Lemhi Quarter Horses
Lucky Blanton History
Lucky Blanton, a chestnut stallion foaled in 1936, was a top rope horse and sire of rope horses. Lucky Blanton was renowned for his dense bone, muscling, and powerful hindquarters. Lucky Blanton's breeder, Burns Blanton, had his breeding program built around concentrating Traveler blood, which is exactly what Lucky Blanton is, going back to Traveler 3 times through Traveler's son Possum (King). Burn's grandson was just 12 years old when he broke Lucky Blanton to saddle. Lucky Blanton was not only was a rope horse but also had some match racing under his belt. In 1942, Tom Mattart, bought Lucky Blanton. Once he had the new stallion he fine tuned his roping skills and introduced him to professional rodeo. For 6 of the 17 years Tom owned him, he was a fixture in the California arenas, competing in calf roping, heading, heeling and steer stopping.
Excerpts from Legends book Volume 2: In a conversation some years ago, Arizona horseman Tom Finley told about one race: "One time Burns Blanton and Mr. McKinney (who owned Red Joe of Arizona, by Joe Reed P-3) got to jawing about their horses. The whole deal was about who had the fastest horse. The only way to find out was to match them, and that's what they did. There was no starting gate, so they just marked off a line in the dirt for a lap-and-tap start. Red Joe was completely lathered by the time he got into place, so they decided to let him rest for 20 minutes before they took him back to the score. Lucky had the advantage since he was always a quiet, calm horse. If I remember right, Finley said, after the two horses got tapped off, they finished in a dead heat at 330 yards. Lucky Blanton was sort of an orange colored sorrel, real smooth muscled with exceptionally heavy hindquarters. As I remember, he stood about 15.1 hands, weighed about 1,250 pounds, and was an athletic-looking horse. You could recognize Lucky Blanton offspring as soon as you saw them coming down the road."
"At Pleasanton one year, Lucky Blanton was matched against Perry Ivory's horse, The Pig, a horse who had outrun many of California's speediest, including the well known Colonel Clyde, by My Texas Dandy, whom Lucky Blanton daylighted."
"If you were a calf or team roper in California, Arizona, Nevada, or Oregon in the late 1940's and into the 1950's and the 1960's, you just weren't mounted if you weren't straddlin' a Lucky Blanton. As stated above Lucky Blanton was a top rope horse, and he probably put as many good rodeo hands ahorseback as any other stallion in the country. As just one example, 13 of the ropers entered at the huge 1954 Salinas Rodeo were contesting on Lucky Blanton's. All of those horses were about the same in heigh and conformation, demonstrating ol' Lucky's ability to stamp his get" (Legends Volume 2).
Most of Lucky Blanton's offspring went to the ranch or in the rodeo arena, but he did have some go to the show arena and race track. Lucky Blanton had 23 foal crops, which made for 196 registered foals. Of those 9 were halter point earners, 8 were performance point earners, 18 race starters, 3 race Register of Merit's, $25,390 race money earned ($18,881 of that was won by Washo Queen).
Lucky Blanton's athletic ability, speed, and disposition carried on beyond the first generation, and he became a successful broodmare sire. His grand-get were top rope horses, barrel horses and AAA race horses.
Below are some articles written about Lucky Blanton.
