Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Horses vs. mules

The guy I got him from had 5 he was GIVING away to good homes. Some were standards and some minis. I should have taken them all.. The biggest was broke to ride and so was mine. He can carry the weight but it looks a lil funny with your feet about 6in off the ground though! The boy rides him sometimes but he doesnt "giddy-up" very well unless HE wants to.. Its quite comical.. I have found that he doesnt want to go in a pen where you want him to go the easiest way is to run a 4 wheeler up under his butt and he will just sit down and you can drive him wherever you want!! Stubborn little Ass...

With a mule you still have to have a horse mare, they won't cross water with out a mare to follow.

Mule shoes are harder to find.

What ever you buy, make sure they are raised in the rocks, that's how they learn to put their feet.

I've seen and used some great mules in my life, even ones you could shoot off of. I had some great horses also, you just have to understand the limitations and be ready for them.

Hmmm, seen my buddies 2 mules cross everything... no mare was within 50 miles.. Maybe I misread what you wrote...

All my mules cross water also ,go into lakes and I don't have a mare on the place. This early summer when the runoff was still strong,we went into the Flat Tops here in CO. Darn water was belly deep and whitewater to boot. These mules dove right in.

As for rocks, I'll be hunting up in the NW corner of Co in about two weeks .Right up against the UTand WY border. It's so rocky up there, I think that is where God piled all the rocks He had left over when he was done making our planet. When you point them in a direction,you'd best hold on ,because that is where they are going.

I do my own shoing and shoes are not hard to find. We have one shop here that carries St Croix and Diamond.I prefer the St Croix because they seem harder, but the Diamonds fit better without extra forming. 25-30 yrs ago,they were hard to find, but not now.
Oleo Acres has the shoes. Anyone can Google that.

Here's one of them mules here. A 10 yr old molly out of a 13 hd halflinger. She is just shy of 15hds. How can you not love an animal that looks this good. I'd not be embarassed to tie her outside any bar. BTW. This is the same mule a fellow on here accused me of not having her feet shod right from a picture taken 5 yrs ago, and said if I didn't do something right away,she was going to have permanent damage. The mules is still walking around.

Wow! She's perdy.. Nice and slick, too..

Mules will have either a horse style hoof, more round and a lot of semi-hard wall, there fairly easy to fit. Or more of a burro hoof, hard as nails and a very thin wall and shaped like the jack.

The more burro style hoof is harder to fit, the heals need to fallow closely and the nail holes of a standardized keg shoe will need to be re-punched finer or closer to the outside wall. The more burro style hoof dose not need shoes as readily as the more 'horse' style hoof.

Mules shoed up with hand-made shoes, frost-nails, borrium welded to the toes and heels of the shoes, and snow-pad is the ultimate off-road vehicle!

As mentioned, Oleo Acre's will ship, I get there once a week, very fortunate there, shoes are pricey to ship, but having what you need is priceless. Oleo Aceres Farier Supplies

You can shoot off any mule, once! (never a good practice, unless your being shot at maybe?)

I grew up in Deer creek canyon. You guys know why that place is called Oleo Acres?

I did have a mule I could shoot off of pretty regularly. Probably could have done some of that mounted cowboy shooting off him.Not so much with this one here. A person can't hit much that way, but I had some shot shells for my .357 that I would plink grouse with as I rode by.

I have mules with each of the type of foot described. I could do without the shoes on this one mule,but he is a fox trotter and will slide his back feet so much that the heels go real quick.Plus he has one foot off that he will round the inside heel off real quick too. He was born that way.

Right now I have the borium on toes and heels.Now that is expensive. About $13 a stick down here and I can do about 8 shoes with it. I just use regular nails though.

I'd like to find someone locally who can shoe mules right, as I'm getting too old for that.But all these guys around here want to jump out of the truck and get at it.Something you can't do with a mule. A person needs to take a few minutes to get to know them and vice versa. I did have one guy that was great and he claimed my mules were asier to shoe than most horses he did they were so well trained. He dallied a thumb and popped it off though and then was in bad truck accident.

Well, I have had little to do with horses, and nothing to do with mules...

...but I have to admit that this was a very enjoyable and interesting thread to read -- saddlesore especially!



John

Take C-470 past Santa Fe, north on Kippling, West on Chatsfild and south at the first light.

Not sure what that st. is called, but south on it to your first right (west) and turn in the first driveway north (right) .

Sort of messed up area, like an office complex area, it was right at the base of Deer Creek Canyon. Good people, you get there, check under the table near the anvils, my new (used) Pro-Forge is in!

Most of our mules came out of Mexico as 3 year olds, and never saw a shoe and never came up tender, but if you ever cut through that core then you had to shoe them from that day on..Same with the horses we got out of Mexico..

