STORIES FROM THE SET: BEHIND THE SCENES OF PECOS

When we started brainstorming what the Pecos photoshoot was going to look like it was obvious that we had to have a rodeo. We searched near and far for the perfect arena and ended up finding it in our own backyard… like literally 2 miles down the road right here in Yoakum!

Now that we knew where we were going to have it, all we had to do was stage our very own Double D Ranch rodeo. Sounds easy enough, right? Oh, honey, you must be new here.

The weather was less than cooperative, and Yoakum got over 6 inches of rain the week of the photoshoot, and then really amped things up with a nice cold front making for some mighty chilly nights. (Doesn’t everyone wear their Valdez coat in the rodeo arena?) Which, naturally, made it quite a bit harder to recruit volunteers to come be extras in a freezing, wet rodeo arena in their spare time! But, with several pretty pleases we were able to rally employees, friends, and family and we managed to get a stock contractor that brought two bulls, a bull rider, and even a bull fighter for us to get some live action! Everyone pitched in to help get the arena looking rodeo ready, and even sweet Nana got to work grooming and loving on two of our equine extras. In the end, the mess made it memorable, and we all ended up having a pretty good time – good food, great livestock, and even better company!

For part two of our rodeo, a couple of our favorite locals brought their horses, steers, and a real cute cowdog, Sam, to play the part of some real cowboys and work on their modeling portfolio. Already a man of many, many trades, Mitchell decided to add Professional Bulldogger to his resume, when he found a wild hair and decided, “ya know what, that doesn’t seem too hard…” Y’ALL. We all laughed so hard we could barely breathe!

We left most of the comedy capers behind us in the dirt and mud of the arena, but we still had a section to shoot in studio, which – in case you didn’t know – is usually somewhere we’ve cleared out of the storage room or back there where y’all try on clothes during the Meetups every summer. So keep that in mind next time you’re in your skivvies with your Wolf Pack sisters trying on that pile of sales items, that many’a catalog images have been shot right where you stand. We hung an enormous monochromatic blue background scrim and scrounged up some cowboy props to make it look as authentic as possible, including a roping dummy that’s currently featured in our Fort Worth store, a few saddles and ropes we had lyin’ around – this is when it pays to be a liiiittle bit of a hoarder (*cough Cheryl*).

We’ve gotta say, the whole production might not have been that pretty, but the end product sure was!