The Pendleton Round-Up closes out each day with a stampede of cattle tearing off across the arena with cowboys on horseback galloping after.

A herd of around 16 cows takes to the grass arena while teams of two — a roper on horseback and a mugger on foot — await the shot of the starting pistol. With a bang they charge the cattle with a singular objective: get a drop of milk into a clear Coke bottle.

But the bovines in the wild cow milking event are not so incline to give freely.

The roper has to lasso a cow, and the mugger has to grab the rope and wrestle the animal so the roper can hop off the horse and hustle to the cow to squeeze that precious drop of milk into the bottle, then bolt to the center of the arena to present it to judges.

Two dozen or more of teams sign up for wild cow milking during the four-day period to compete for prizes such as trophy belt buckles, a purse of more than $1,000 and a Pendleton Woolen Mills blanket. Half the teams compete Wednesday and Thursday and the other half Friday and Saturday. The team with the fastest time over two days to get a drop and sprint back to the judges take the winner’s crown.

Round-Up directors have called wild cow milking the “last home town event” because it is open for amateurs who might not be competing in other events during Round-Up, and is one of the only events a hometown person who isn’t a professional cowboy or cowgirl can participate in.

There are no rerides here. Just a 1,000-plus pound animal on four legs that has no desire to allow anyone to touch her. Cowboys are more likely to end up dragging behind a cow than getting any of that milk.

Why would anyone sign up for such a wild event?

“Hell, well there’s really no reason not to,” said Clayton Eggers, who, in 2021, despite falling off his horse, got second place with his teammate Wyatt Siebert. “Why not do it?”

Perhaps the best part isn’t the competition between the teams, but how this event gets to a more rudimentary question: Who is going to win between the cowboys and the cow?

The second that cowboys make for the cows, the action unfurls across the grass.

One team could be looking like it is going to get that milk while another cowboy is desperate to stop a cow from fleeing across the grass. Cowboys have come away bruised, shirts torn and on occasion with a broken foot.

The spectators, though, get a hoot from watching amateur cowboys struggling to corral and milk a wild cow.

This echo of yesteryear, in short, amounts to an outrageous and riotous end to each day at the Pendleton Round-Up.