New York Mills High School alum operates Perham, Tri-County Stockyards

By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

Not every auctioneer gets the chance to compete in an industry contest, especially in a worldwide competition located out of the country. One local auctioneer did just that, however, and came back home with a fourth place finish under his belt.

Mitch Barthel, local livestock auctioneer, took his turn on the auction block last month at the International Livestock Auctioneer Competition near Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Barthel is no stranger to livestock auctioneering competitions, having been a world quarter final champion in 2012 and placing seventh in the world in 2014, but this competition was a new one for him. Having been told by a few friends in the past that he should compete in Calgary, he finally made the decision to enter.

“This one was a new one,” said Barthel. “My colleagues from the states said they had gone before and one of my buddies owned a sales barn in Kansas, he passed away this last year, I’ve known him for 20 some years and he said, ‘you gotta go to Canada and do that,’ so I thought well, here’s my opportunity, so I did.

“I’ve been in a lot of competitions, but I haven’t competed for four or five years,” he continued. “This was my first competition after five years, so I was happy with fourth place. It’s an international championship, so there’s a lot of Canadian auctioneers, there’s quite a few U.S. auctioneers, and then they have the Australian champion and the South African champion come over and then they have a contest. There’s roughly 30 auctioneers every year.”

The winner for the Calgary competition goes on to the World Livestock Auctioneer Championship, which is held in the United States each June. There, the international winner from Calgary’s contest qualifies for the world championship and faces three quarter finales to compete.

“I was up there from Wednesday to Sunday,” he said. “We held a regular cattle sale on Friday and I was in the lead, then on Saturday, I ended up taking fourth, so I was close. The scores are based on how you conduct yourself, how you conduct the sale, your clarity on your numbers, your bid-catching ability, the expedition of the sale, and then whether you would hire the auctioneer.”

While the competition has a certain element of both excitement and novelty, Barthel said his part in the competition wasn’t far off from his average day of work at the sales barn. The big differences come down to not knowing the buyers and having to pick up on their cues and personalities and the fact that the contestants also wore their best threads with a suit and tie.

“Just like going to work on Monday, it’s a lot like that,” he said. “You don’t know the buyers exactly, so you gotta pick up all that kind of fast, but after you’ve done it as many years as I have, you pick it up pretty quick.”

The 1993 New York Mills High School graduate grew up on a cattle farm just south of town and attended his auctioneer schooling when he was 17. Barthel has been throwing out numbers and catching bids for the past 33 years. He got his start doing estate sales with his father, Jerry Barthel, who was also a longtime local auctioneer.

“We did a few farm sales when I was younger,” said Barthel. “The first sale I had with my dad and his partner was an estate farm auction by Sebeka. My dad did a lot of farm auctions in the 70s and 80s, so I grew up in the industry.

“My dad sold cars at Mid-State Auto Auction for 44 years,” he continued. “Me and him have sold the East Otter Tail County 4-H auction for like 49 years in a row, either him or I, so we’ve got a history.”

Barthel owns both the Perham Stockyards and the Tri-County Stockyards in Motley, Minn. and moves over 100,000 head of cattle each year between the two locations. Though he makes his rounds between the two towns throughout the week, he enjoyed his short time traveling through the Canadian interior.

During the competition, he was able to attend the Calgary Stampede, a rodeo held during the competition with a large variety of performances, including the regular rodeo, chuckwagon races and the relay races.

“You don’t ever see that,” said Barthel of the chuckwagon races. “It’s a 10 day rodeo, so they have a rodeo performance at 1:30 and it’s a pretty big rodeo and a lot of good competitors, but then they have the chuckwagon races at 7:30. So that was a big highlight and really fun to watch them.

“Then they have what they call the relay races,” he continued. “The younger guys, they’re 18 to 22, they’ll ride a thoroughbred horse bareback around the track, then hop off that one while it’s still trotting, and jump on the next one. They run around the track, they gotta do two races, so they call it a relay.”

Barthel said that the thoroughbred horses are not tame, so while they’re being held by a handler, they’re jerking around to get away, and the racers have to jump off the horse they’re riding and grab on to the next one’s mane to jump back on to grab the reins before taking off again.

“They’re coming down the track and jump off them at a trot, run to the other one, grab it by the mane and hop up, no saddle or anything, grab the reins and they’re off, full bore,” said Barthel. “I said, ‘holy smokes, this is quite the deal,’ so it was quite exciting, I got to see all that for the first time.”

Another highlight during his time in Canada was a trip out to Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada.

“I went to Banff,” said Barthel. “In the mountains where the winter Olympics were many years ago, they did all the skiing out of Banff. So we went up there and that was phenomenal, it was really pretty, it’s Canadian rockies. And we drove all the way, so we got to see a lot of Canada. We went up through North Dakota and drove through a lot of Western Canada.”