Autumn in the Ozarks includes annual Mule Jump

Red, yellow and browns intersperse the fading greens of summer in the Ozarks hills.

Days grow shorter, nights grow longer and cooler.

It's autumn in the Ozarks of northwest Arkansas -- time for football, hunting and mules jumping.

Raccoon hunters have used mules to jump fences for years. Jumping mules for entertainment began in Pea Ridge nearly 30 years ago as just one of many events of the 1985 fall festival called Battlefield Daze.

Mules of all sizes -- from the miniature Billie, at just 34 inches, to the statuesque Bulls Eye -- and colors -- buckskin, sorrel, red, white, black and spotted -- descend on Pea Ridge for the annual Mule Jump.

Blue, Bucky, Sunny, Nut-N-Honey and Frosty were some of the mules that competed in 1989. Red, Mollie, Scatty Cat, Radar, Molly Francis, Ragin' Rooster, Ruby Tuesday, Buckwheat, Foxy, Colleen, Baxter, Missy and Babes have each delighted visitors over the years.

Thousands of people are expected to attend the 26th annual event which begins with opening ceremonies at 9 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 11, south of Pea Ridge Primary School off Weston Street. Various events including the halter class, barrell racing, pole bending and jumping will fill the morning hours with a short break for lunch before professional jump begins about 1 p.m.

What began as friendly competition between coon hunters has become an annual tradition attended by thousands of people. For 26 years, people from around the nation have traveled to Pea Ridge, the town just west of the Pea Ridge National Military Park and the ridge after which both take their name to watch mules and their owners battle wills over whether the mules will jump a curtain raised regularly until all but one are eliminated.

On Oct. 13, 1984, the Pea Ridge Chamber of Commerce sponsored Fall Fest. The next year, a mule jumping event was added to the festival then called "Battlefield Daze." The festival, held on the downtown school grounds, included a trail ride, coon dog competitions, craft sales and other events.

"Tim Summers at the bank asked me about mule jumps," said Paul Arnold, who was vice president of the Pea Ridge Coon Hunter's Association at the time. He said Rick McCrary was president. Arnold said he went to Oklahoma to see a mule jump to get an idea about it and came home to put one on here.

"The first four people I talked to were Tommie Yeargain Sr., Negel Hall, Don Shockley and Dale Shrader. We hunted together," Arnold said.

That first year, they had a trail ride on mules riding up Arkansas Highway 265 to State Line Road and down Patterson Road and back to the school grounds, Arnold said. They also had a coon hunt Saturday night after the festival. There was also a UKC Coon Hunters' Association coon dog show.

"They were all registered hounds -- Walkers, Black and Tans, Redbones -- ours were Walkers," Arnold said. "Ronnie Smith, he had Redbones. Don Shockley mostly had Walkers."

Arnold said he took flyers advertising the event to various coon hunts he attended. The first year, the jump was wooden, but after that, the group used one Negel Hall had built.

"It was just a bunch of coon hunters getting together," Peggy Hall, widow of Col. Negel Hall, said. The Halls are memorialized every year with an award given in their name to the high-point winners. Hall died in 1998; Mrs. Hall died in 2011.

Don Shockly remembers: "Negel bought the old big mule. I bought a little red mule."

Then, "we just got together down at the school. We had a little mule jump, a trail ride and a coon dog contest," Shockley said. "That's where it started. Negel had that good jumping mule."

Mule jumping comes from a tradition in coon hunting of having mules jump over fences rather than finding gates. Hunters throw a blanket over the fence so the mule will jump it. Mules can jump flat footed. Once a mule walks up to the jumping barrier, it has three minutes to jump.

The mule has two tries to clear the barrier without knocking it down. Trainers can not touch the mule. They must get the mule to jump by word commands. They can hold the reins and tug them.

Mules are eliminated until only one remains and that mule continues to jump until it reaches its limit. The mule seems to know instinctively when that limit is reached because it just won't jump any more.

The John Higgins family has been coming to the Pea Ridge Mule Jump since John Jr. was a little boy of 10 in 1989. Then, he showed Buckwheat, a mule that continues the family tradition being handled in 2013 by the youngest Higgins, "Baby John," then 5. John Higgins Sr., his wife, Ricki, and their children live in Greentop, Mo., and travel regularly to the Pea Ridge event. In 2013, the Higgins brought five mules to the show. Both daughter, Alexa, and son, John III, won awards during the 2013 event.