Second biggest sale-off in Elk City Sale Barn history creates long night for buyers, sellers, and the cowboys making it all work
Brandon Hickey, owner of the Elk City Sale Barn, had no idea what kind of wild rodeo was ahead of him last week as the first sale of the year was approaching.
Hickey and his family bought the sale barn in 2008 and kept the tradition of closing the sale barn for the weekly Friday sales following Christmas and then New Year’s.
It isn’t uncommon for the first actual Friday sale of the year to be larger than normal for that reason.
However, on Thursday, Hickey and his staff realized quickly and early that the first sale of 2025 would reach near-historic levels.
The Elk City Sale Barn, located on South Highway 6, can still see the town of Elk City to its north, but is appropriately surrounded by western Oklahoma prairie in every other direction.
However, one of Oklahoma’s busiest thoroughfares, Interstate 40, has its busiest exit just a mile to the south.
Hickey realized that a circus was impending early Thursday morning when he saw at 9 am that stock trailers were already backed up to the interstate’s exit.
“This isn’t the biggest sale that we ever had,” Hickey recounted. “The biggest was in 2011 in the big drought saleoff. But, we knew that was coming days before. We were prepared for Friday to be a little bigger than normal, but we didn’t know that it was going to be anywhere near as big as it was. What are you gonna do? We all say that we want to be cowboys, and sometimes you just gotta bow up and do cowboy stuff.”
Scrambling for help, Hickey said the group experienced “one of those God things” when three random cowboys just happened upon the sale and asked if they needed help.
After more than twelve hours of unloading trailers on Thursday, the sale officially kicked off Friday at 9 am.
By 10:30 pm, the first cowboy walked off. Hours earlier, the already cold day grew nearly unbearable with a gusty north wind settled in and dropped the wind chill temp another ten degrees.
At 3 am, they lost 3 more to exhaustion.
At 6:45 am, the last set of hoofs crossed into the show ring. The auctioneers, who had spent the near 24 hours swapping out, barely maintained their voices. The offices ladies were feeble as well, total sales were approximately $6.5 million.
The work was yet to be done, though.
All those cattle — the 3,650 head who were going to find new owners and new pastures to graze — still had to be loaded onto the trailers.
It was well into Saturday afternoon before that task was completed.
“Here’s what I will say — and I think this speaks to our people, to our western Oklahoma and Texas Panhandle people. Some of those guys were waiting up to four hours to unload on Thursday. That would have probably made me impatient, too. I had a few complaints, but most could see we were working our tails off. And then there were a couple of mishaps and lulls in the sale. That is going to happen, especially when you are kind of not fully aware something this big is about to unfold on top of you.
Prices were high, the weather was nice, some folks maybe were worried about pasture in the coming months, the fact that we had closed for the holiday weeks — there were a lot of factors that went into it. But there were also a lot of factors that made it go right and made us pull it off.
Everyone wants to be a cowboy until it is time to be a cowboy. This is sort of thing really lets you know who does truly want to be there. Our buyers and sellers were great and patient. The bull haulers and individuals picking up cattle showed the same patience. This is why we call this place home.”
