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- Nine-year-old Waylon Estes began interviewing rodeo contestants by chance.
- His mother started a GoFundMe to cover travel, hotel and car costs.
- Waylon is headed to the Pendleton Round-Up, which runs Sept. 12-19.
Nine-year-old Waylon Estes began interviewing rodeo contestants by chance in July.
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It all began at a local event in his hometown of Santa Maria.
Now, he’s hoping to sharpen his skills with some of the country’s top cowboys at the famous Pendleton Round-Up in Oregon, running Sept. 16-19.
The 116-year-old event is considered the oldest and largest outdoor rodeo in the world, drawing an estimated 50,000 visitors to witness cowboys and cowgirls compete on its one-of-a-kind grass arena.
“When I was little, I would always watch rodeo, and I would think, ‘How can they do that?’ And I had so many questions. So when I got older, I started getting my head stuck in it,” Waylon told the Herald in a phone interview.
His mom, Taylor Estes, persuaded event organizers to help Waylon get a press pass and tickets to attend the event, where he plans to record interviews for his Facebook and Instagram accounts.
His interest in the rodeo world didn’t come as a complete surprise to his family. His paternal grandfather rode bulls, and his uncle competed in rodeos when he was younger.
That family influence led Waylon and his 7-year-old sister to also compete.
“Fast-forward to when my husband and I got married, then we had Waylon, and his first birthday was a pony. Then he rodeoed a little bit,” she said.
“He participated in junior rodeo, and then my daughter was born two years later after him. Now she is competing strongly in rodeo and just succeeding amazingly well.”
How Waylon’s interviews began
Taylor Estes said she knew her son would be drawn to entertaining people because he had always tried to talk, even as a baby.
As Waylon grew older, he would strike up conversations with people on his own or people would approach him.
“We didn’t quite understand him, and we didn’t know what he was really saying,” she recalled. “We’ve always said that he was born for stardom, born to entertain.”
His path to creating rodeo content began this year when he was invited to sing the national anthem at a local race competition in his hometown.
The organizers liked his performance so much that they asked him to interview race car drivers in another event in July.
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But things didn’t go as planned. Waylon failed to record the audio from his interviews.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to buy a microphone, and we’ll practice’,” his mother said.
To test the new microphone, Taylor took her son to the Santa Ynez Days Rodeo. Waylon ended up interviewing Lefty Holman, a third-generation cowboy who has qualified for the National Finals Rodeo multiple times and was the 2022 Reserve World Champion.
Two weeks later, Waylon asked to be taken to the California Rodeo Salinas, where he recognized competitors he had previously watched on TV and interviewed them.
“I didn’t buy him the microphone with the intention of putting him on social media and having people actually go for it,” Taylor said.
“The contestants want to talk to him because they’re not talking to an adult with the same old questions. He’s asking fun questions, and he’s genuine.”
He asked professional cowboy Shad Mayfield everything from his favorite rodeo snacks and drinks to the farthest place he had traveled to compete.
He even asked him whether it took the cowboy or his horse longer to get ready.
Raising money for Pendleton
Taylor suggested Waylon record some interviews at the Pendleton Round-Up.
Her son agreed because he was excited about the possibility of meeting bull riders Stetson Wright and Hayden Welsh.
Now, Taylor is raising money through GoFundMe to cover his travel expenses to Oregon and to help Waylon to his next rodeo interviews.
“He wants to work for the Cowboy Channel,” she said.
“No matter what it is, he wants to entertain. And I think at the end of the day, everything he chooses to do is at least put a smile on somebody’s face. He loves to make people happy.”
This story was originally published September 15, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline “How ‘kidfluencer’ from Central Coast earned a chance to interview rodeo’s top stars.”
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