Meet the Iowa State Fair's Women's Cow Chip Throwing Record Holder

[Pam Sufka] Guess what I found today? I found my 1982 Women's Cow Chip Throwing Contest first place ribbon. It's awesome. I'm never going to misplace it ever again.

[Reporter] Now an event that makes you glad there's no such thing as smell-o-vision. Steve Givens takes us to the Cow Chip Throwing Contest.

[Narrator] Seeing who can hurl cow chips the farthest has been a favorite fair tradition for nearly 50 years. And in the early '80s, history was unknowingly made by one young woman in her 20s.

[Pam Sufka-Boyd] My oldest sister and I decided to go to the fair, and we were just meandering up on the hill, and the Cow Chip Throwing Contest was about ready to start and I wanted to do it. There was a big cardboard box of cow chips and I started looking at them because they were all different sizes and I wanted to get one that was somewhat symmetrical and equal thickness across, but not big.

And I decided by watching previous people that not the Frisbee throw and not the underhand throw was going to be the technique. The technique was going to be the overhand throw and it went sailing. And then it continued to roll and hit a car in the front and on the street and then fell over.

[Narrator] Pam's throw was measured at 146.7 feet, a women's record that still stands today.

[Pam] I didn't even know I was a reigning champion until my sister in Oregon heard it from one of her friends on a PBS program. So then she called me and said, “Did you know you're the reigning champion?” And I said I did not. I was quite shocked.

[Narrator] Now that she's retired, Pam has time in her schedule to compete in the contest again. We took a trip out to her farm to get some pointers on how to win the cow chip throwing contest.

[Pam] Real cow pies! Here's a stack of cow pies, the first I've ever picked from the family farm. This one obviously is too light, thin. It's not going to go the distance. This guy, pretty good, symmetrical, but it's a little bit big. I would probably take some of this out to make it more of a Frisbee size.

Too light, too thin, not going to be a good champion cow chip. This one, although, is a little bit bent, it's got a nice weight and it's symmetrical. That's it! That's the one I like.

I grew up with a family of 7 kids and I was the tomboy of the family. And so it was football, basketball, Frisbee out in the front yard and in the street.

91!

[Narrator] Though it's not a requirement to be an athlete to participate in or even win the contest, Pam knows a thing or two about the best throwing techniques.

[Pam] One is Frisbee style. Not very effective, as you can tell. Another is the underhand style. Granny! Also not very effective. My personal favorite is the tomahawk throw.

Yeah!

[Narrator] All that said, throwing dried cow manure down a hill as hard as you can is not that serious. Like most activities at the fair, you do it because it's entertaining.

[Pam] It's not about winning, it's about participating and having fun. I think everybody should go give it a fling.se we only had so much building space here. So to get as much stuff in here as we could, we kind of made the cages smaller than I would prefer them to be.

So yeah, at home they've got a lot nicer environment.

So we've been at it forever. There were 4 of us that started up in the Grandstand, as a matter of fact. That was 51 years ago. I have two other partners now that used to work for me out here, and now we've made them— I've made them partners in this exhibit. And the three of us keep all of these animals.

Zach, who is one of the guys, one of his primary interests is in lizards, so he keeps a number of lizards. And he's got the Gila monster. Nick, who is from Columbia, Missouri, is a professor at Missouri University.

He and I are kind of on the same wavelength in what we like and what we keep.

[Nick] It's funny because when people get the opportunity to interact with an animal, they get an appreciation for it. They make a connection with that organism. And the reason why I continue to be involved in this is the education aspect of it. I mean, I'm an educator, so that's kind of like my big kick for this.

[Tom] But I think a lot of people are amazed at what they see inside here because you're going to see things and you get up pretty close to this stuff. It's just not stuff you're going to see every day.

[Nick] Yeah, they have to earn their rent, but at the same time, they get to kick back for the whole rest of the year and just get ready for the next year.

[Tom] You know, we didn't know what was going to happen when we started this whole thing. The opportunity presented itself to be out here, so we thought we'd give it a try. We run several thousand people through this thing every year, so it's a pretty popular exhibit. And my goal above all is to make sure, hopefully, when you leave here, the next time you see a snake in the wild, you admire it and leave it alone.

[Photographer] All right, guys, look right here. 1, 2, 3, smile. And keep looking.