LIVING INDUCTEE
BRITTANY SHELBY MILLER
“BUCKING HORSE GAL”
DISTRICT 12 - YEAR 2025
Brittany Shelby Miller was born in California on the first day of summer, June 21,1992, to Stacey Bohm and Eric Miller. While Brittany was in high school, she fell in love with a mule named Mervin who became a huge turning point in her life. The connection they made and the ways they changed each other sparked Brittany’s passion for self-discovery. Her nickname, Bucking Horse Gal, started as her own personal reminder to remain confident in herself throughout her life.
Brittany attended the University of Montana Western at Dillon where she earned a B.S. in Natural Horsemanship and a minor in Psychology, graduating in May 2015. A few years into her college career, she entered her first rodeo. As Mervin had, the small town rodeo in eastern Idaho changed her life. Brittany won her very first competition with an 80 point bronc ride in the all ladies ranch bronc riding competition. The euphoria she felt after the rodeo inspired her to chase that thrill. It’s the addiction every rodeo athlete craves and dedicates their life to: the glory of an eight second ride. The bucking horse she rode in her first competition shared the same nickname as her grandfather, “Pinkie” who had passed a few years before, and so Brittany felt a very powerful connection. She knew instantly that the rodeo life was the life she was meant to live.
While she was in Dillon, Brittany completely immersed herself in the western lifestyle. She was transformed from the shy, passive young girl with big dreams into a horsewoman, ranch hand, rodeo athlete, and a cowgirl. Brittany moved all over the western states chasing cowboy jobs and ranch work. She lacked experience, though, and struggled for years with gender role issues. While she gained valuable life skills from her travels, Brittany gave up the cowboy lifestyle to seek out the one thing she couldn’t get out of her head, bucking horses. In spring of 2016, Brittany pursued a rodeo career full time. She ate, slept and breathed bucking horses. Rodeo fulfilled her dreams and shaped her into the woman she always wanted to be.
She hired onto a rodeo company in West Yellowstone, Montana, in summer of 2016 and dedicated herself to advancing her abilities as a bronc rider. Brittany’s reputation as a lady bronc rider took off like wildfire in the western states. Being a woman in an otherwise male dominated sport never imposed on her. Her grit, try, and passion for the sport is very well known. Brittany found herself in Texas riding broncs with other rodeo women in fall of 2016 when a local TV network picked her up. “Cowgirls,” a reality show, features five ladies who ride bucking horses. The show currently has three seasons and has taken her as far as competing in the 2019 PBR Velocity tour. Meanwhile, a Colorado musician wrote lyrics to complement Brittany’s goals and titled the song, “Bucking Horse Gal.”
In summer of 2019, at the height of rodeo season, Brittany tore all the ligaments in her left ankle after catching her foot in the chute gate. She then fractured the tibia in her right ankle after trying to ride another bronc the next day. Brittany had to be carried out of the arena for the first time in her career. She was bound to a wheelchair for three months. In summer of 2021, Brittany sustained a puncture to her lung and a broken clavicle that kept her off the rodeo trail. She found new ways to fill her time, and, of course, continued to ride bucking horses after she healed. In the spring of 2022, she turned her cinch building hobby into a business which she calls “Bronc Or Broke Braiding.” Brittany started building cinches because she wanted to offer rodeo contestants better quality gear in the arena, specifically for the ranch bronc riders. That summer she broke a third bone after finally learning how to spur in timing with a bucking horse, a goal she’d been chasing for eight years and four-hundred broncs later. This still did not slow her down. With her arm in a cast, Brittany went onto flanking broncs and worked as a chute boss for another rodeo company.
The status Brittany gained as a woman bronc rider spread to Europe. She founded a bronc school in Collonge-en-Charollais, France in January of 2020. What had started out as simply being a student turned into teaching classes about ranch bronc riding. She made fast friends as her teaching was a huge success. Brittany returned to the U.S. in the spring of 2020. She established a business for women who want to learn how to ride ranch broncs. Her goal was to create the best possible avenue for women in rough stock to learn properly, safely, and pass on the knowledge, tradition, and skill set to future generations. Her rodeo schools are quickly becoming known across the states and internationally. Brittany taught more than two hundred students how to ride broncs during her first year as a rodeo school instructor. While primarily focused on women, she offers open instruction for anyone who wants to learn. Her most recent travels took her to Saint-Agreve, France to Equiblues, a western festival and rodeo in August of 2023. Brittany attended the three-day sold-out event where she competed in the open ranch bronc riding, along with one of her students, Ilona Bercx, from Belgium. Brittany earned the Reserve Ranch Bronc Champion title. From there Brittany and Ilona traveled to Belgium where Brittany did a one-day women’s ranch bronc riding school. European schools have been so well received, she is now invited back to Europe regularly. In 2024, she will be in France, Australia, and Canada.
Brittany aims to pursue stunt work, host an annual women’s bronc riding school in Montana, produce rodeo schools in Europe and eventually settle down into her own ranch where she can focus on starting colts while improving her own horsemanship skills. Brittany received her first Montana horse brand in spring of 2020, a three character jaw brand, the Montana code; 406. In summer of 2022 Brittany decided to create a business for her horsemanship in colt starting, a passion she formerly set aside to pursue rodeo. She applied for and received a second brand, an outdated character that Montana hasn’t seen in decades, the “walking” B on a horses’ left hip. She hopes to build a solid string of good minded young horses to be recognized all over Montana.
The accomplishments she’s made in and out of the rodeo arena prove her dedication to the sport. Her biggest goal is to ride more than one thousand head of bucking horses before she quits. She holds the two-time title of Iron Woman Champion, two-time Texas Ladies Ranch Bronc Champion, three-time Madison County Fair Ladies Ranch Bronc Champion, two-time Dillon PRCA Wild Horse Race Champion, 2017 Ride TV Cowgirls Bronc Champion and 2018 Reserve Ride TV Cowgirls Bronc Champion.
Brittany has won more than twenty-five bronc riding buckles in the ten years she’s been competing and is a genuine, fiercely determined cowgirl whose story is far from over.
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Photo by Lance Miller