I love Westerns, but I’ll admit that the only horses I’m familiar with come from an engine or a motor.
But an awful lot of the Westerns I love feature gunfire from a saddle at a dead gallop on horseback or maybe a wagon or coach with the team at a dead run.
I know nothing about horses, but guns and shooting, OTHO, I’ve spent a lifetime around.
I wouldn’t say impossible, but very damn difficult to have any kind of accuracy in that situation.
Ever done it or seen it done for real? Comments?
7mm

The horses they were using must have been deaf. Try cranking off a .45 Colt round a few inches from the average horse's ear, and see what happens!
Jerry

I used to do cowboy mounted shooting.

You can be pretty damned accurate off a horse.

It helps if the horse is broken to gunfire though.

Barry can tell you about mounted cowboy shooting competitions, Ive never participated, so I don't know the degree of accuracy involved, they shoot blanks, so much different than a single projectile shot from a moving object. My feel is, it's more about horsemanship than shooting, but I could be wrong?
Ive seen guys make good shots mounted horseback, but from a standing animal, not at a gallop.

This. There's an entire sport built off the idea of mounted shooting.

Horses can be trained to tolerate gunfire. I have one that does pretty well. That said, accurate shooting from horseback is quite difficult. The cowboy mounted shooting crowd uses single action revolvers in .45 Colt shooting blackpowder blanks, which essentially turn them into little shotguns. Burning grains of powder melt the surface of the balloon popping it, so precise aiming isn't really required.

I've known some horses that were broke to it. I have a couple young ones now that will be in fact. They also sell ear plugs for the ponies too.

I've read the cavalry used to puncture eardrums but I'm not sure if that was for gunfire or artillery or both.

cowboy action shooters do all the time -and bust balloons at fulll speed.




but they use blanks and the ranges is close. and they have ear plugs for the horses..

A hunting friend's horse would go bonkers if it heard the safety click off. No shooting from his back.

Here's a few pics of my favorite shooting horse from years ago.

I competed off him, and had a wild west show, where I did trick shooting while horseback.

Shooting a balloon being held between a guy's knees.



In the air.



Competition.



Rifle's can be tricky.

Most of the shooters I ran with didn't use earplugs for the horses. They just trained them.

A few of us used to get together and shoot live ammo... Better be an excellent horseman, and marksman. Mostly we shot holes in prickly pear cactus as we ran by. You can be pretty accurate.

You can shoot while mounted on any horse...ONCE.

In the movies a horse can run forever at a full gallop.
I know it varies from horse to horse and condition just like humans, but what is realistic??

You have bank robbers chased for days in the movies. How long is a horse good for in a pursuit like that?

Thanks

At a dead run... I wouldn't ride any horse more than a few minutes.

At a slow lope, given some rest and time to cool off, you could get 3-4 hours out of one in good shape.

You can sure ride a horse to permanent injury or death pretty quick.

Yeah, I think some of us are missing the point. I can understand shooting mounted on a horse that’s broken to gunfire. I don’t think that’d be much different from offhand unsupported. But at a dead run from a saddle, or even a wagon has got to be a completely different ball game.
Maybe a melon or a stationery target at short distances, but a moving target, better yet also mounted at a run, has gotta be a helluva feat!
Hollywood’s full of stuff like that, but I’ve got an idea of the mechanics of such a stunt. Try holding a revolver or a rifle steady in a car on a bumpy road! A horse or a wagon hasn’t got near the suspension of a vehicle!
Might be a good trick for Terry to try on Outdoor Channel’s “Hollywood Weapons”!
7mm

Personally, I will pass up a shot if I can't dismount to shoot. Just too many unknowns shooting from a live animal. The movies do not always depict real life which is what some said earlier. The scenes are shot from different angles and most shots are rehearsed or retaken several times. The horses and actors are trained before the shot is actually filmed.

