Dual Pep, one of cutting’s most influential sires, passed away on Tuesday, September 25, at the age of 33. He had been in good health until his last day, and at the end his good friend Winston Hansma was there with him, “as he peacefully left this earth.”

Year after year, for more than two decades, Dual Pep offspring dominated the cutting charts, as do the offspring of his sons and daughters, today. On Sunday, September 23, Dual Pep’s daughter, Tears From Heaven, won the 2018 Brazos Bash, making Dual Pep the oldest living sire ever to have a major cutting futurity champion. In addition, Stunner Cat and CDs Kual Gun, whose maternal granddams were sired by Dual Pep, placed second and third in the same event.

Bred by Nic-A-Lode Farms of Boise, Idaho, and sired by Peppy San Badger out of Miss Dual Doc, by Doc’s Remedy, Dual Pep claimed the open reserve championship of the 1989 Memphis Futurity for then owner Reidy Land & Cattle Company. Not long after that, Bobby Pidgeon, a beverage distributor from Memphis, Tenn., purchased him as a non-pro mount for himself, as well as for an open mount with Pat Earnheart. By the end of his show career, at six, Dual Pep’s official NCHA earnings stood at $302,054.

In 1991, Bobby Pidgeon established Bar H Ranche, Weatherford, Tex., as a training and breeding facility and hired Winston Hansma as manager and trainer. Dual Pep’s first crop of foals, born in 1991, included Smokin Dually, bred by Pidgeon’s Dogwwod Farms, trained by Hansma, and shown by Hansma and Pidgeon to earn $314,705. Olena Dually, also bred by Pidgeon and from Dual Pep’s first crop, was shown in the 1994 NCHA Futurity Open finals by Paul Hansma, who had joined his brother at Bar H Ranche. Olena Dually would go on to win acclaim for non-pro competitor Charles Spence and to earn $289,133.

Dual Pep’s leading money earner, and an all-time leading earner, with $812,942, was Dual Rey Me. Foaled in 1999 and shown by Jeremy Barwick, Dual Rey Me topped the NCHA Open World Championship standings in 2006, 2007 and 2009.

With offspring earnings of $24,032,926, Dual Pep ranks fifth on the roster of all-time leading sires and is the only stallion among the top five with a son on the list – Dual Rey, with offspring earnings of $36,790,588, who died earlier this year.