I have posted a couple of these on here before, they were probably the two funniest ones, so sorry for those who have read them before.
I trained this horse for my uncle once, she had a pig attitude, was short stocky and round as a barrel. I had given her her first few rides in the yard and though she hadn’t given me any hint of bucking in the yard I had a gut feeling she would let me have it once we rode out. I saddled her up, rode her about in the yard and she went alright so I thought, “it’s now or never” and we went out of the yard. The yard was on top of a bit of a hill and as we rode out it was fine until she got to the downwards slope of the hill and she let rip. She was kicking so high the cantle was slamming into the small of my back and she was near nocking the wind out of me every time she landed she bucked so hard, and the hill didn’t help. But I had her, and I knew it. I was ready for her and like clockwork first buck I knew I had her. We must have gone for four or five bucks and then she hit the ground again, my eyes were shutting each time she landed she was coming down so hard, but then there was nothing. Everything just stopped. I opened my eyes and looked up and saw her galloping off across the paddock. But nothing made sense. I was still in the saddle!, feet in the stirrups, I had the mecate in hand and the hackamore was out where it should have been, but there was no horse in any of it. She had come down so hard, and probably with her head down between her front feet and her back legs kicking up, and going down a hill, that she just slid straight out of everything.
On another occasion I was working, riding one of my own horses, he was a good going horse by this stage, young, but not green, and me and two other guys were taking a herd of weaners out of the yards and walking to a paddock only about half a mile away. The weaners went fine, the lead guy opened the gat up and lead them onto the water and blocked them up (the trough was just through the gate), I was on the side of them and the third guy bringing up the tail. We had a fence on the other side of them. As they were walking through the gate one weaner thought it would make a break for it but I turned him back easily, but as I was cantering back to the rest of them the horse started bucking. Again, I had him, no problems, he wasn’t really giving it to me, and I was kind of yahooing and carrying on like a fool, a bit cocky. The other guys had the weaners through the gate by this time and were waiting at the gate for me. So I rode out the bucking and thought, just to show off, I would canter the horse up to the gate and set him into a slide op to the gate. Well, all of that went fine till the horse slid to a stop at the gate. As soon as he had stopped he propped and gave a kick up and sent me sailing straight over his head, over the gate and I landed on my back on the other side of the gate me looking up at the horse, him with his head over the gate looking at me. The other guys there near fell over laughing.
When I was about fourteen I was living with my uncle on the cattle station he had back then, big place in north Queensland, and we were out mustering one day. I was riding this old quarter horse and he must have had a sore back or something that no one had noticed but we were all riding along and I turned around to talk to someone and rested my hand on the horses back just behind the saddle skirts, leaning back talking to whoever was behind me. The horse kind of tucked up a bit like he was going to buck but I didn’t really notice it, but my uncle did. He though it would be funny to see what would happen so told me to lean back like that again. So I did, and the horse gave one huge buck and suck back and sent me flying. I still get teased about that 24 years later.
Another time I was at a rodeo/camp draft in southern Queensland sitting up on the rails of the arena watching the camp drafting. I had a skin full of beer and whiskey and when I saw one of the guys I worked with on a cattle station not far away walk by on his horse I thought it would be a fun idea to leap on the horse behind him. So, like the drunken moron I was being, I did. The horse bucked its way through the crowd, people diving everywhere to get out of the way. Needless to say no one was impressed, (thankfully no one was hurt) I think I just ended up jumping off to go find some more beer.