“Growing up I loved football and horses. I knew from the first time I rode a horse at a summer camp that after my football days were done I was going to be a cowboy.”

It’s a line you might expect to hear from a young man growing up in a rural part of the country. But Hal Coker’s upbringing was about as far from country living as you can get. Born the son of a Southern Baptist minister, Hal grew up in suburban San Francisco.

“Most people thought it was just kid talk. You know, one week I’m a fireman, another I’m a cowboy,” says Hal. “But that wasn’t the case for me. Once the dream took root it grew.”

Not growing up around horses made it difficult to get the experiences he craved but Hal never let that stop him.

“I never lived on a farm or ranch. I lived in a cul-de-sac with a paved driveway,” he says from beneath the brim of a 10-gallon hat. “But dreams have a funny way of coming to be if you nurture them for long enough.”

Despite having virtually no experience with horses in his early years, Hal has become one of the best horse trainers in the country. While you won’t hear him boasting about his abilities he does admit that people from all over the United States bring him horses to train.


“I just work with the nature of each horse,” says Hal. “They’re not so different than people. The trick is to understand how they think and communicate before you try to train them. If you can get into their mind and make them feel safe then you can train them to accept you. If the horse accepts you, it will respond confidently to your requests. That’s when it gets fun.”


So how did a California suburbanite end up as a sought-after horse trainer on a ranch in Arizona?

“I blew out my knee in college football when I was twenty,” says Hal. “True to my word I shifted to my dream of becoming a cowboy.”

He was turned down by countless ranches and told by other cowboys that they couldn’t take him on because he had no experience.

“Riding ponies at my childhood summer camp didn’t qualify in their eyes,” says Hal laughing. “But I didn’t let that stop me. I tried ranch after ranch. I made them all tell me no.”

After countless attempts, he decided to try a different tact.

“I figured they couldn’t say no to free labor so I volunteered,” he says. “I had a buddy from high school, his name is Ron Slocum, his dad and uncle ran two major fairgrounds in California. They let me just hang around and help. It gave me a great start and the experience I needed to get the ranches to take me seriously.”

His first break came from Chaps Horse Ranch, which is located off of Highway One in the Central Coast of California. It started off as an unpaid position.

“It was a job, sorta,” he says. “I did every menial task they asked to the very best of my ability. I know it sounds silly but if they asked me to pull out nails from wood, I’d shut-up and do it like it was the greatest job in the world.”

His diligence paid off. They quickly recognized his passion for horses and his commitment to becoming a cowboy.

“That’s when it all changed,” he says. “They gave me a paid position and helped me to get more experience. Then they did something that made my career: they paid my entry fee to Buck Brannaman’s clinic in Watsonville. There I got to hang around some of the top cowboys in the country. I kept quiet and listened and learned.”

What did that pivotal moment do for his career? What life lessons has he learned? Watch this space for more of Hal Coker's story.