Home Forums Gear Horses and ATV's Getting the horse ready for the mountains

How do you get a horse ready for the mountains other than just getting them in good physical condition. The horses that we have rented in the past have worked just fine but we are thinking of taking our own horses next time. Both of our horses are well broke and been on many trails around here. My horse will even let me put a calf on the saddle with me and the dog rides the rump but we all know the mountains are different. Any ideas?

Make sure they are ok riding in the dark ,with headlamps, accustom to all the noises around camp in the dark, tieing up to a high line, OK around close gunshots.

Most flat land horses don't have enough hair on them for later seasons. Best bring a good heavy ,water proof blanket if you plan to hunt later seasons.

Flat land horses are no more accustom to the higher elevations than humans so be prepared to not push them hard.

Brings a couple tubes of electrolytes

The altitude difference is the main concern, Our horses are sea level dwellers so when we take them into the high country we give them a few days around base camp to get used to the thinner air before heading up and do it slowly as previously mentioned. treat your horse better than you would yourself walk and lead when the going gets to tuff. Make sure your farrier knows where you are going. A "show ring" clinch wont hold shoes worth a damn in shale and muskeg. I always include a preshapped set of shoes and nails for each horse in the pack sure beats trying to turn a heel on a rock lol. Above all enjoy every second up there its the greatest way of hunting there is.
Good Luck

I will have to work some with my horse in the dark and see how that goes. He is used to gun shots and has even had them fired off of his back. I will give him a refresher in that. My hunting partner's horse might take a little more work.

I hear ya on the higher elevation. It slows me down for the first few days also.

We will be hunting the first season so unless it gets really cold they should do ok but I will remember a blanket also.

We are not hunting Colorado this year so maybe next summer we can make a trip out to the Rabbit Ears and do some trail riding to see what we might need to work on.

We don't have the elevation to deal with here for hunting, so for me it comes down to miles and wet blankets.

One of the better things you can do is arrive on Wednesday if the season begins on Sat. Don't just pull them out of the trailer, go to packing and take off.

We set up camp near the truck Wed. Then Thursday we saddle up and do some riding and again on Friday. Not far,4-5 miles maybe. This gets them use to the trails they will be on, smells, sights etc. in daylight.

Load them up with what you will have on your saddle, bags, scabbard, canteen, etc. Get it all situated so you are not fussing around opening morning.

Then on opening day they are not so spooky when every one is rushing around getting to ride out and they are nervous and excited. The horses pick up on that and get jittery too.

My mules have been in every elk camp for 14-15 in most cases and I still do that.

I can't begin to count on how many times I see guys pull up of Friday night, go to sleep and then opening day they get the animals all spooky and it ends up in a rodeo or wreck a few hundred yards up the trail.

...or the wreck will be spread from 'hell to breakfast'!

Really bad idea IMO, the last thing you need is a bucking show with a cocked gun in your hand. A bomb proof horse is like an "unloaded" gun they are the ones that will kill you. Even the best and safest pony has it's trigger if it hasn't gone off the trigger just hasn't been pulled yet. You should definitely get your horse used to gunfire just don't do it on their backs, be safe have fun.

Two horses. Are you going to pack big game with them? If so, consider the reaction of the horses to blood and flesch smell. Are the horses accustom to picketing or hobbles?

Don't know if you travel your horses much, make sure your paper work for them is in order. Current coggins, health inspection. Don't need to be quarantined along the road some place. As for the mountains, condition them at home and give them a few days to get acclimated in the higher elevations like others said.

All great information.

I have no intent on shooting any game from the back of my horse. I was just saying that he has had it done with a .22 hand gun a few years back and that was after a lot of other work to get to that point. I will have to give him a refresher but I doubt I will shoot off his back again.

This next fall I will try and get them used to dead deer. My horse has been near them and racoons but not in bags on his back.

I know it will take a lot of work but I have until 2015 to get them ready. I just think it will be worth it to just have my own horse there. If the elk hunting sucks at least I got to take a ride in the mountains.

I won't shoot near my animals. Gunfire is hard on our ears and doubly so on more sensitive animals' ears.

Some folks take their horses early to give them a chance to acclimate. Others go at the last minute, work the hell out of them and try to get them back to a lower elevation in a few days before the pulmonary edema gets too serious.

