Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Montana Horse Auctions

I follow Western Horseman, mostly dreaming of the cowboy life from down south in Bama, and also admiring the horses. Notice that a lot of auctions are coming up in Montana for high dollar "performance" horses. Man are they beautiful and well trained. Seems like such a romantic life, training and working these horses in the Big Sky Country. Started digging into prior sales results and noticed that a lot of these horses are sold north of $100K with anything sub $50k being cheap.

Maybe our inmate ranchers can shed some light into this life. Who buys these damn expensive mounts? I know it aint Sam and Jim.

My old horse fell over and died when I was in high school.

Dad and I go visit a friend of his that was raising horses.

Dad asked if he had a horse in the 2000 dollar range.

No...he didn't.


His horses started at 40 thousand....went up to 80 thousand.


Rodeo and barrel racing horses.




This was nearly 25 years ago.

Loose horses at the Billings sale have been going for 1000 to 3000 bucks!

When the horse market crashed you couldn’t give them away! Go out and look for wild horses and several were shod. The last few horses my family and friends bought were anywhere from $5-10 thousand for a good sound horse. I have seen some around where I live for $2-5 thousand.

Are the $100K horses used for rodeoing mostly? Wealthy rancher's kid? Certainly can't justify the cost for ranching.

A $100,000 horse is just like a Corvette ZO6, or $100,000 dog.

You pay 10 times as much for a 5% increase in performance. But that is what it takes to win a race or a reigning/cutting competition.

Sometime you can make part of it back on stud fees, or selling competition winning colts and pups.

Performance horses are like performance autos in another way. Most can not get a damned bit more work out of that $100,000 horse than they can from a properly trained $5000 horse.

Most of us can not get to the top, or bottom of a tight twisty mountain road 10 seconds faster in a $100,000 sports car, than we could in a Dodge Neon.

Probably would be more likely to kill ourself in a hot sports car.

But, hey, I guess they are fun to brag about down at the old watering hole.

California transplants.

I guess you could say that i live the "lifestyle" but not at those prices. grin. I raise and train a few horses, but for mine and my wife's own use. They are used or going to be used for riding in the mountains or desert for pleasure of for hunting. I chased the cutting game for a while, but it was too rich for my blood.

The kind of horses you see going for big money are typically cutting, reigning, reigned cowhorse, racing type horses or one of the big games right now for horses, barrel racing. Bill Smith gets some big money for some of his "ranch" horses at his sales, but you won't see the typical rancher giving those type prices.
They generally go to rich people playing rancher/cowboy or just to trail ride.

Overall the horse market is up like everything else and under these circumstances....buyer beware.

Breeding and color Bama. I know the roans are real popular around here .

Horses eat pretty good.Had some at a Restaurant in Quebec.

Good gosh, all that for ONE HORSEPOWER with LOUSY mileage?
On the other hand, I watched the Swedish Yumping Team at Tokyo for a few minutes. Man, how much did THAT cost for a 42 second or less ride?

Older rich horse women. AKA the craziest critters on the planet.

Or a barrel racer with two dogs.....

Having dated 3 of them I have to agree. crazy to the tenth power. Bit of fun mixed in though

wives of rich cucks usually buy them. someone who know horses can find a really good one, with some searching, under 6 to 8 k.

Gagged me, and I didn't know what I was eating until I asked. Courchevel, France.

I worked for Northwest airlines in the 80s & 90s, we used to ship alot of horse meat to Paris France, every afternoon! Air Cargo.!

ribka is right, most of the horses being used in this branding are well trained and can do whatever the owner needs them for. They are all horses that are being ridden by some of the local cowboys that ride for a living. I doubt that any of them were purchased for under $5000.00, but probably not over $10,000.00.
These guys all showed up to help my son brand like all of the neighbors do for each other..
It's a tough life, but some horse-nut has to do it!

Dammit!

You get off that fence! Your old ass dont bounce like it did!

Jim, I ain't a cowboy, just an observer. I have pics of me on a horse, but not while it was working.

The fence didn't try to move by the way .