went down there and were fighting full-blooded Mexican fighting bulls the first day,” Munsell says. Admittedly, while the bulls weren’t fully grown, they were fast, mean, and awfully aggressive.
“They didn’t bump me around a lot down there and I enjoyed it, and that’s probably when I decided that this is probably what’s best for me,” Munsell says.
In high school and college he went on to try his own hand at bull riding. “The adrenaline running through you is second to none,” Munsell says, thinking back to that time. “On the back of a bull it is easy enough to ride one that is bucking straight away, but when one is spinning and turning back, that adds to the higher degree of difficulty. Man, it is maybe sort of like a controlled car wreck.” But as much as he enjoyed it, he found it wasn’t for him.
“I’d always known I’d be involved in rodeo in some facet. I just didn’t know what,” Munsell says. “I was capable of riding bulls fairly decent but I’d hit a rough patch and was, at that time, getting more bullfighting jobs in high school.” And that’s what he’s done full time ever since.
Down to a Science
There are countless videos on the internet of Munsell being thrown by a bull, stomped on, trampled, kicked, and flung by a pair of horns high into the air. Like a rag doll, the bullfighter has been whipped all over the stadium and often in front of a cheering crowd. One video shows a frenzied bull’s back legs landing on Munsell’s back, slamming him flat to the ground. You can’t help but cringe when seeing it happen, knowing it’s like someone dropping a motorcycle on him.
Bullfighters hurry into position to help a rodeo contestant thrown from a bull during the Professional Bull Riders world finals in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2017. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection photo by Bob Bushell)
“Well, it certainly takes a special person to do the job,” Munsell remarks about the danger. “You’re purposely running in front of an animal that’s out to kill you.”
For Munsell, part of the thrill is about being able to control an animal that’s fifteen times his size without touching it. But more importantly, he says it is about being in the right place at the right time to help the bull rider in danger.
“When you pull a guy out of a bad jam and he tells you thanks, that’s super gratifying,” Munsell says. “You see a lot of these kids and they don’t get up and move as quick as they should, which makes my job a little harder than it should be.”
Munsell makes it a point to tell the bull riding competitors to help him out and move as soon as they hit the dirt. The sooner they start moving away from the bull, the easier it becomes for him to control the animal safely away. “If you’re getting up and moving, it makes my job a heck of a lot easier than if you’re lying around pouting,” Munsell says.
During the actual bull riding competition, the bullfighters are careful to keep their distance from the animal, about ten to fifteen feet away, to avoid negatively impacting someone’s ride. “A spinning bull is always going to get you more points, so we never want to draw the attention of the bull to us while he’s spinning,” he says. At the same time the bullfighters have to be ready to launch themselves forward in the blink of an eye. Munsell admits, “It’s a very fine line to keep your distance far enough away to let the bull buck and do its thing and not distract him, but a close enough distance where we can get in the middle of a situation as quick as we can.”
Sprinting across an arena toward a charging bull, instead of away, seems a little counter-intuitive. Every fiber of his being that cares about his own safety must be screaming to turn and run the other way. “It is completely backwards,” Munsell agrees.
The art and science of bullfighting has evolved over the past fifteen years. Bullfighters endlessly view videos of their performance, critiquing their game like NFL players.
“So you train yourself to look for certain things that the rider is doing that may indicate coming off the bull,” he says. “I understand how cattle move—and good cow sense, I think, can make a good bullfighter great.”
And of course while there are competitions for bull riders, there are also competitions for bullfighters. In that arena, Munsell has won two world championships and two national championships. He describes the contests as being a big, dangerous game of tag between him and the bull, with the bull being judged essentially on its aggression and tenacity—or basically its will to kill the bullfighter.
“I’m being judged on how close I can get to the animal and executing certain moves, and getting awarded for how close I’m getting and how well I pull off the maneuvers around that bull,” Munsell says. The bullfighter cannot touch the bull and must use its own inertia against it.
“A lot of bulls are trained, and they know when they’ve done their job and they know when to leave,” he says. But some bulls learn and remember moves used by bullfighters, and can use that to surprise the next one they find themselves up against.
A Dog-Eat-Dog Industry
For Munsell, fighting bulls is a full-time job that starts in January and runs most of the year. “It’s year-round, [and] there’s a lot more indoor venues than people would think. If you’ve got a nice barn, we can have a rodeo,” Munsell says.
Things are changing in America. The Western and rural lifestyle is in a constant state of decline, but the number of rodeos held every year are actually increasing. Rodeos reached their peak in the early 1990s but decreased every year until 2006, when it reached its lowest number of 560 rodeos in the United States. But there’s still an audience, and with prize money growing ever higher, that number has begun to creep up once again. Today there are six hundred professional rodeos held across the country and approved by the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. Membership in a popular organization like the Professional Bull Riders association has grown from twenty members in the early ’90s to about one thousand today.
The competition for bullfighters is steep. Being one of the top ten bullfighters in the country helps Munsell get the jobs he needs to stay competitive in the business. “It sure enough is a dog-eat-dog industry,” he says, adding there used to be a saying that bullfighters are a dime a dozen, but now it is more like a penny a dozen. “I’m very fortunate to have known a lot of really good bullfighters and they thought enough of me at a young age that I might be a good fill-in for them when they retired.”
A bullfighter can make between $100 and $500 per rodeo. “You’ve got to treat this profession as a business and not be going for cheap money, because you don’t make a very good living at it if you’re going cheap,” Munsell notes.
Healthy Respect for the Bull
Most people wouldn’t step foot anywhere near a bull, and with good reason. But with a lifetime of being around bulls and bullfighting, Munsell no longer holds any fear when he steps into the arena.
“I know how to control those nerves better than most,” he says. “People always ask me, ‘Are you scared of those bulls?’ No, not really—I’ve been around them all my life. I have more of a respect for the animal than I do a fear [of them].” Smart bullfighters keep a healthy respect for the animal and what it is capable of. Because a bull is fifteen times his size, Munsell believes it will take only one kick or one well-placed blow to the head to take someone out permanently.
“It’s not a fear. If I died fighting bulls, I’d probably die a happy guy because
