HOPKINTON, N.H. (AP) – The black bull started kicking before a rider even came near, crashing its hooves into the sides of the red metal bucking chute, its eyes wide and nose dripping. The smell of mud and chewing tobacco mingled with cigarette smoke from two bull riders waiting their turn, thumbs tucked in the belt loops of their Wrangler jeans.

Eddie Winfield, a Maryland cowboy in turquoise chaps, climbed on top of the bull, and three riders helped hold him in place as it thrashed and snorted. With a nod of Winfield’s head, the red door swung open and the bull set off, kicking mud back on riders who yelled, “Move! Get on!” The bull tossed Winfield before the eight-second buzzer rang, meaning he, like most of the four dozen riders at the Hopkinton State Fair last week, didn’t qualify for prize money.

These cowboys paid $100 just to ride. They drove from as far away as Pennsylvania, upstate New York and West Virginia, carpooling with other riders to save money, taking turns sleeping along the way. Many work at steel mills or farms during the week to pay for entry fees, medical tape and gasoline. Some never win prize money, which ranges from $100 to several thousand.

But for these young riders, who are mostly under 25 and from states above the Mason Dixon Line, going home broke isn’t so bad as long as they’re sore from taking on a 2,000 pound bull. The riders are a tight-knit group who get together every weekend to tease and cheer each other on. Even when they’re losing, they’re learning, and taking a chance on a big bull is the only way to earn big money.

“You’re only going to be as good as what you get on,” said Carlos Garcia, the youngest rider at the fair, a 16-year-old from the Finger Lakes region of New York. Garcia won the Pennsylvania High School Rodeo season in 2003, and he’s been riding big bulls for two years now. He hopes to be a world champion, but first, he has to finish his senior year of high school.

Garcia came to the fair hoping for a shot at the $2,000 prize money added to the rider entry fees. The top eight places would win cash, but a rider must stay on his bull for eight seconds to qualify.

He was the first to ride and the first to fall. A small, white bull called Half-Cocked made short work of him. Leaning against the pen, the lanky teenager later called his mother on his cell phone and told her, downtrodden, “I fell off.”

Some riders, like Garcia, are the first in their families to ride in rodeos. Others, like Trinity Dunkelberger, are just the next in line. Dunkleburger, at 5 feet, 8 inches and 145 pounds, is a third-generation bull rider and ranked first in the association of riders who came to the fair on Friday. Originally from South Dakota, Dunkelberger, 24, lives in West Virginia and rides racehorses at a track in Charleston to earn money for bull riding. He started riding bulls when he was 14, and after a decade of being tossed and stepped on, his body requires some taping up before a ride.

Dunkelberger broke both wrists when he was 17, after falling off a bull. His right hand bears a scar from his palm to the middle of his forearm where doctors went in and reconstructed his wrist with plates, screws and pins. The injury should have kept him out for months, but after a couple of weeks, he cut off the cast on his left arm and rode a bull, swinging his casted right hand over his head.

“You’re gonna get injured,” said Dunkelberger, whose right sleeve was torn from wrist to shoulder. “Putting a human being on a bull, I don’t think was ever meant to be.”

Last night, before successfully riding his first bull, Superstition, Dunkelberger put a plastic splint over his right wrist and a black brace on his elbow. Nathan Catlett, the jokester of the crew, a 6-foot-3-inch rider with a fake sheriff’s badge pinned to his vest, chided Dunkelberger about his equipment.

“He does it cause he’s a sissy,” Catlett said. “He’s fragile.”

Every rider seems to have a horror story about a bull goring him or stepping on him, but they don’t brag or whine about injuries; if a rider’s not dead, he’s ready to get back in the arena. None seem to have health insurance, and some stitch up their own wounds.

Justin Shue, 27, of Gettysburg, Pa., limped out of the arena yesterday after falling hard and fast off his bull. He pulled off a boot to reveal an Aircast and at least one broken toe. Last spring, he fell off a bull and broke the second toe on his left foot. He reset it himself, but said he wasn’t sure if it had healed right. On Friday, he hit it again, and the toe swelled up. He iced it and sat the night out but said he would stuff it back into his boot for another rodeo the next day.

Several famous riders have been gored to death by bulls, but since the 1990s, riders have been required to wear Kevlar vests to protect their vital organs from bull horns. Riders who have had severe facial injuries sometimes wear helmets, which provide protection but can also win them the title “pretty boy.”

Bulls weigh between 1,500 and 2,500 pounds, and they often hurt riders, but it’s rarely because they’re mean. Mostly, a bull wants to kick off the cowboy and the ropes that are wrapped around it to make it buck and to give the cowboy something to hold onto.

But some bulls do get angry, and that’s why bullfighters in heavy body pads follow the bull around the ring and distract it when a rider falls off. They call themselves cowboy savers, and they step in front of charging bulls to protect dazed riders. “We bust ours to save yours,” said B.W. Merithew, a 20-year-old bullfighter from Canastota, N.Y.

A veteran bullfighter, Brandon Davis, 32, of Belmont, N.Y., has spent so many years dodging bulls, he jumps whenever someone taps him on the shoulder. But like bull riders, bullfighters love the adrenaline rush that comes from tangling with huge, horned beasts in front of a crowd.

“Fighting with people gets you in trouble,” Davis said. “Fighting with bulls don’t.”

The dream of the riders in circuits like the one that came to the fair, the International Bull Riders association, is to someday make a living at rodeos. One of the top five finishers at Friday’s competition was Sevi Torturo, 22, from Burnt Hills, N.Y., who has already won more than $150,000 in six years of professional riding. He got on his first calf when he was 5, and he’s never had any other kind of job. In 2003, he qualified for the Professional Bull Riders World Finals, making him one of the top 45 riders in the world. This year, he hopes to make the final again and compete for $2.3 million in prize money, showing fans that a Northern boy can be a rodeo champion, too.

“I’m a Yankee cowboy,” he said.