several arena events because trainers wanted me to expose them to all the noise, boogers and tight situations that comes with penning cattle in salebarn alleys. He asked if I would ride some horses at the barn for him. Would I!! The first one I took he said “don’t be stopping this horse hard on that bad ground.” He didn’t say a thing about turning around or going down the fence to turn a cow, and I might have done that… a lot.
One time when I was at the ranch in Murphy to pick up a horse, we were gathering the horses in from the trap behind the barn and I saw this beautiful filly. I’d never seen her before. I asked Dewayne what she was. He said she was one of his that kinda fell through the cracks. When they broke her she rode well with the hackamore and showed some promise on cattle, but, “she won’t pack a bit,” Dewayne said, “just won’t. I didn’t have time to work on it so here she is.”
I asked if I could ride her. “Sure, ride her all you want. Mess with her on cows if you want. Ride her in the halter if you want to.” And so I did. I loved her from the first minute. She was a Smart Little Lena daughter, and that’s how I learned Smart Little Lena is my favorite cow horse bloodline. I still own and ride two right now. So I rode her in a loping hack and fiddled with cows and figured I couldn’t afford her. I asked if she was for sale. I know he had been periodically watching all this. He got that grin and asked if I would want to buy her. I am sure he sold her to me much cheaper than he could have sold her elsewhere. I rode her and loved her (with a little bosal rig) until she got navicular many years later.
Another morning at the barn a fancy car drives up and this feller gets out wearing alligator boots and one of those leather starter jackets with a pro sports team mascot on the back, also in leather. He was bare headed. That should have been my first clue. He told Dewayne he was there to ride his horse, a nice young stud Dewayne was training. In his diplomatic, nice, kind way, Dewayne tried to explain to the man that he might not be ready to ride that horse and we had others there that might suit him better. The guy was adamant that was his horse, he was spending all this money to get him trained, and he wanted to ride him. Dewayne kinda looks at me – it was the same look he got when schooling someone in a conversation who didn’t know they’d been schooled.
Dewayne said, “go get that buffalo.” Buffalo are nothing like cattle and aren’t worth a flip for cow work – except – what this one would do anyway, he would stay on the end of the pen and he would run from one side to the other. As long as he was in there. He wasn’t as good as working the flag because you couldn’t stop him, in the middle or anywhere else, and you couldn’t make him change direction unless he was at the end. But for a green horse learning to let a cow pull him through a turn, he was the ticket. The owner would only have to ride one turn with time to recover before the turn at the other end – and the horse would never do anything stride for stride back and forth because the buffalo didn’t do that. It seemed the best situation. But I should mention here for those of you who ride cutters, Dewayne had been riding that horse and he did NOT leak on the ends.
“I want to use my own bridle,” the owner said. “No,” Dewayne said, “you’ll use my bridle and besides, you need some big boy reins to ride this horse.” That was a gunsel in the clubhouse statement right there, but of course the owner would never notice. The horse was already saddled and we got everything all adjusted because now that I think about it, I guess that guy didn’t bring a saddle. Maybe he didn’t have one. Meanwhile, I had the buffalo ready. He was already loping from end to end. So Dewayne was explaining to this guy to ride up there and the horse would go with the buffalo. The guy didn’t ask to warm the horse up or ride him around. To my knowledge he had never been on him.
The guy rode up to the middle and here comes the buffalo by and of course that nice horse went with him. He got to the end. Sat on his hocks, got down low and let that buffalo pull him around and it was so smooth it looked like a tilt-a-whirl. The owner didn’t make it. The horse was particularly sharp because Dewayne had already ridden him that day. Owner flies up in the air and goes straight backward off that horse. And he got some air, too. Feller landed flat of his back with his feet straight up in the air. I went to catch the horse and pen the buffalo. Dewayne went to the guy, but I didn’t hear what was said. Guy went straight to his fancy car and left – but when I came walking up with the horse, Dewayne threw his hands out and said “stay back.”
There on the heavy sand cutting pen floor was a perfect replica of the back of that starter jacket. I mean he had hit hard! “Don’t anybody come in here. Don’t ride in here anymore today,” Dewayne said. He was preserving that impression. I’m pretty sure he was saving it for the afternoon clubhouse crowd. It was not only a lesson, but also one of those tongue in cheek schooling sessions.
When I met Dewayne he was a great rider even though years before his pelvis had been broken when a house fell on him. He was working in the family house moving business. He started out roping and his champion NCHA cutting horse was actually purchased as a roping prospect. That didn’t work out and somehow Dewayne started playing with him cutting. There used to be lots of club cuttings in a hundred-mile radius of here. He was a gelding bought at a horse sale. A true Cinderella story.
Dewayne went all over the world teaching and judging cutting and once when he went to Italy he bought a Border Collie. He told me he didn’t want to put the dog in cargo because he would be quarantined when he got here and because Dewayne could become separated from the dog. So they gave the dog a bunch of tranquilizers and put him in a bag that would fit under the seat. “You could just fold him up like a sweater,” Dewayne told me. When the plane touched down, Dewayne said that dog was waking up. The plane had to wait sitting on the tarmac to get a gate to unload and Dewayne was getting nervous because that dog was starting to move. He made it off the plane, but just barely and Dewayne said he was running to get outside to get the dog out of that bag.
A good friend who left a mark on a lot of people. I’ll see you again.