Just beyond Cottonwood Creek, in the heart of Four Star Rodeo country, lies a roping arena surrounded by oak trees where a champion team roper was made. Justin Davis, a Cottonwood, Calif. native, is a descendent of a long line of cowboys who have made a name for themselves inside of the arena.
Stoic and serious in nature for those who don’t know him, his sharp sense of humor and quick wittedness, coupled with kindness and generosity may surprise you if you find yourself in his inner circle. A family man and a friend, Davis has found himself challenged both in and out of the arena on multiple occasions. Like all great champions, he gracefully accepts the wins and takes the losses as lessons to be learned.

The Beginning
“When I was a kid, my family all rodeoed. My uncles, Bob Nichol and Allen Gill, roped together. Bob headed for Allen, and they were two of the best ropers in California. My mom, Terri, and my sister, Mandy, are both barrel racers — and that foundation started with my grandpa, Cecil Nichol.”
Davis grew up next door to his grandpa, an avid roper, who at 90-years-old, still competes today.
“My whole family had a big role in my life, but if I had to pick one, I’d have to say my grandpa was my biggest influence. In the summertime when I didn’t have school, I would go over there and rope with my grandpa in the morning. We used to call it ‘two-a-days’, and it was a dream life for a kid. We would rope in the morning, go eat lunch, play 9 holes of golf, come back and rope again. And that was a typical summer day for me, if I wasn’t at a rodeo with my parents, who are stock contractors.”
Davis’s dad, Jeff, owner of Four Star Rodeo Company, the WPRA Stock Contractor of the Year 2024, also helped ignite Justin’s passion and love for rodeo. “My dad roped calves, team roped and rode bulls when he was younger. And he was ambidextrous. He headed right-handed, roped calves left-handed, heeled lefthanded…he’d rope calves left-handed and then get off and tie them right-handed. I didn’t think much about it, but looking back, it was really unique.”
Although he aspired of playing basketball professionally, Davis sadly was never drafted to the NBA. “My sister and I had three bets when I was a kid. One was that I’d be able to dunk, one was that I’d be 6-foot, and one was that I’d make the NBA. Each bet was worth a million dollars, and I owe her 2 million, because while I did make it to 6-foot, I can’t dunk, and I never made the NBA!”

Since the NBA was a flop, Davis decided a rodeoing professionally was a better fit and began chasing his gold buckle dreams during his senior year of high school. “My first partner was Dan Williams Jr. We entered Odessa and a couple other rodeos, and then David Motes asked me to rope in Tucson for the rest of the year, and I was starstruck. This is back in the day — ’06. And then I roped with Joe Beaver and Wade Wheatley and all those guys before I was even 20. All of a sudden, I start thinking, ‘Maybe there is a future in this.’ And I loved it.”

The Broc
In the 25 years that Broc Cresta walked this earth, he and Justin were the definition of brothers from another mother. At 17-years-old, Broc moved to Cottonwood to live with Davis and his family. “He just loved it here,” Davis reflects with a faraway glance out the window. Cresta’s unexpected passing while competing at Cheyenne Frontier Days left a hole in the hearts of all who knew him, especially Davis, who took the loss extremely hard.
For the past 12 years, the Davis family has produced and hosted the prestigious Broc Cresta Memorial Open Roping and Pro-Am in memory of the 2-time NFR Qualifier. Always a team roping favorite, both professional and amateur team ropers alike flocked to Cottonwood to compete.
The 2024 Broc Cresta Memorial was the year we will all remember as “almost the last Broc Cresta roping.” As fans and contestants gathered around the flatbed trailer where Davis and his family auctioned off items for a scholarship in his best friend’s memory, you could hear an audible gasp when the announcement came that they would be discontinuing the Broc Cresta Roping in the years to come.
“As soon as I make the announcement, people started flocking up to the office saying they don’t want the roping to be done,” recalls Davis. “The last few years, my family and I had gotten to the point where we thought that it’s been great, but we could end it on top. I remember going to the Mike Boothe roping and it was just a roping. They didn’t even pay tribute to Mike Boothe. I didn’t want that for Broc.”
Despite Davis’s best efforts to retire the roping, sponsors and supporters showed up asking for the roping to continue. “After Cheyenne, I flew home and was roping over at my sister and brother-in-law’s house, and my brother-in-law, Robert, tells me that we already have a bunch of sponsorship money. So, we made the decision to do it again.”