I favor the former over the latter.

Exactly, when option 2 goes wrong it will probably go horribly wrong. I grew up with cow/trail/pack horses. My Gramps insisted we looked after our horses/mules before and better than we did ourselves. His motto was kill or lame up your horse in the back country and you may be killing yourself.
A couple more notes for the OP check feet and shoes often, a bucket of cold water over the back and rub down the legs with cold water at the end of the day will go miles to preventing a lame, sore back horse, don't let them drink to much water right away at the end of the day, you don't want them rolling with a gut full of water.

bullchit...... let them drink what they want. One of the problems of hunting on NF is the certified hay/pellets requirement. Either, or both, of these need all the extra water the horse wants. Most folks don't feed these at home, and changes to the diet can bring on colic. As can weather changes they aren't used to. Like bringing ponies from 60 degree nights to altitude with 10-20 degree nights.

The problem isn't so much rolling with a belly full of water, but a big load of very cold water when they are very hot. Some horses can colic in that situation.

Of course it a matter of relativity - how hot is the horse and how cold is the water.

We cross a creek as we get to camp and always let the horses drink some as we cross, but not as much as they would like.

After they are unloaded and cooled off, we will take them back to the creek to drink all they can.

Some think a horse will "tie up" from drinking a lot and that has been debunked. Tieing up is Azoturia, or rhabdomyolosis, is a different ailment.

You are right IB, I was not quite specific enuff with my advice, I just took forgranted the water being very cold being in the high country. As for the certified hay/pellets that's not something I can comment on cuz we don't have the such like where we hunt/pack/cowboy. We usually picket/hobble in a slough grass meadow and supplement with some COB, but then our horses are mostly range grazed and are used to it.

On the occasion that we have to use pellets or cubes, we soak the heck out of the cubes. Put them in a feeder and put enough water in there to cover them. Let sit half an hour then feed. With hay pellets, that are ground and processed, soaking doesn't work as well so we make sure that they mules get a chance to drink a lot. One thing about mules, they won't drink a lot when overheated so they are better in that respect than horses. It helps to have a little loose salt in camp to throw a handful in every other day or so to get them to drink more water.

We sure found out that you don't want to feed straight alfalfa cubes to mules. In about three days, you have a mule that is acting like a kid on a sugar high or just drank two cans of Red Bull.

I see a lot of DYIer's that don't give their horses enough water. Where we go ML hunting, there is no close water, so we take three 55 gallon plastic barrels, a small generator and a pump to get water out of a lake a mile away. Haul them back full in the back of a pick up and then we have a water tank to water al the critters before we leave in the AM, when we get back and then again before we hit the sack.

I don't pack in any more, but when I did, I always packed cubes or pellets in 600-800 pounds for a ten day hunt, and we high lined all our stock.

What with all the hunting pressure now days, you can't depend on there being enough grass to feed. Hobbling, you don't want to leave stock out all night, as they are usually gone in the morning or at least you have to look for them around camp in the dark unless they are seasoned back country horses and mules. Picketing, sooner or later you will end up with rope burns on the hocks. With those pack in electric fences, sooner or later ,something will come thru camp at night to spook the stock and they will bust thru the wire and be gone.

All these are personified with horses that are not normally used all year in the back country. Between feed and water, not getting your stock enough water will get you into more trouble and faster than not enough feed.

A highline can get you in trouble too, although I do believe it is the safest method of keeping stock around camp. If you have the drop lines too long, and especially with mules, they can get to rolling, hang a back foot up in the drop line and easily dislocate a hip.

Fortunately we don't have a 'over grazing' problem where we pack, when we hobble we picket a night horse(the boss mare, most of our string won't leave her) close to camp and bell a couple of the hobbled ones(we know our bunch quitters). We train and refresh all our horses to the picket using picket ropes run thru a piece of small diameter fire hose, no rope burns and we carry this setup to picket our night horse. I am not a huge fan of high lining but we do condition our animals to it just in case, great advice on the tether rope.

We seldom pack grain or COB in for just that reason. By the middle of Sept, grass has little nutrition left as it has pretty much stopped growing. It gets to be a less valuable feed as the seaon progresses.

We now pack a couple hundred pounds of a locally-produced complete pelleted feed more as a supplement.