Do any of you more "seasoned" folks on here remember BIG MAC....the steer that won Denver.....?? (Kudos to NWSS for catching cheaters in the Market Show, at least part of the time.)
For you younger steer planet people, Big Mac was a Charolais steer that was dyed black. Think of how much dye that would take. The following is a link and article for a true "blast from the past".
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,903329,00.html
Bum Steer or Real Champ?
One evening during the 1972 Stock
Show, Jack Orr was finishing up chores
down in the yards when his son and a
friend came rushing into the pen. “Jeep’s
up there on the Hill!” they blurted
breathlessly. The steer with the funny
nickname had started life on the Skylark
Ranch at Kremmling, Colorado, where
one of the boys had prepared him for a
show and sale in Kansas. He had been a
creamy white Charolais back then, but
now he was jet black and entered as an
Angus in the Junior Show. So began a
melodrama that still evokes smirks and
discomfort. “No story created more
publicity in National Western history,”
wrote former General Manager Willard
Simms, but it’s a story the Stock Show
would sooner forget.
“They took me up there and except for
being black, it sure as heck looked like
Jeep,” Orr recalls. If it was Jeep, this was a
bombshell. Only steers sired by an Angus
bull were eligible to enter the Angus
division and Jeep, if that’s who he was, had
a Charolais poppa and momma. A dye job
could be the only explanation for his
present hue. Soon, the barn talk was all
about the steer and a protest challenging his
right to compete was filed with Stock Show
brass. When the owner tendered
documents showing an Angus sire, the steer
was allowed to stay in the competition. He
conceded to using black dye to touch up a
few light spots but this was a common
practice and not against the rules.
John Grisham might have scripted
what happened next. The Angus judge,
unaware of the hubbub behind the scenes, picked the animal over 86 other
entries as the division champion. Two
days later, a second judge chose him over
Hereford and Shorthorn winners to
become the Junior Show’s grand
champion steer, one of the highest
honors at the Stock Show. “He was a
good animal, no doubt about it,” says
Orr. The award put the critter in the
headlines and when McDonald’s laid
down a record $14,250 at the Junior
Livestock Auction and dubbed him “Big
Mac,” he was a celebrity.
Ordinarily, their appearance at the
auction is the last curtain call for Junior
Show champions, but Big Mac got a
reprieve. Documents had turned up
purporting to prove his Charolais ancestry
and he was sequestered before he could
be slaughtered. Blood samples were
drawn to probe his links to the claimed
Charolais and Angus sires. Branding irons
from the Skylark Ranch were brought in.
A vet had a gander up the champion’s
nostrils for signs that pink membranes
had been dyed black. “As far up as we
could see, he was black,” the vet said.
Investigators flew to Kansas to interview
the owners and 4-H officials. A brand
inspector clipped hair and photographed
brands from other Skylark cattle to
compare with the marks on Big Mac.
Separate labs turned up nary a trace of
Angus blood in Big Mac’s veins. He was,
they said, descended from a proud
Charolais lineage. The brand inspector
concluded “beyond a doubt” that Skylark
irons had branded him. The owner’s
account of the animal’s provenance began
to unravel and the steer started showing
white around his eyes as the hair grew out.
The vet peered up his nostrils again, stood
back with a surprised look and proclaimed,
“He’s just as pink as he can be.”
Then the lid blew off the unfolding
drama. “It hit page one of the Post noon
edition,” Simms would later write, “and
then about every newspaper, TV and
radio station in the country, and the AP
and UPI wire services.” To the
accompaniment of media guffaws, Simms
called in Big Mac’s ribbons and awarded
them to the reserve grand champion.
McDonald’s asked for a refund.
Months passed and the storm
subsided while Big Mac grew out a
creamy white coat in pens of the
Colorado Brand Board, which held him
as an unclaimed stray. He had
contentedly munched his way through
600 pounds of hay and 300 pounds of
cracked corn by August when Iowa
newspaperman Eddie Collins bought
him at auction– but not to turn him
into patties. “Practically everybody in
the United States and a lot of Europe had heard about Big Mac,” laughs Jack
Orr. That fall he checked into
Washington, D.C.’s, Mayflower Hotel to
help stockmen dramatize low cattle
prices. In a Cadillac and horse trailer
Collins and Big Mac toured the country,
appearing at fairs and 4-H clubs to
illustrate what happens when
competition goes too far. The storied
steer, a champion at heart, lived to a
ripe old age and might have said that
things turned out just fine.
Youngsters in the Big Time
With chortles all around, the 1973
Junior Show’s grand champion steer was
nicknamed Honest Mac. And though the
National Western was still smarting, the
embarrassing fraud brought some needed
reforms. First, the Junior Show, which
had lagged in adding new breeds, opened
up to the increasingly popular Charolais
and added a class for “Other Breeds and
Crosses.” Now any steer sired by a
registered bull could be an Honest Mac.
Steps were also taken to thwart so-called
“steer jockeys,” exhibitors who would
bend or break rules in pursuit of the big
money paid for top animals at the Junior
Auction. Jack Orr, a key figure in
exposing Big Mac and later a Chairman of
the Junior Show, says, “We simply tried
to make rule changes to where it’s a good,
honest show and the kids are really
deserving and you’re teaching honesty,
respect and responsibility.”