There is a vast difference between the Cowboy Action Shooters firing off their horses they've trained to ignore gunfire -- blanks -- and the old timers and cowboys who actually rode horses for a living and might actually have had need only rarely to fire from their horses' backs.

The CAS members have fired literally dozens of thousands of rounds each, training themselves and their horses for "action shooting." Fun and games. Back in the old days, very very few cowboys, sheriffs, ranchers & farmers, even soldiers, could expend the money to practice any acceptable accuracy required to shoot from their horses' backs. They just could not afford it. When a Colt's six shooter cost near the equivalent of a month's pay, and a box of cartridges cost upwards of $1.00, money was too dear to go blasting it away at tin cans and empty whiskey bottles.

As for what you have seen for nearly 100 years in the movies ... boys and girls, do not believe any of it. All that stuff up on the silver screen or the teevee tube, is there for one reason and one reason only: entertainment. Authenticity has virtually no place in western flicks. Believe me. I know.

Just relax, have some popcorn, a Coke, and finish off with a Snickers bar and enjoy the flick.

L.W.

the best mounted shots are those boys i knew from Arkansas that grew up shooting running deer from the bed of a rolling pickup, at night

Idiotic putting a horse through mounted shooting in other than absolutely necessary circumstances. Their hearing is just as sensitive to loud noises as ours if not more so. plus being unexpected it causing stress and possible harmful reactions. Like our own hearing 70db should be approaching a maximum under sustained or frequent circumstances. Large bore firearm's can reach 160 to 175 db or more. Hearing loss in a horse isn't something I'd want if I had to rely on them. Even though hearing protection for horses is readily available, I doubt many use it.

Phil

Yeah, you'd know that, for sure, LW!

Hope you are doing well there. Think of you often, as we have been down some of the same roads... with both grins and losses.

Yeah, some of the best received scenes, and memorable ones, in the western movies are nothing more than a figment of some movie director's imagination.

Phil... You don't know which end of the horse the schidt falls out of.

The sport of mounted shooting uses blanks, not live rounds. Blanks are surprisingly quiet. They make a cool *pop* but nothing that comes remotely close to needing ear protection. Some horses don't like the sudden noise and don't get used in the sport because of it. Other horses just don't care.

How do you know that? You ask one?

Yup. Horses talk. You just have to know how to listen.

Here's one of my kids at mounted shooting practice. The blank projects a spray of heated particles that pop the balloon. It's kind of like a mini shotgun (that's how the rider is able to take her eyes off the target just before she shoots so she can start lining up the next target), but the particles burn up and after about 15 feet, there is no danger to bystanders.



That horse never cared a lick about cap guns going off. Wal Mart bags flapping in the wind were another story...

EDITED TO ADD: That horse never really liked going fast; his forte was the Performance events (English and Western Pleasure/Equitation classes). He was also pretty darn good in Dressage. Mounted shooting was just my daughter's "junk food"--a way to goof off while aboard her horse. (Horse kids take breaks from working at riding by goofing off while riding. It can be difficult to get them to do other things!)

Here's a typical gun used--Ruger Vaquero w/ Bird's head grip in .45 Colt.

My Dad, born in 1902 killed many deer from the saddle on any number of horses, but only with a puny 1895 Win. in .30 Army. I guess he didn't know the Grey Ghost.

Makay Sagebrush's daughter does mounted shooting as well.

I sure would rather see kids learning horsemanship and marksmanship than many other things they could be doing.

Yes, Waders is right. Horses communicate.

Some horses will take to gunfire, and some don't.

My old shooting horse enjoyed it as much or more than I did. He would get excited when he knew we were fixing to shoot. That's a fact.

Miss him. Too bad horses and dogs get old too.

