Just drove across the Crow rez.

Car pulled off on the shoulder with wrecked front end and smashed in windshield.

On opposite side of the highway is a pretty big and very dead horse just barely off the pavement.

So...

Gets real exciting when it's a black horse at midnight.

Reservations have a lot of open range, and where the range is not open -- the fences aren't that excellent.

We have thousands of square miles of open range that aren't rez. Livestock has the right of way and a large animal will defeat a small car.

Owner of the car will never see a cent of compensation from the owner of the horse. In Wyoming, horses are supposed to be fenced at all times, but on the rez they get out in the roadway all the time, hit one and you will pay for the horse in addition to paying for your car and injuries.

These 2 things are not related on the rez. A dead horse is a common sight and a car off to the side with a smashed windshield and bashed up front end is even more common. Finding an Indian without a blood alcohol of less than .08 still in a car is what is really rare...

I grew up the reservation .. Anyhow my wife full blooded Navajo and me 1/4 breed who is white as day stop at the loves truck stop on the crow agency. Head to the bathroom come out grab soda then I notice it them Indian boys staring at me trying to figure what this white boy was doing with one of their indian women... Lol told my we better get out here before they kidnap you lol...

... hey kemosabe',... hold my beer and watch this!....

Point being, contrary to others' experience, I don't see dead horses roadside for what looks like over a day with the car that smoked said horse still disabled there as well anywhere but on the rez.

ya thats not something you see every day. at least around here.

i was driving from shreveport to austin in 84 and came upon a calamity. a small car had hit either a longhorn or some other very large, horned bovine and said bovine was very much alive but very much fugged up and flopping and flipping and bawling. the car was crushed and the people were still inside screaming. since others were on the scene already, i just kept going but it was nasty. horrible actually.

There are a chitload of cars in way worse shape and missing way more windows driving around town as we speak.


Some real war ponies.




End of the month here, drunks [bleep] all over the place.


Not that the horse was probably drunk or anything.



We have pasture on both sides of Highway 2 and check the fences pretty regular. About 2 weeks ago drunks went down in the ditch and took out a little chunk.




And I'll take (most)Indians over yuppie dumbphucks ANY day.

Not a bad place to be if you aren't into urban 'fluff'.




Ain't fuucking Starbucks and Subaru country!

Moose get a lot of cars and kill people the same way. With their long legs, the hood goes under the belly and the full weight comes through the windshield.

Ah the Rez life.

Hell, it's got more damage on the rear end than the front end. What did he do, run over it and then back over it. powdr

Ain't that the truth!

Once a rez, always a rez. Sorry, but I live not far from a couple.

lol some phuggers went under the fence in the highway department yard in the last week.....keys in vehicles, hundreds of thousands of dollars in survey gear and tools and they made off with some factory vehicle jacks and the chargers to our radios.....we just shook our heads at that one.....

That house must have lept out of a badger hole right in front of that car. WTF!

How the [bleep] do you not see a 1250 lb black horse standing on a flat highway in broad day light?

Good Weed?

probably happened at night....had a car full of drunk natives smoke 2 or three of them in a group on the road 100 yards from my house when i lived outside of town.....odd thing was we never heard a thing but woke up to a hell of a blood bath in the snow the next morning.....not sure if it was air currents or what but we never heard anything on the highway in that house

One time I came within a couple feet of hitting a black horse at night. It was tethered to a fence for weed control but the rope allowed it to reach the middle of the 1st lane. I was driving an old Jeep CJ3A and I guarantee the horse would have won. The old 6V lights weren't all that bright and I think the outside of the horse was blacker than the inside.

Damn dose guys needs new fence postesses so all does udder guys quit hittin der livestocks too!!

When my young brother was in college he and a friend were driving to the friend's cabin in western SD. At night. They rammed a horse on the Rosebud res with enough of a vehicle to spare their lives but it looked a bit accordion-like the next day.

They motored through the impact with enough awareness after the shock to keep going. As my friend told my brother, "you don't stop on the Rosebud at night."

