Nothin’ But Try: The Bulls and Family Behind the Chute

At Nothin’ But Try Ranch in Erick, Oklahoma, some of the toughest athletes in professional bull riding are also some of the closest members of the family.

There’s more to a great bucking bull than the eight seconds most people ever get to see. In the arena, it’s 1,500 pounds of muscle exploding out of a chute, twisting through the air and doing everything possible to put one of the best bull riders in the world on the dirt. Under the lights, they can look downright fierce, but back at the ranch, those same bulls come looking for scratches, rubs, and attention from the people they know.

Over the years, the Drurys get to know each one’s personality, habits, preferences, and quirks. They feed them, haul them, watch over them, worry about them, and welcome them home when the work is done. That’s a side of these bulls most fans never get to see, and it’s a big part of what makes Nothin’ But Try’s story worth following. Sure, the bulls are serious athletes, but each one of them is also so much more.

Located in Erick, Oklahoma, Nothin’ But Try Ranch is owned by Chad and Jenny Drury, with their daughter Addi growing up in the operation and now building a reputation of her own in stock contracting. Over the years, the family has developed a pen of bulls that has represented the Nothin’ But Try name on some of professional bull riding’s biggest stages. Oklahoma State University has described the ranch as home to multiple world-renowned bucking bulls, while PBR records show how consistently that name has appeared among the sport’s top competitors. Those results, however, were years in the making. Before the World Finals appearances, the recognizable names, and the bulls fans know today, Chad and Jenny were building the operation one bull, one decision, and one season at a time.

Building Nothin’ But Try Ranch

The roots of Nothin’ But Try go back well before the bulls that carry the name today. Chad grew up in South Dakota alongside his brothers in a rodeo family, and Jenny later recalled that rodeo helped put all three brothers through college, with Chad attending on a bull riding scholarship. His younger brother Shane went on to become an NFR bull rider, while Chad eventually entered the business world still holding onto the idea that the two of them might someday raise bucking bulls together. After Shane passed in 2006, Chad began reevaluating the direction of his own life and eventually left his corporate career for western Oklahoma to pursue the work he had long imagined doing.

Chad and Jenny married in 2008, and Nothin’ But Try began taking shape as a true family operation. In a first-person account Jenny wrote several years later, she described the decisions behind raising bucking bulls as something the two of them worked through together, from deciding which bulls to enter or sell to determining which should be kept and bred for the future. Faith has also remained central to the way the Drurys describe those decisions and the way they have built the ranch. One of the earliest signs that they might be onto something came from the first bull born on the ranch, Tid, who was named after Chad’s brother Shane. The Drurys turned down an offer to sell him while he was young, and Tid eventually went on to make the PBR Finals before continuing his career with a rodeo company and appearing at the NFR and Canadian Rodeo Finals.

Built to Buck, But Cared For Like Family

In professional bull riding, the bull is every bit the athlete as the person trying to ride ‘em. Stock contractors are responsible for raising, developing, transporting, and caring for the bovine athletes that make the sport possible. At Nothin’ But Try Ranch, the relationship between performance and the everyday care behind it is especially easy to see. Few bulls illustrate that better than Hard Labor.

Hard Labor was born when Chad and Jenny’s daughter, Addi, was seven years old and had difficulty nursing as a calf, so she helped raise him by bottle. What started with helping a young calf nurse grew into a bond that followed them well beyond the arena. Chad later described the 1,520-pound bull simply as Addi’s best friend, even as Hard Labor developed into an elite bucking athlete.

During a competition in North Carolina in June 2022, Hard Labor stopped putting weight on his left hind leg. He was taken to Oklahoma State University’s Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, where veterinarians discovered a serious fracture of the talus bone in his hock. The injury threatened his career and raised questions about whether an animal his size could heal well enough to remain comfortable and sound. The family chose surgery. What followed were screws, casts, veterinary visits, and months of recovery. Throughout it all, the Drurys remained committed to bringing Hard Labor home regardless of whether he ever bucked again. Eventually, he did come home and while his competitive career concluded, his place in the family hadn’t changed one bit.

House Mouse: Fierce in the Arena, Gentle in the Pasture

House Mouse may be one of the clearest examples of just how different a bull can look outside of work. He competed at the highest levels of professional bull riding and was among the bulls selected for the 2021 PBR World Finals. In the arena, House Mouse could be all business. Yet, back at the ranch, the bull people encountered could be remarkably different: approachable, gentle, and friendly enough that the contrast became part of his identity. 

That dual personality is part of what makes bucking bulls much more complex than most people realize. Calling a bull “mean” simply because he bucks misses the point. These animals have been selectively bred and developed for an athletic job, and what happens during an eight-second competition doesn’t necessarily tell you much about what the same bull is like standing in a pasture with the people who know him.

House Mouse can look fierce with a rider on his back and considerably less intimidating once the work is over. That spirit also made him a natural inspiration for our newest collaboration with the ranch, The Nothin’ But Try House Mouse Holiday Blend, built around the same idea of plenty of fiery character with a festive and smooth, strong finish.

The Paint Power: Tecovas Triple Aught and BRUNT Haymaker

Then there’s the duo known around the ranch as Paint Power: Tecovas Triple Aught and BRUNT Haymaker. Both have built impressive PBR resumes, qualifying for the 2025 PBR World Finals and returning again in 2026. Bull-stat records currently credit Triple Aught with four PBR Finals appearances and Haymaker with five, making the pair two of the more established names at Nothin’ But Try.