It runs in my mind of seeing a tv show where an attractive young lady was doing exactly what I’m asking about. IIRC, she was using an SSA in .45 or maybe a 1911. It was big enough to destroy a melon. Range was maybe 15 or 20 yards.
She was obviously enough of a shooter and horsewomen to accomplish the trick, but in a real gunfight situation, my money would still be put on the guy on foot every time.
I’ve drank enough beer out of a can on a bumpy road to understand the physics involved!
Duke was constantly shooting wild injuns outta the saddle, but like you said, this is the movies.
7mm

Wade, I thought those girls of yours had to be big enough now to start turning heads and getting Dad worried.
How old are they now? Great to see another old timer like you still bumming around here!
Wish we still had a lot of the others!
7mm

Hey! Yeah, we're getting old! The daughter on the horse is my oldest--she's also the bigger kid in my profile pic! She just finished her third year of college, majoring in Biology (with an emphasis in pre-veterinary medicine) and a minor in psychology. She has another 1.5 years left and then the plan is to attend vet school. She wants to be a large animal vet. So far her academic pursuits keep boys on the back burner.

It's amazing how fast it all goes by--it makes me feel old!

As for the old crew here on the 'fire, I miss those days quite a bit. It were a good bunch!

That's more of a Hollyweird fantasy than reality. It can be done, but hitting something is another matter. It would have taken quite a bit of practice to come close to what you are shooting at. Cavalry had pistols and short barreled carbines, but dismounted before doing any shooting from a distance. I'm sure they shot from the saddle in "charges" and raids, ala Quantrill's Raiders, but it would have been a close up affair.

I did find one short video of Kenda Lenseigne shooting live steel targets off a running horse. (I think she beat the guy firing out of a moving vehicle.)

Kenda's pretty good.

I'm gonna go on the authority of Texas Ranger Captain John Salmon RIP Ford, as he relates in RIP Ford's Texas...

https://www.amazon.com/Fords-Texas-Personal-Narratives-West/dp/0292770340

Captain Ford and his men were at the tip of the spear, going out and engaging in the sort of combat very few men cared to; intercepting Comanche War Parties.

Captain Ford said a Comanche, firing from a flat bow rather than aiming down the arrow Euro style, could hit a running horse at 100 yards. He further stated that in mounted combat, the revolver and the bow were equally matched. This implies that a guy on horseback with a Colt revolver could reliably hit a mounted opponent at more than contact distance. To put things in context though, in his account of the Mexican War, Captain Ford states a Walker Colt could throw a ball "with the force of a rifle" at 100 yards. No mention of hitting anything at that range.

We get accounts that Jack Hays was very good with his pair of Colt Patersons, shooting the head off a chicken across the street etc etc. but he was a wealthy man and could a) afford a brace of Patersons and b) afford to practice. We do know that, once he was able to get Patersons from the Republic of Texas, enough to equip at least 15 men, he drilled his men in a style of shooting similar to cowboy action except using melons IIRC. Also, in his initial mounted combat with Yellow Wolf's Comanches along the Pedernales River in 1844, the famous but somewhat less-than-reliable Texas Historian TR Fehrenbach tells us that Hays instructed his men to "Powder burn 'em!" ie. fire from near contact distance.

It is also of note that Jack Hays, by one of his men's own account, lost about half his force in combat in the space of a year. In fact it has been suggested that Hays was notoriously reticent in his reports so that he didn't have to list casualty figures.

RIP Ford, who did not lose many men, fought most of his many combat actions against mounted Comanches using rifles, revolvers still being in short supply in the early 1850's and even odds against a bow weren't very good odds to begin with if you was planning on a career. In fact the deadliest opponent he faced, someone riding with the Comanches, was a skilled marksman armed with a "Swiss rifle", likely an Indian.

The most effective way to fight on the Plains was with rifles; you rode within rifle range of the other guy, dismounted, took careful aim, and shot him off his horse. Reserving your fire if there were a group of you so that someone always had a loaded rifle, which was an effective deterrent against attack. Hence the famous tactic of guys like the Cheyenne Roman Nose (copied at the beginning Dance With Wolves) of riding across the front of your rifle-armed enemies to try and induce them to empty their rifles by shooting at you.

