John R. Scott Jr., 87, passed away on Tuesday, February 22 in San Angelo, TX.
“The Quarter Horse is noted for its Western heritage, and preserving that heritage is what the Scott Ranch is all about,” said Scott, who owned ranches in Texas and Montana, where his father bred some of the first horses registered by the American Quarter Horse Association.
Scott’s great-grandfather settled in West Texas, when it was part of the Republic of Texas. “At that time, they didn’t work the country with a (chuck) wagon,” Scott told me. “They’d just take a pack of horses and three or four of them would gather cattle. They called that a cow hunt.”
In the 1920s, Scott’s father, who owned a ranch in Miles, Texas, near San Angelo, purchased 10 daughters of a horse sired by Hickory Bill and known in that area as the San Antonio Sorrel. At the time, Scott owned the stallion Jazz, and offspring of the 10 San Antonio Sorrel daughters, by Jazz, were the foundation of the Scott Ranch herd. Jazz bloodlines contributed to many great cutting champions, including Royal Jazzy, Jazabelle Quixote, Jazzote, Son Ofa Doc, Bob Acre Doc, as well as 2010 NCHA Futurity Open champion One Time Royalty.
In partnership with his father and brothers, John Scott, Jr. established the Scott Ranch near Billings, Montana in 1948. At one time, the ranch encompassed 280,000 acres and employed 25 cowboys to tend 10,000 head of cattle.
In 1969, Scott held what was at the time the largest one-owner, one-brand cattle sale in the history of the U.S. and sold 5,300 head for a record $1 million, at the auction yards in Billings.
In 2000, Scott held a Quarter Horse dispersal at the Billings ranch. The 250-head catalog included ranch sires Paddys Irish Whiskey and Doc O Dynamite, as well as five 2-year-old Peptoboonsmal daughters trained by Gary Bellanfant. Meradas Boonsmal, Boons Freckle Lena, Freckles Lena Boon, Boonsmal O Lena and Boonsmal Doctress would go on to earn a total of over $620,000 in the cutting arena.
Horses bred by Scott have also earned major championships in reining and rodeo events: Scott also competed successfully in NCHA non-pro competition into his seventies.
A memorial service will be held in the Johnson’s Funeral Home chapel in San Angelo, Texas, on Tuesday, March 1 at 10 a.m. A luncheon will follow.