Tecovas Triple Aught, better known around the ranch as “Trip” or “Trip Trip,” has a story that goes well beyond his results sheet. PBR describes the roughly 1,550-pound bull as easygoing and good-natured around the people he knows, even though he wasn’t always that way. As a young bull, Trip could be difficult to approach and sometimes struggled just to stay on his feet while learning the sport. Over time, he developed into a proven PBR athlete without losing the personality the Drurys had come to know back home. He can still be petted before he bucks, travels well, tolerates having his feet handled, and is apparently more than willing to roll over for a belly scratch. When it’s time to work, he flips the switch. When the job is done, he goes right back to being Trip.

BRUNT Haymaker brings plenty of credentials of his own. He’s been one of the most durable and recognizable bulls associated with the ranch, and his repeated World Finals appearances have made him a fixture in the Nothin’ But Try lineup. Together, Haymaker and Triple Aught became Paint Power, right down to matching tail bags bearing the name when their tails are washed and braided. The matching tail bags are a pretty good example of the personality the Drurys bring to the whole operation. That pairing ultimately inspired The Nothin’ But Try Paint Power Blend, our dark six-bean espresso created in their honor.

The Work Behind the Eight Seconds

Professional bull riding might last eight seconds, but raising the bull takes years, and plenty can happen during those years. Mouse Trap demonstrated that in 2024. When he didn’t come up to eat one evening, the Drurys knew something was off. They found him salivating excessively and unable to eat, and X-rays revealed a fractured jaw. He was taken to Oklahoma State, where veterinarians stabilized the fracture surgically using pins, a connecting rod, and wire. Less than 24 hours later he was eating and drinking again, and six weeks later enough new bone had formed for the pins to be removed.

Then there is OptiWize Rescue Story, whose name almost tells the story by itself. In March 2022, Chad, Jenny, and Addi found the newborn calf cold and unresponsive in a pasture. They carried him inside, warmed him, tube-fed him, and spent roughly the next day and a half trying to keep him alive. Four years later, that same calf made his PBR debut. During only his second trip out of a PBR chute, Rescue Story was matched with three-time World Champion José Vitor Leme, with the pair combining for 88.45 points. That’s a pretty remarkable distance from a calf lying cold and unresponsive in an Oklahoma pasture.

A Family Operation, and the Next Generation

The depth seen at Nothin’ But Try doesn’t happen because of one bull or one person. It’s the product of a full family operation built over years. Chad brought the background in rodeo, bull riding, and the competitive side of stock contracting, while Jenny has become a central force to keeping the operation running and everything moving in the right direction behind the scenes. From the day-to-day demands of the ranch to the decisions about which bulls to enter, sell, keep, and breed for the future, Nothin’ But Try is something they’ve built and managed together. Their daughter, Addi, grew up in the middle of it.

For Addi, that meant living the parts of stock contracting most spectators never do: animals to feed, health issues to catch, young bulls to develop, veterans to care for, injuries to manage, miles to haul, and an endless number of ordinary days behind every extraordinary eight-second trip. Today, PBR records are already crediting bulls such as Tecovas Triple Aught directly to Addi Drury / Nothin’ But Try / Diggers, making the next generation of the operation increasingly visible. What began with Chad and Jenny taking a chance on a life built around bucking bulls has become a family operation their daughter is now helping carry into its next chapter.

Why Wrangler Coffee Company Wanted to Work With Nothin’ But Try

The mix of hard work, family, competition, and genuine care for the animals is a big part of what made NBTR such a natural fit for us at WCC. Our goal with these collaborations has never been to just put a horse, or in this case a bull, on a coffee bag. We want to show the lives our coffee fuels, the work it helps power, and the people and animals behind it all.

A lot of that feels familiar from our own experience with horses. We’ve spent years around trail horses and racehorses, and you learn pretty quickly that no two are exactly alike. Like all of us, they each have their own personalities, quirks, good days, bad days, and ways of letting you know exactly what they think. Over time, you learn to work with them as partners, earn their trust, and give them the same care and respect on the difficult days as you do on the good ones.

We see that same kind of relationship in the way the Drurys know their bulls. House Mouse isn’t only a former World Finals bull, Trip isn’t just a set of scores on a results sheet, and Hard Labor’s story didn’t stop when his days in competition did. Knowing the animal behind the athlete is part of what makes these stories worth telling, and it’s why the bulls themselves have become such an important part of our collaborations. The Nothin’ But Try Hard Labor Roast carries the name of a bull whose story became deeply tied to the Drury family’s own. The Nothin’ But Try Paint Power Blend celebrates BRUNT Haymaker and Tecovas Triple Aught, while the Nothin’ But Try House Mouse Holiday Blend draws inspiration from one of the ranch’s most memorable personalities.

For us, the coffee gives those stories one more place to live. A bag might introduce someone to a bull they’ve never heard of, send them looking up a ranch they didn’t know existed, or give a longtime PBR fan another connection to an animal they already follow. And maybe that brings us back to the name itself: Nothin’ But Try. Chad and Jenny took a chance on building a life around bucking bulls, worked through the highs and lows that came with it, and built an operation their daughter is now helping carry forward. None of those outcomes were guaranteed. You can’t control every result, but you can control how much you care, how much work you put in, and whether you keep showing up to try again tomorrow. Around here, that still counts for quite a lot.