Santiam;
Good afternoon once more, I still hope you're all well.
Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it.
It's interesting what some horses will and absolutely will not do.
Carly the Appy was my meat packing and hunting horse, but Cody the ranch bred Quarter Horse was a better mountain horse and way, WAY better cow horse the couple times I used him.
He'd been a pony horse at a local track for awhile too so that was great for teaching our girls how to ride.
Hopefully you and the fellow horse folks and even those who aren't might appreciate this tale of mine that I posted here a couple years back, but took place sometime in the early 2000's.
In the spirit of some of the recent "Have you ever?" threads, I mentioned in an answer that I'd done this a time or two over the decades, so with your kind permission I'll sally forth with the tale.
In the photo, we can see that when I headed into the mountains behind the house on Carly the Appy, I at very least looked the part! Someone once described me as looking like a 3/4 sized Marlboro Man and that sort of fits I suppose.
One particular morning I was out cruising the mountain when I came upon a young fellow standing over a mulie 2 point looking quite lost.
I need to note here that Carly the Appy was part Thoroughbred and she was by far and away, the fastest horse I've ever been on. Our method of hunting was a wee bit like riding a hot dirt bike in that she liked to run and I'd let her! We covered incredible amounts of ground in a short time that way and through the years I learned the spots we'd see bucks and would slow her down there.
Anyways all that to say we came up on the young man in a big hurry!
Perhaps he must of thought I was going to give him what for or something, as he looked a wee bit confused and a tad frightened.
When I congratulated him on the tasty looking buck, he visibly relaxed somewhat, but then said that it was his first and he had really not the first clue as to what to do next.
I chuckled, slid down off the horse and said, "Well this isn't my first rodeo, so hang onto Carly and watch".
He mumbled something about not knowing much about horses, to which I replied, "Hold the end the food goes in, watch the end it comes out and you'll be golden".
Perhaps I should add now that since I've been the community eviscerating specialist since I was a wee lad, it didn't take me long.
When I was done, I cleaned my hands on the grass, took back the reins and asked the youngster if he needed further help?
He said that he had buddies in a pickup down on a dirt road below so would be fine - and so I checked the cinch, mounted up and let Carly Gal go straight into overdrive as she preferred to do.
When I got home and was telling my good wife about the morning, she turned to me and started laughing.
"Can you just imagine," she began, "how his friends are going to react to his story? When they ask how he managed to gut his first deer, he's going to tell some wild story about a little cowboy looking guy who came riding up out of nowhere, hopped off his tall horse, gutted the deer, hopped back on and rode off into the sunset!"
"They'll never believe a word he says again!!!"
Of course I had to admit that hadn't occurred to me......😮
Thanks for reading and all the best to you all.
Dwayne