2024 Grand Champion steer ‘Leadfoot’ auctions for six-figures at Fort Worth Stock Show

The Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo’s 2024 Grand Champion steer sold at auction Saturday morning for an impressive $340,000 in front of a full crowd at Watt Arena in the Will Rogers Memorial Center.

Bidders refused to take their foot off the gas until the champion Leadfoot’s asking price jumped into the $300,000 range.

Higginbotham, the Fort Worth-based insurance and financial broker group, had the winning bid on the European cross breed steer belonging to 17-year-old Elli Bezner of Dalhart in Dallam County.

The money from the sale will go toward Elli’s education, most likely at Texas A&M.

“I’ve always kind of had a strong desire to go to Texas A&M. But I’m not completely sold,” Elli said.

While Leadfoot’s sale price is likely to cover tuition at almost any university, it’s not the most Higginbotham has paid for a champion steer.

This is the second year in a row that Higginbotham claimed a Grand Champion at the auction. In 2023, the company paid a whopping $440,000 for “Snoop Dog,” shown by Sadie Wampler of Canyon.

William Blanchard, managing director at Higginbotham Insurance, told the Star-Telegram the company probably wouldn’t have paid as much as it did last year if bidding reached that point again.

“But maybe next year,” Blanchard said.

Blanchard said the steer will be raised for protein.

Elli got emotional at a press conference when reporters asked about her parting with Leadfoot.

“I spend more time with him than I do my friends. I wash him every day and do all that, I’m getting teary up already,” she said. “So it’ll be hard, but you know, it’s coming at some point so you have to be ready for it.”

Elli and her family are familiar with the process of showing steer. In 1991, her father Stephen Bezner won the Fort Worth sheer show, and in 2018 her cousin Ben Bezner won.

Stephen Bezner told the Star-Telegram that while he was watching his daughter and her steer on stage, he kept thinking about the process of raising Leadfoot at the family’s farm in the Texas Panhandle.

“I love the opportunity to spend the time with the kids and to grow these projects. We raise cattle on our farm that we use for show, and so we get to see the animal from birth to harvest,” Stephen said. “It’s very rewarding and so a lot of those emotions are all going through my head while that animal’s auctioning.”

Elli has been showing livestock since she was in third grade and plans to compete in the junior steer show again next year.