Home Forums Gear Horses and ATV's New "horse fan" here!

Hey, there, I am real new here myself, altho I know one of these fine folks a bit in person/ I am a mule ridin gal.
There is a wealth of knowledge in this crew, and I have been treated well, without them really knowing me, so that says a lot!
Welcome!

Like that Ericksen saddle on "let's go" pic

Lady, you know your saddles...

http://www.ericksensaddlery.com/Mountain-Saddle.php

Thank you, just saw this post.... have a good un..

Ian Tyson... listen to it..

"The wonder of it all" ;-)

The old Double Diamond .. that one will git ya.


If you are wanting to pack.. one hitch that is easy to learn and you can pack anything with soft or hard panniers..

Modified Sierra Box hitch.

But the horses and hitches is a good book to have.

Ironbender got it right. I used to run into Vic Lemmon his sidekick when I lived in Laramie. Of the three greatest trips of my life, all involved pack animals, especially mules. Joe Back was something else. Old ways are the best ways.

Smoky canvas, horse sweat, and the smell of pines. There is nothing like leading a pack string through great country like the Absaroka Range.

or following one, watching the shoes spark on rocks after dark-thirty....

I prefer barefoot mules. They have brake pads on their feet instead of steel.

Problem being I ride mine enough that I wear down them barefoots. Last year,just in two hunting seasons, I had about 24 days in the field, and rode about 400 miles. Then I'd have an unrideable mule if I ran bare foot. A little tack of borium on the shoe helps that traction in the rock country and on ice.You sure do get the sparks flying in the dark with them on granite.

Around home here we have the decomposed granite and it will wear down feet like a rasp in short order.

Can't run em barefoot in these hills.. I see some "newer" type farriers saying natural horseshoeing is the best thing going.

One was so adamant about it that I said lets go ride in the hills you "nartual" horse and I'll throw iron on mine and we'll go 15 miles. He shows up packing "boots" for his pony.

Whats every ones take on this renewed interest with "mustangs"?

The 'interest' should be in putting them in cans....

Really..can them all huh....

Why would you say that? Ever own one? Ride one? Train one?

Albeit they arn't for everyone. Most don't have a clue on how to handle or train them nor have the balls.

Never said 'all'...

Because there needs to be an outlet for the unusable ones? Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, again....Spent some time cotching them with one of the premier horse cotchers, too.

Might be clueless, but having 'balls', never been a problem....

I don't know anything about training them.

I do know that most mustangs are decendants of domestic horses that got loose or turned loose and very very few have any spanish blood in them.

I worked in the Nevada desert for years and there were several horse herds there.None of them looked like the fine bodied horses usualy depicted in the movies.

Something needs to be done with the thousands that are being kept in pens by the US Govt that are not adoptable.

The ones adopted out and trained by the inmates of the Canyon City CO State pen aere very sought after.Some of them are not too bad looking and turn out well.Too much of a challenge for me any more though.

I've owned mustangs, trained 'em (kinda, enough to ride 'em), and did like it for the most part. There's just too many, don't have a clue as how many tax $ in our state alone goes to gather and feed, way more than I'm comfortable with. Too many just aren't adoptable.

Sampled a horse roast, not bad, came from a domestic horse trying his best to be a mustang. Trespass fees and all that...

Seen huntsmans' rodeo pics? Quite sure his balls aren't painted on.

Totally agree with Huntsman's, Saddle Sore's, weaselsRus's comments.

I haven't read the replies yet so I hope I am not repeating much.

I joined our local Back Country Horseman chapter last year. They are a wealth of info and are good at getting guest speakers in for more info. Nice people too. They consist of ranchers, one modern day mtn man as far as I can tell and guys and gals who just enjoy horses. Almost all the rides are in the mtns. If the chapter down there is like that it may be worth looking into and then you can learn how to care for horses in the back country by doing.

There are a couple guys in the chapter who sold all there horses and ride mules exclusively. A cousin of mine just couldn't bring himself to ride a mule, but he would rather packed mules then horses. Must be something to them.

Good luck.

Relatives of mine have to deal with moving cattle through the Pryor mountain horse range. Used to not be a problem. Now permits, inspections, deadlines and an attitude that they are trespassing on trails that they have been using for better than 70 years.

The Meteetsee bunch have been selectively bred over the years. The old timers would shoot bad stallions and turn loose a good one. Some good ranch horses used to come out of that bunch.

All before mustang Annie though

My late friend, Lynne Taylor, managed the Pryor wild horse herd for over 20 years. I am currently working on a novel (my 6th) which has a working title of "Looking for Lynne." Because of this project I am revisiting the whole wild horse issue, talking to friends, relatives, and co-workers of Lynne's, and reading older books on the wild horse issue. Lynne was almost totally responsible for upgrading the quality of the Pryor herd by castrating all inferior studs. But, he was eventually forced from his job by BLM bureaucrats and Wild Horse Annie romanticists. The BLM and the wild horse advocates now use the Pryor herd as the role model for proof these horses descended from the original Spanish Barbs because of their dun, zebra dun, and grulla coloring. Ironically, the reason the Pryor horses are dominate in these colors is because Lynne cut every stud that wasn't colored. He knew a colored horse was more in demand in the adoption program, so he selectively bred for color by castrating plain-colored studs. Also, it is well known in that area that early breeders used to turn their horses out to winter in the Pryors, and some of these, including the early AQHA stallions Wagon N and Good are undoubtedly contributors to the Pryor gene pool.
About 10 years ago I drew a bighorn sheep permit in the Pryors and I spent a lot of time in there. I saw lots and lots of horses while scouting and hunting and once ran into a young BLM horse biologist. By then, I was cleaned up so I didn't look like a hunter (this was a hot August scouting trip). I told her I was a journalist working on a story about bighorn sheep and needed to photograph some rams. She told me where I could find some and admitted the sheep had been forced out of the Pryors that summer by the horses. She then told me that if I came back in about two weeks the sheep would be in rut and easy to photograph. Mind you, this was the middle of August! This is just one example of what experts some government biologists can be. Bighorn sheep, of course, come into rut between the middle of November and the first of December. Her reasoning: she had seen a two-point mule deer buck running with some does, so evidently the mule deer rut was on and bighorn sheep rut about two weeks after mule deer, so...