No. You don't.

True words.

Just came across there this evening.

Or most any reservation for that matter, regardless of the state....unfortunately.

Tarkio: Back in the late 60's and 70's myself and my Hunting partners used to drive on down to the far south east corner of Montana (near Alzada) to shoot a couple of Buck Mule Deer apiece!
We "used to" take the "shortest" route that took us through the Crow Indian Reservation and then immediately through the Northern Cheyenne Indian Resrvation. Sadly we were working types and had to travel that route most often on Saturday evenings -it got to be so dangerous and scary that after a few years of numerous "close call incidents" we consciously decided to take the much longer (but much safer!) route up through Miles City and then turning south through Broadus thus avoiding the dangers that were (and still are!) inherent with travelling on the roads and highways of those two adjacent reservations.
I also "braved" the elements and would travel to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation during spring and summer to Hunt Prairie Dogs thereon - I did this for years but would only drive on the rez during mid-morning and mid-day!
Sad the destruction, human misery and death that alcohol and drugs have plagued Indian folks on these two reservations I know is horrific!
I hope no one was hurt in that horse versus automobile accident (on that straight and level stretch of road???)!
I simply refuse to drive on any road on any Indian Reservation in Montana after dark - its simply a matter of self preservation.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

I damn near hit a Bob Cat last night.

Of all the $hit hole countries I visited while in the Marines and all the shady places I have been in my civilian life, I never felt more threatened than I did in Browning Montana, in broad daylight. Even Bethel AK wasn't that bad.

Browntown certainly has its own "flavor" so to speak.

lol most other natives dont like the Blackfoot either......here on the Fort Peck its not quite as bad atleast around Wolf Point. Though i would prolly stay out of the bars for the most part in Poplar at night doesn't bug me to be over there after dark. My sister dated a guy from Sidney in high school and whenever he caught a ride up here with his buddy, his buddy would lock the doors when they hit the rez and refuse to unlock them when until they hit my parents house and then refused to go anywhere without my sister. Guess we have a bit of a reputation here but in reality other than some of the theft and stuff like that its not bad, most the serious stuff is native on native.

What I find hillarouis, is that there is still a satellite dish in the back yard, there should be a tripod around some place with an old car under it, a pack of tic infested mutts roaming also.

Yeah I grew up next to a souix Rez.

It's a interesting town for sure, beautiful county with a amazing amount of misery, violence, and dispare. Pretty much every rez I've been on has been a epic chit hole.

Isn't it strange when you give people everything they need to live they all turn out the same.Doesn't matter what color they all turn into trash. ED K

I've hit a steer, a deer, and a horse - all at night.
Thankfully,I was only doing about 30 mph on a windy road when the horse jumped off the embankment in front of us! We, and the horse, survived.
Impact with a critter of any size WILL result in warped sheet metal, and outgoing $.

I'm gratified for this insight on the safety of traveling in the reservations. I love to just wander across the west, although I haven't had the wherewithal to get out there for years. Without really knowing anything specific, my senses always told me I probably didn't want to go poking down too many rural roads around four corners or etc. Or was I just being paranoid?

I've been removed form the rez scene for 17yrs so I'm not up on anything anymore. But I do know don't stop anywhere on the rez at night I made the mistake on the crow agency but it was a well lit place LOL. On the Navajo indian rez if you get lost you are more apt to get fed Navajo tacos before you get mugged LOL. When I joined the Army holy [bleep] my accent was bad like fresh off the reservation bad. People asked me where you from I said Warm Springs, Oregon its a reservation. Now days listening to them talk cracks me up especially when they try to sound intellectual lol. My wife ex brother in law was that way [bleep] drive me nuts trying to listen to him talk. Took him better part of a day to tell a story lol...

That's funny. Years ago we chartered a boat to take us down on the Alaskan Peninsula - the owner was an old native guy. I grew up in Northern MN and I swear he sounded just like an old Finlander and talked just as slow!