You could shoot around any of our mules and they would stand ground tied (reins just on the ground)that is the way we broke them, at best they would jump and go perhaps 25 feet but only if you were too close when you shot. I never even considered shooting off a horses back, accuracy is next to impossible, thats movie stuff IMO...Our mules would all pack a deer even with you in the saddle with the deer in your lap, as that is the way we did it..They were broke, broke, broke..That is why when we came out of our elk hunting camp in Colorado each year, the packers would be waiting at Chimney Rock to buy our mules every year..We would hold a silent auction..drop your name an bid in the hat type..They were mostly excellent hunting mules, hard footed and not a lazy bone in their bodies. We got top dollar for them. All the outlaws that wouldn't sell dad kept for us kids to ride another year. Gotta love him for that. Same with the horses, sold the good ones, rode the dinks and lied my ass off to him anytime I got a good one going, told him the horse was still bucking every day..He later told me he knew what I was up to..:)

I still prefer a horse!

Most folks think of me as an old world wide hunter, booking agent, stockmaker, but that is my business....My first love is none of those things..It's horses and roping and horses and roping and horses and roping. I might play a round of golf about once a year these days so that when I get to old to rope, I'll have something to do.

Like John, I have little to do with horses and mules, but I can say that I wouldn't have traded this mule for anything two years ago when I experienced the nasty side of the Gila. We encountered situations that could have gone ugly fast but she was as cool as a cucumber. I can only imagine the same situations with a half ass half ass (or half ass horse).

Notice the chain. The picture was taken after the kill and the guide was gone after the pack mules. She was NOT one bit happy about being left behind with me.

That's one outstanding looking piece of mule flesh!

saddlesore is right on with all that he has said.

I owned 60 horses and 20 mules.

While I rode a saddle horse most of the time. ( usually one in training ) I always looked forward to riding a mule. You can work a horse to death, you can't a mule. A horse will give you 100% and then a bit more when asked and then die. A mule will give you 100% then call it a day.

Mule are a much better ride(smoother) unless you've a good saddlebred or foxtrotter. Even then a mule can keep up.

No doubt you need a picket mare or 3 in camp. Otherwise your mules will leave ya for the trailhead.

I've many a pards who switched from ponies to mules... I've half a mind to.

see ya on the trail..

Those are awesome pics.. couldnt get any better,,

sure it can here we are about to drop into camp...

Atkinson. Sure wish I knew you back in those days.

Wyowhisper.
That mule should have been named "Socks with being all black and 4 white feet.

Oleo Acres = One of the Cheaper Spreads.

I first started to go up years ago when it was out there west of the resevoir. Had a hell of a time finding it when it moved up into that industrial zone.They just opened a small shop a few miles east of me a few years ago.So I need to go only about 5 miles instead of 65

Damn, I like those photos.Makes me want to go packin again. Can't lift those panniers anymore, but if you guys ever need a good camp cook, let me know.

My two cents: I'm a backpacker from way back, but I got tired of packing elk out on my back and wanted to be able to get farther in. I thought a lot about what kind of packstock to get. I'm nearly 50 years old with very little equine experience. I did not want to be maimed or killed by my stock, either accidentally or on purpose. I didn't have or want to spend the years needed to learn to handle horses or mules. I didn't want my pasture to be grazed down to dirt, and my fences weren't all that great. I'd been on a few llama trips in the past, and after much contemplation decided to get llamas.

I bought 3 experienced packers and 2 young novices last summer. I worked with them over the summer and took them on their first pack trip last October, when I went elk hunting. I killed a bull and they made the packing easy. This summer I've taken them on 4 pack trips to practice more and get them in shape for fall. Things are going great.

I think all the benefits of horses and mules have been covered already. If circumstances were different, I guess I'd get myself a couple of mules. Anyhoo, here is what I have learned:

Llamas require very little maintenance. They don't eat much and are easy on the pasture. They don't challenge fences. They aren't cuddly. They are stoic and don't seem to get sick or injured. You can't work them to death. If they can't go anymore, they lay down. They enjoy chasing strange dogs that come into the pasture. We've had a black bear in the pasture once; the llamas ran at him and he ran off and that was that. Word amongst Colorado packers is that bears stay away from llamas. Cougars may be another story.

Packing with them is easy. Mine have carried up to 90 pounds so far without difficulty. On the trail, we get varying reactions from horsepackers. A lot of them seem to think we are granola sucking hippies from California. Horses often spook even though we get the llamas far off the trail as soon as we can. The llamas don't spook on the trail. They may stop and look and listen. They almost always see game before we do. When picketed out, they don't panic when they get tangled up, no matter how bad the tangle is.

Weight is still an issue. Llama packers can't take wall tents and such. My camp would never be mistaken for a horse packer outfit. I use a Kifaru tipi and all my backpacking gear. Now I can have some luxuries like a nice chair and better food. This year I upgraded to a Kni-Co stove.

Riverdog.You hit the nail on the head.Them critters spook horses and mules to death,unless the stock has been around them.
Encounter a pack string on a tight mountain trail and you are in for a wreck.

We recently bought 3 llamas that we're working on. We took them on a 2 mile hike the other day and passed the neighbor's mule pasture. The mules, and 1 horse, charged the fence and generally went nuts, especially the horse. They didn't run away, though. They wanted over the fence to see what these strange things were. The horse did a fair bit of bucking and farting before he decided that they weren't going to eat him.