- Address:
- 4901 North Broadway
Guthrie, OK 73044 - Phone:
- (405) 919-1395
- or evenings (405) 282-6758
- E-mail:
- gooch44_quarterhorses@yahoo.com
About Gooch RHR Ranch
My father Robert G "Bob" Gooch later known as "The Gooch" acquired his first mare, 7 year old Aprisa Sue in 1959. In 1961 he bred Apraisa Sue to Tobin Joe resulting in filly Tonto Sue Gooch. The herd grew from there. his 1st stud was Traveling Block, a grandson of Sugar Bars. While working in the oil fields here and abroad and with the help of my mother this working horse and cattle ranch grew to what is is today. Present herd mares and studs go back to Traveling Block, Lowry Star, Hancock Duplicale, Harlan, Blue's Beard, Hired Hands Dee, and El Rey Rojo among others. Our hearty pasture bred stock can be used for ranching, roping, racing, reining, showing, cutting, barrel racing and just about anything else you can think of.
Newspaper Article
When Bob Gooch was three years old he, somehow, put the bridle on one of his dad's horses and rode it to the field along Skeleton Creek where his dad and granddad were cultivating corn.
Although Bob doesn't remember the incident, his Mother told him he had to go through at least one gate to reach them.
While he was visiting with his somewhat amazed father and grandfather, it started to rain, and the three of them went to a straw stack and took shelter in the walkway the cows had eaten through the stack.
(Ed. Note: For younger readers, a straw stack was the creation of a stationary threshing machine to which bundles of grain were taken to be harvested. The harvested grain ran out a spout into a grain wagon and the straw was ejected into a stack resembling a small mountain. Cattle having access to the straw stack in winter would eat the straw until the had cut a walkway clear through it. But that isn't what the tale's about.)
Bob says his folks, now both deceased, said he started crying because he couldn't get his horse, an old one-eyed black, under the shelter.
ALWAYS LOVED HORSES
Obviously, Bob Gooch had a love for horses then - and it never ended.
Now retired from an oil company and living east of Cresent after spending 33 1/2 years in the Mideast, Gooch has accumulated land east of Crescent and 100-plus brood mares, most of them deep in Hancock breeding. Hancock is a line of quarter horses started by a man named John Hancock around Quanah, Texas. The Gooch horses also have Rey and Shoemaker strains in their bloodlines.
He says his band of broodmares is something that just evolved.
"I never intended to have this many," he says.
But he keeps breeding them, raising them and marketing them. His horses are spread all across the western United States.
He has a commercial cattle herd, also, but the horses are his joy.
"He's a walking encyclopedia on blood lines," neighbor and horse trainer Roy Rosson says of Gooch.
Gooch and a friend discussed individuals in the herd, discussing sires, grandsires, dams and granddams of the individuals as if they were family members. Each could pick out physical characteristics of animals that were reminiscent of ancestors they knew.
THEY'RE COWBOY HORSES
"These are cowboy horses," Gooch says of his line of horses.
The horses have scale, bone and athleticism that allows them to be trained for a myriad of ranch and rodeo uses.
Rosson, who breaks a number of Gooch's horses and owns some of the still competes in "old timers" rodeos standing third this year with his calf-roping ability.
Just how did Gooch wind up with his Hancock line horses?
"I bought a (quarter horse) mare in 1959 and just kept raising them," he says.
"He loves roan horses (a mixture of white hair with the base coat of the animal)," Rosson said. Many of Gooch horses share this train in common.
Gooch says that while working in the oil business in the hot, sandy Arab climate two years at a time, he used to dream about Oklahoma and owning his own horse ranch.
He did more than just dream. He started buying land in 1961 and kept adding to it with his oil field earnings.
Now he has several ranches in the vicinity of his home places with his RHR emblem over the gates at the entrances. The RHR is his cattle brand. His horses wear a 44 over a "bar" on their left hip.
IDEAL WORKING HORSES
Hancock horses were always his ideal working horses.
"I met the man who started them," he said.
He noted that the mother of the first Hancock horse, Joe Hancock, a foundation sire of the breed, carried 50 percent Percheron blood, which probably accounts for the Hancock's patently sturdy build and often the abundance of hair that grows at their fetlocks. Joe Hancock was a son of John Wilkins, a son of Peter McQue.
Gooch's first stud was Traveling Block, a grandson of Sugar Bars, a race horse out of the Thoroughbred Three Bars.
He has used several sires since,notably Frosty Roan Gooch, Harlans Country, a grandson of Rey, Bar-O Good Music, a Goldmount bred horse which goes back to Shoemaker.
He also has a son and grandson of Lowry Star, one of the great Hancock sires. He follows a careful line-breeding program, intertwining various strains leading back to Joe Hancock which keeps the Hancock strain strong but avoids inbreeding.
Gooch pointed out a pretty mare in his heard that was the product of an accidental breeding of a mare by her sire.
"That is unusual," he said. "Generally when that happens the colt is born dead."
"Bob Gooch is known as the horseman in American, more than any other, who has kept the Hancock strain strong," said Reuben Pulls, former Kingfisher city manager and a quarter horse breeder himself.
When Gooch retired the last day of the year in 1991, he was already in the horse business and has been having the time of his life ever since.
And he has no plans to quit any time soon.
While showing his colts, he pointed out a pretty little sorrel colt that was newly arrived on the place.
"That's my next stud horse," he says of the newly-purchased baby, a colt he bought from a horseman at Cherokee. The colt is a grandson of one of his old sires, Bolsa Roja, that was branded as King Ranch. The colt's mother also is King Ranch bred.
THE OIL FIELD YEARS
Gooch founded his horse dynasty on earnings from his oil field career. He broke into the oil field in Colorado in July after graduating from Guthrie High School in 1946.
"i promised Mom I would just work a couple of years until I had enough money saved to go to college," he said.
He never got around to college.
He began working in the Mideast May 19, 1958, and worked as driller assistant foreman then drilling foreman.
"i enjoyed every bit of it," he said. "That desert would get hot in the summer, but I only saw ice three times, and that was skim.
He would spend two years in Arabia and then come home for 60 or 70 days.
His wife would sometimes get to fly over to stay with him for awhile.
Once the DC3 she was flying on crash landed. She was unhurt but had to spend the night in a hospital because there were no other places to stay. Her roommate was an Egyptian girl name Zarah, and they remained friends.
That's why Zarah slips into the Gooch horse names occasionally.
While Gooch has traveled the world, his world is close at hand today.
He and his wife, Hester, have one daughter, Renae, and son-in-law Jamie Harden, who live one mile north of them along with the Goochs two grandsons, Jacob and Josh.
And he has his horses.