The politically incorrect (that is, true) story of rez life is well told in Dan Cushman's 1953 book "Stay Away Joe".

IMO, it could have been written in 2015.

Driving through one res in eastern Arizona, a few years ago, I actually see a guy in front of me stop, pick up road kill and throw it in the back of his pickup.

Scarier was the time I'd stayed late at Monument Valley, getting some pretty cool photos of the Mitten Rocks. I grabbed a bite to eat, then hit the road headed east. And almost hit a guy who was walking heel to toe along the white line of the highway (no street lights, and it was pitch black). He was probably drunk, of course, but I'm sure the rez police would have given me a big hassle if I'd hit him.

I've never had a problem on any reservation, myself. Except one time I got caught in a huge blizzard south of Browning and had to pull over and park in a ranch yard.
Family took me in, we had a nice visit for an hour or two until the wind died down enough to see the road. But they were pretty much just like small town people anywhere else, and that's been my impression on every rez I've been to.
There's a big difference between a regular Indian and a "Native American."

Thats priceless!

We used to play them in football.
If you beat them, they throw beer bottles at your bus.
If they beat you, they throw beer bottles at your bus.

Sounds like Green Bay....

You have to expect open range fence or not on the navajo rez.
I have come through there any number of times where there are fences, and the horses are outside the fence to get at the grass. Not uncommon.

Back in the 70's, at the age of 15 I signed up to work my first job with the youth conservation corp in Montana, hoping to wind up in Glacier Park. Instead I ended up in Lame Deer/St Labre Cheyenne/Crow country. Wow what an eye opener. During the 8 weeks I was there, there were three murders, two of the victims were beat to death (alcohol involved). One of the murders was white on white, the other two were native on native. They put some of the local troubled youth on our crews and one of them got beaten black and blue by his buddies ending with a bit of a hospital stay. Made my neighborhood seem like Mayberry. Back then it was "only" alcohol and dope, now with meth, crack etc lord knows what has become of the area.

From what I hear, and saw back a few years ago, the meskins like to move dope there.

Average life span was supposed to be about 35 when I was there, I doubt it's gotten any better. Sadly it's similar on most reservations I suspect.

Pretty regular thing for some convenience stores in a town north of here to sell cigarettes one at a time. A common sale to two "natives" is two cigarettes and a strawberry soda with two straws...

Don't you know it ain't strawberry soda, it's Rett pop! Sold a million gallons of Red Rattler to indians in SW OK growing up, it was the second favorite behind Milwaukee Beast.

That just sounds like rural Montana in general!

Yep.

Many years ago I was headed north at night in southwestern Wyoming on a highway across open range. Was driving only 50, due to knowing it was open, but all of a sudden there was a horse walking across the road. Managed to drive toward the ditch and slow down enough that the horse’s jaw hit the windshield right in front of me, and that was all the damage.

Turned out there was another pickup down the road about 200 yards in the opposite lane, both headlights gone from hitting another horse in the herd. He had a spotlight and we looked at the herd, standing 100 yards off the road, and couldn’t pick out the ones we’d hit. They may have been lying out there in the sage, but who knows?

Which is why I ignore the law when it comes to auxilary headlamps. Candlepower rules -- at least until someone comes up with a FLIR for cars.

It sure is a good thing the crow nation is dry, would not want to know what could happen if they got booze out there. They have a transport bus that drops off a load of homeless Crow at North Park in Billings, they come into town and blow their paychecks on booze and are stacked up on the sidewalks like cordwood, absolutely destroying the efforts to clean up and revitalize the downtown there. It is bad enough that they are traffic hazards anywhere near 6th Ave North and 27th St.

I go out of my way to stay out of the Crow nation.

Our church recently returned from a mission trip to a reservation in Montana. They were well received and did a lot of good while there. They reported a culture that is ripe with drug abuse and child neglect. Very sad.

Welcome to democrat land=Rez.

But they get free food!

We whip dead horses on this site every day!!