The Daddy
Exactly 12 years after Broc left us that rainy day in Cheyenne, Davis and his partner, Hayes Smith, nostalgically found themselves short-round bound at the Daddy of ‘Em All.
“Leading up to Cheyenne, our confidence level wasn’t the highest, but we had a great spring and that’s why we were entered. Cheyenne slack was on the 14th of July, which is a couple of weeks before the short round. It’s a 7 am slack and they have 200 teams. Everybody ropes that morning. They take the top 60 from the first go and pay 12 moneys on one. Those top 60 times on one were automatically seeded in the rodeo. We were 13th place with a 9 flat.”
After slack in Cheyenne, Davis and Smith hit several rodeos over the next ten days. With a
good run of bad luck, Davis was ready to be home for a while. “I roped at Ogden and was wanting to go home, but I had to go back to Cheyenne. I’m glad we did obviously. Leading up to Cheyenne, I knew that it was kind of a fairy tale deal for us. I knew that the short round would be on the 28th, which was the day that Broc died — so I thought that it would be cool for us to win this rodeo on the anniversary of his passing.
“The first time we put on Broc’s roping, Clay Tryan won it, and he told me, ‘Three days ago, I knew I was going to win this roping. Something just came over me and told me I was going to win this roping, and I did.’ I woke up that morning of the short round and I knew I was going to win Cheyenne.”
And win they did. Drawing the best steer in the pen, Smith got out, spun a nice steer, and Davis heeled him in 8.3, leaving very little chance for the remaining teams to beat them.
“The coolest thing was that Emy (Davis’s wife) was there with me. It really meant a for me lot to have her there because she has been by my side since the beginning of my career. We had a good time. It’s crazy…team roping in Cheyenne has only been around for 24 years. 12 years ago, Broc died in 2012, and he was 12th in the world the day he died.”
Whether it was fate or pure coincidence, we’ll never know. But one thing is for certain, Davis had a friend smiling down on him that day at The Daddy.

The Horses and Horsemanship
It’s no question that roping is getting faster, and beyond talent and skill, a team roper of Davis’s caliber has to be mounted. “The talent and the horse have got to be equal,” Davis says. “At these rodeos, the guys entered are top 50, 30, 20 in the world. Everybody ropes great, so you can’t show up on a sub-par horse and expect to win. It comes down to skill, horsepower, and horsemanship.”
Anyone who has followed Davis’s career, knows that he has been fortunate to have some phenomenal horsepower in his string over the years. “One of the biggest things that I hang my hat on still to this day was in 2009 when my heel horse won Reserve World Champion Heel Horse in the PRCA.” At just 21 years of age, Davis found his good heel horse, Slim
Shady, coming in close second to Randon Adams’ Diesel. A legendary heel horse, Diesel took the title 4 years in a row. “I think that Slim Shady would have won Heel Horse of the Year, but he was injured all the time. He tore 4 deep flexors throughout his career.
“With that horse I developed this passion and shine for ‘this is how a heel horse is supposed to work’. It kind of hinders me sometimes, because not every horse has that talent. But there’s also some people who are not fortunate enough to have ridden a horse like that.”
Beyond the horses themselves, Davis has a deep passion for horsemanship and the ability to bring out the best in his horses. “To me, horsemanship is huge. I want to ride a really broke horse. When I pick up the bridle reins, I want them to respect it. I want them to tuck their chin and when I say ‘whoa’ I want them to stop.
“If I’ve got a horse that isn’t working properly, sometimes I won’t even practice with my rope. I just focus on riding with my hands and my feet and making dry runs. It’s the difference between making run after run to try to fix something, and ending up frustrated, when you could just work on your horse and then make less runs easier. I’ll catch myself getting mad at my horse on occasion, but then I think about it and realize I’m just mad at myself because I put my horse in that position by being unprepared.”
The Future
Qualified for the winter rodeos, Davis plans to make another run at it. “How do you not go? Usually when I get home after the winter, I tell myself, ‘If I don’t have this much won, I’m not going to enter after Reno.’ And I keep meeting that number. Maybe I need to raise it. It’s just enough to rodeo, but it’s kind of one foot in and one foot out.”
Beyond rodeoing, Davis runs multiple businesses, including his partnership with Pro Earth Animal Health and ranch real estate with his dad and cousin, Kyle Davis, as the first agents in California for Fay Ranches, one of the largest ranch real estate brokerages in the nation.
His daughter, Shyla, has also taken to rodeoing, but encourages her dad to keep entering. “She wants me to go. She has gotten so into rodeo in the last year. Watching me and watching my nieces, now she wants to start roping. And I want to be an example for them. Win or lose, doesn’t matter, you’re getting to do something you love.
“Roping is a great life. If you can find happiness in it, you can live forever and still do it. My grandpa is 90 years old, and he still ropes. I love that. I also try to compare it to Broc sometimes. When I don’t want to go do it, I do it because he can’t. It puts a little drive in me. I’m 37 years old — luckily, I’m a team roper and 37 isn’t old for team roping. I remember when we were kids and Broc saying, ‘I’m going to rodeo until I’m 30 and then I’ll do something else.” Well, 30 came and went. He never got to see 30, but he’ll be 25 forever. Time does fly, so I’m going to do it for a couple more years, if I can.”