Home Forums Gear Horses and ATV's Hancock bred horse

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Bay roan mare, stud was Hancock line. She was never bad at bucking just real ground shy for quite awhile. When she was three though she did pile drive me into the dirt pretty bad. Cracked ribs and bruised me pretty good. She's settled in good now. Loves to work cows and she will not quit. She's nice to drag calves on.

She's 11 now, may not ever be a kids horse though. I've guided and hunted on her quite a bit too.

Top pic preg testing cows with my kids, couple years ago.

Bottom pic holding a calf, she was almost 4 in the pic.

Dan H - John L. Moore here. As you must know, I have written about Hancocks to some length and it would take a long article to cover all the bases here, but much of what you hear about the Hancocks being broncs just isn't true. Yes, there were some years ago, but many of those horses then were not broken until they five, six years old. But, why all the rumors? First, Joe Hancock had some Percheron blood and some Arab blood and that has produced some great bucking horses (look at the Tooke program for example) but he had so little and that was so long ago that it simply isn't relevant today. Secondly, one well-known Hancock was Buck Hancock. Perhaps a bad choice for a stallion's name no matter his color. Third, some of the old Bartender horses bucked, but they were not Hancocks, but Roan Bar looked like many of the Hancocks and people began confusing them. Fourth, Hancocks can be big and intimidating. Big framed, big feet, big head...they look like they could really buck if they wanted to. Now, I'm sure there are some that bucked, but I could probably name four or five lines of QHs that throw more fire than Hancocks. Finally, today's Hancocks are just a really different animal. I tell people if they are looking for a really docile colt, look for a Hancock-bred colt, especially a High Rolling Roany. Many of them are a bit too big and not very agile, but they retain considerable cow and good dispositions. If posting photos were easier, I could post a number of photos of Hancock-bred geldings being handled by my small grandchildren. Now, there are a lot of different Hancock lines so you always have to investigate the individual line, but generally speaking, the idea that Hancocks may have had some validity 50-60 years ago, but it is hardly true today. I think one problem is people like to perpetuate the myth and then others treat Hancock-bred horses as if they are going to buck, and of course, they pick on them until they do. Any horse with any bottom and fire is going to have a limit to its patience. The Oswald line that I am fond of, is a line you can't pick on. As an old cowboy/ horse trainer friend of mine says about the Hard Twists, "if you pick on them, they'll ante-up."

Seems like ol` Ezra had trouble a time of two.

Good to see you here John. Hope you are well

Thanks for the education. My wife and I both enjoyed the discussion.

Ironbender, thanks for the greeting. It has been a hard year in Eastern Montana. Record drought last summer, record snowfall this winter. We badly needed the moisture, but the drought and hard winter also meant everyone had to buy a lot of expensive hay. I am slowly working on my fifth and I think final Ezra Riley novel. Not much new besides extreme weather. I bought one of those new Henry Long Ranger rifles in .308 because I have an exquisite tooled and lined scabbard that I've had for years and used for a BLR .308 that blew up due to a faulty bullet. So, looking forward to tuning this new rifle up for a 2019 elk hunt with Warren Johnson and Hells A'Roarin' Outfitters of Gardiner, MT. I did a Facebook series on the historic FUF Ranch of southcentral Montana. They ran 15,000 horses on 1.1 million acres and had a crew that included two men who became famous writers, one who became a famous western artist, a freed slave and many others. The FUF horse operation existed from 1890 until 1910. I will be talking about it and other horse history on an upcoming episode of Special Cowboy Moments on RFD-TV. The FUF Ranch series ran for 30 installments on my Writer FB page and hopefully we will put all of that together into a small book. Hope you're farin' well. John

Great history of a great area John.

I'd enjoy another ride with Ezra.

The RFD-TV episodes will begin airing on May 2 and there will be three episodes featuring the history of Miles City,