Rodeo performer and 18-time World Champion in trick and fancy roping. He was the son of Eliza Jane Gray and Jessie Byers. When he was 3 years old, his family moved to Mulhall, Oklahoma. As a child, he dreamed of becoming a cowboy like the men he saw in town riding horses, wearing chaps, carrying ropes, and wearing big hats. At age 13, he joined the Pawnee Bill Wild West Show and learned roping and fancy roping from great instructors like Will Rogers. During his career, he headlined the Miller Brothers' 101 Ranch, Lucky Baldwin Ranch, and Lucille Mulhall's Congress of Rough Riders shows, as they toured the United States, Canada, Mexico, South America, and England. By 1915, he was the supervisor of the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus's Wild West division and had gone out on his own, competing in trick and fancy roping. He won his first "Trick and Fancy Roping World Championship" that same year, and his second world championship in 1916 at the Sheepshead Bay Stampede in New York. He held the world championship for another 18 years until Madison Square Garden rodeos discontinued the event in 1933. He decided to become a full-time rodeo competitor in 1917, and his first appearance was in the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show Rodeo in Fort Worth, Texas, where he competed every year until his death. He moved to Fort Worth in the early 1920s. When the event's fancy trick roping was discontinued, he switched to calf and steer roping and quickly became one of the most popular rodeo entertainers by the late 1930s. He wrote "Roping: Trick and Fancy Rope Spinning" in 1928. It was reprinted in 1966 under the title "Cowboy Roping and Rope Trick." He was also the first cowboy to promote a product. In the 1930s, he appeared in newspapers, magazines, and rodeo programs advertising Hobbs horse trailers. His hometown of Fort Worth was the location of the company. He is best remembered for his remarkable trick of simultaneously roping six cowboys on their horses. He was inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1969