The Early Years
For most of his life, since he could walk, Craig Cameron has been associated with horses. Growing up in Texas, he became a dyed-in-the wool Texan and at two years of age he began riding “Old Mac,” a sixteen year old gelding on his grandfather’s ranch near Cat Spring, Texas.
When he was three, he moved to Yokosuka, Japan and lived for two years with his family while his father served in the Korean episode. It was discovered that he had a remarkable talent for communication and making friends. Without knowing Japanese, or without the Japanese knowing English, he was able to explain the rules of football to his young Japanese friends. No one was ever able to entirely clarify this.
Back in Houston, he became an avid Houston athlete, playing running back for the Baby Oilers in grade school and defensive half at Robert E Lee high school. He also showed a talent for music, inherited from his concert-pianist El Paso grandmother, and played bass guitar in the “Chessmen,” a combo led by Billy Gibbons, later of “ZZ-Top” fame. Additionally he mastered the harmonica. But it was always the outdoors, nature and horses that attracted him, and he became a superb hunter and crack shot who respected the game and sportsmanship. Always he preferred a stalk to a baited blind, and still does.
During one summer session, he attended Culver Military Academy in Indiana and was schooled in equestrian basics and English riding. In his formal riding habit, the Western cowboy, hidden, was not discernible.
The Later Years
In college he majored in agriculture which included bulls and bulls had to be ridden. To learn how, he studied with Jim Shoulders and became a bull rider over the objections of his fracture-conscious but supportive family. After winning many events, he became highly ranked in the annals of Texas bull riding. Subsequently, his family sold the Cat Spring ranch and acquired another ranch in Giddings, Texas, where he became the manager and operated a successful cattle business. Here he discovered his talent for communicating with horses; he understood them and they, him. He could get inside a horse’s mind and make friends. Once trust was established he found that with patience and understanding he could quickly and gently introduce an untrained horse to the bridle, bit, saddle and rider, all this without a shade of the raucous manhandling techniques of the old West. Using the same gentle mind-driven techniques, he then could teach the horse and his rider the fine points of equestrian methods.
Meticulously he refined and nurtured this gift and when he was ready, he began giving local demonstrations that were regarded as remarkable. Quickly this startling talent was recognized and sought after. This led to seminars throughout the USA, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Canada, and requests from Europe, as well as publication of these techniques in authoritative horsemanship journals.
The Double Horn
In 1994 to further accommodate his burgeoning fame, he established the Double Horn Ranch, Craig Cameron Clinics for Horse Training and Horsemanship in Bluff Dale, Texas. Although he still travels giving seminars, it is here in Bluff Dale where his home and ranch accommodates students in an aura of the old West that Craig Cameron shines the brightest, for he is truly a Western man sprinkled with the stardust of horsemanship genius. For more about Craig Cameron please visit https://craigcameron.com/ .