{"id":21928,"date":"2018-10-15T12:08:05","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T17:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=21928"},"modified":"2018-10-15T15:56:35","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T20:56:35","slug":"jeris-jackpot-weird-and-wacky-the-testicle-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2018\/10\/15\/jeris-jackpot-weird-and-wacky-the-testicle-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeri’s Jackpot: Weird and Wacky, The Testicle Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0While researching the Mothman Festival and the festivals that are around the United States, I came across some rather interesting festivals. One of them is the Testicle Festival, or Testy Fest as it\u2019s known in Montana. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0It was founded by Rod Lincoln, the original owner and founder of the Rock Creek Lodge. Lincoln was also the chef behind the testicle dishes, and claimed to use only USDA approved meat. It is unclear if he still cooked the dishes in the past few years.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 The festival took place at Rock Creek Lodge just outside of Clinton, Montana. It ran for 35 years up until its cancellation this year due to accidents that had taken place in previous years, prompting the end of the festival. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0It began in 1982, and started as a way to raise money for local charities related to testicular and prostate cancer. The people of the town needed something to sell, so why not sell what was most abundant in the area. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0When bulls are castrated, you end up with a bunch of testicles and no use for them. They\u2019re edible, and cowboys have been eating them for centuries, so why not?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0There\u2019s a variety of ways to fix them, from fried to testicle sushi, to grilled and everything in between. The festival ran for five days and culminated in an eating contest to see who could eat the most of the festival\u2019s famous dish. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The festival featured a wet t-shirt contest, the \u2018undie 500\u2019 tricycle race, a hairy chest contest, and bull chip throwing as well as a rather crudely named bingo game. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Festival-goers had to be 21, and no children were allowed. The convenience of it being near the lodge was that if a festival attendee had too much of the fest\u2019s signature beer (\u201cBull Snort Brew\u201d as it was called), they could get a room to sleep it off. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Flickr.com\/29795314@N07<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0There was also a gift shop located in the lodge where you could buy a variety of souvenirs from t-shirts to \u2018Testy Fest Hot Sauce.\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Unfortunately, Testy Fest was cancelled in 2018 after the death of two pedestrians the previous year. One of the shuttle passengers, James Bayford, took the wheel of the shuttle and flipped it, killing two and injuring seven. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0This wasn\u2019t the first incident related to the festival but it was the final straw. In 2012, a car accident killed an eight-year-old boy. The truck that struck the SUV of a Seattle family was driven by a festival-goer who was intoxicated and had discovered keys in the ignition of a truck. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The festival had other issues too, seeing as it was a heavy alcohol consumption based event. Lots of videos would get uploaded to Facebook, which most people didn\u2019t have an issue with, while others were upset over their drunken debauchery being posted for the world to see. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Attendance also took a sharp decline in the past few years. Usually, according to current lodge owner Matt Powers, the attendance was close to 10,000 thanks to social media becoming more prevalent. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Testicle Festival was rather popular in its heyday, and was what Montana was known for to a point. The Festival was so popular that the recent Ubisoft game \u201cFar Cry 5,\u201d featured a mission early on in the game called \u201cTesty Festy.\u201d Upon completion, the player would receive a t-shirt in game with the same saying on it. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The mission required the player to butcher several bulls to collect a certain number of the festival\u2019s main dish ingredient, bull testicles. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Sadly, the Testy Fest is no more, but I\u2019m sure the locals will still consume the famed dish for years to come. Testy Fest will be remembered by those who attended, and I\u2019m sure, as was the motto, they \u201chad a ball.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Jeri Hensley<\/strong>
\n<\/span>Graphic Designer<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0While researching the Mothman Festival and the festivals that are around the United States, I came across some rather interesting festivals. One of them is the Testicle Festival, or Testy Fest as it\u2019s known in Montana. \u00a0 \u00a0It was founded by Rod Lincoln, the original owner and founder of the Rock Creek Lodge. Lincoln […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10416,"featured_media":21960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2104,2109,3],"tags":[2751,2016,2765,1384,2769,2771,2770],"class_list":["post-21928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","category-opinion","category-tartan-news","tag-festivals","tag-jeri-hensley","tag-jeris-jackpot","tag-opinion","tag-testicle-festival","tag-wacky","tag-weird"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/agriculture-animal-bull-457447.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-5HG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10416"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21928"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21961,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21928\/revisions\/21961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}