J Bar J’s star horse Straight Jacket passes away

Straight Jacket | PRCA photoScreenshot_18-2-2026_94810_www.prorodeo.com_ On the day J15 Straight Jacket was branded, the J Bar J Pro Rodeo horse showed everyone around that 2010 day a little bit of his personality. “He didn’t think he was cool,” J Bar J’s Sparky Dreesen said. “He knew he was cool.” Out of legendary stallion Night Jacket by Kattle Bells, Straight Jacket died in mid-January after suffering a broken front left leg on the company’s Montana ranch. He was taken to Washington State University, where veterinarians operated for several hours before realizing the injury was just too severe. A stud himself, the Dreesens buried Straight Jacket next to another stallion, Bugs Bunny; the two had been pasture buddies for several years. “We keep all of our studs in the stud pasture when they’re not with mares,” Dreesen said. “I would assume that he got kicked, because his leg was broke halfway between the shoulder and the knee, and it was just shattered.“They worked on him for about five hours trying to put it back together, but there just wasn’t any doing it.” Straight Jacket has been a major part of J Bar J’s breeding program, just like his sire – he is one of 265 Night Jacket colts to have been selected to buck at the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. Straight Jacket has also had his own offspring perform in Las Vegas, including eight that were at the 2025 NFR. One of those is Shady Jacket, which helped saddle bronc rider Stetson Wright to an 89.75-point ride and share the Round 10 victory. On Feb. 7, Shady Jacket was half of Darcy Radel’s 91-point ride to share the final-round victory at the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo. “This is going to be a bump in the road,” Dreesen said, referring to his breeding program and what he had envisioned long term with the stallion. “We bred him to mares in the spring and the fall, and we’d get 10 to 15 (foals) in the spring and the same amount in the fall.” Because of technology, Straight Jacket’s legacy will continue. The stock contracting firm had hundreds of straws collected, and Dreesen said he will be selective when it comes to matching the sire with the right dam. He will focus on proven combinations and will then breed accordingly. He expects to use intracytoplasmic sperm injection technology, in which a single sperm is injected into an egg into a laboratory, then transferred into a recipient mare to carry for the term of the pregnancy. “We know the crosses that work, and we’re probably not going to be trying any new crosses with him,” Dreesen said. “We’ll see how that works a few years down the road.” The goal is to have generations of new buckers who have the abilities J Bar J has been known to carry. Maybe they’ll have Straight Jacket’s personality, too. “He knew he was cool, and he did it in the coolest way, whether it was how he reared out of the chute, whether it was how he sorted or whether it was how he would scare the ever-loving hell out of guys that were intimidated by him,” Dreesen said. “There were guys like Wyatt Casper, for example, that weren’t intimidated by him, and Straight Jacket wouldn’t do anything to try to scare Wyatt. “I truly believe that when we pass and go to the other side, we are really going to find out these animals know way more than we think they do.” -PRCA

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