Of course this only worked well against muzzle loaders.

In Walter Prescott Webb's classic "The Texas Rangers" IIRC there are few accounts of going against mounted Indians, and in the one I'm recalling against Apaches, the Rangers rode all night to catch up and when they got within range of the fleeing mounted Indians, dismounted and used their Winchester rifles.

Anyhow, prob'ly many more accounts of mounted combat with revolvers can be found in cavalry actions during the War of Secession, IIRC Custer wrote somewhere of shooting a fleeing Confederate Officer in a mounted chase involving jumping a wall, dunno the range.

I used horses for 35 years for field trials. Horses acclimate very quickly to gunfire. I can only think of
one friend that had a horse that would get fidgety when a shotgun or pistol was brought out.

Way horses is shot in old westerns every time they get a little gimp, or the cowboy needs ta hide behind em during a indian attack, ya can't blame em for bein a little spooked by a gunshot.

1895 in .30 Army! Good medicine!!!

Retired Mounted Border Patrol Agent in El Paso, Texas(actually Anapra, NM)..Shot off horse back a few times...returning fire from train burglars....our horses went out to the range with us for quarterly qualifications. Stood tied behind the firing line... after the first few volleys it was no big deal to them. Al least as amazing about our ponies was how quickly they figured out the job...a group of aliens, all from the same town, would be traveling North. We would be working the sandhills West of El Paso, at night. Horses trailered...when a sensor hit went off, we would trailer to the "catch area" and get mounted...other riders would get in behind the group...the aliens had been on the road for days so they smelled pretty ripe...Just let the horse "have his head" and like a bloodhound. you could walk right up on them...occasionally they would scatter...and one by one the horses would sniff them out...way easier to spot them with your eyes 9-10 feet off the ground too ! Shot a pretty good Mule Deer using the saddle as a rest...with a single round from a ...I'll stop here before I incriminate myself...

rockinBBar, this is one badazz photo. Love all feet off the ground.

60 years ago two early teen boys were out riding their horses-and packing .22 rifles. Checking brier patches and brush piles to see if they could bring a rabbit or two home.

A fox flushed out of a pile and the race was on. Full speed, shooting at the fox who was running for his life.

It didn't work out so well though. Yep, Old Blue took a 40 grain .22 slug to the top of his head at full gallop, killed him DRT.

The fox got away.

We take a few clients on horses usually for deer, invariably one of 'em will ask "Can I shoot off this horse?". My boss tells 'em "You sure can...once!"

The thing to remember is hollywood can get 20 shots out of a 6 shooter. Everything else is easy.

Custer killed his mount at a gallop chafing bison, too.

Fully agree, Wade and Barry. Of course they communicate. All animals do. It’s all “Greek” to most people.

Some horses will rodeo your ass, and some will look at you and say, huh?

Maybe it was this woman. She can definitely ride and shoot and is a real looker. I saw some of her other videos where she talks about training the horses. I think she starts them with a .22. In this video the gun sounds pretty loud but maybe it't because it's indoors so maybe even worse for the horse?

ON the topic of mileage two Amish guys in Ohio told me you could expect a 40 mile day out of a horse, max. Of course that's at a steady trot pulling a buggy. Having tried to pace them on a bicycle, I can say that the torque of a Amish horse is impressive; same ~12 - 15 mph pace uphill, level, or down.

She's pretty good!

Mounted shooting is about horsemanship, around here they crossover from rodeo a bit. Also ( around here) livestock is quite used to shooting, so trail horses , pack horses, mules usually won't jump off a cliff....Usually!
Until they encounter there first love sick bull moose in the fall.

I’d like to hear of the two early teen boys breaking that news to dad .?

Our horses always let us know when they scented game. A smart hunter always watches his horses ears. They will often point directly at a deer or an elk, or another hunter.

I practically lived in a saddle until I was 25. And then I broke young horses for a bit of extra cash after work for another ten years. And then I started breaking horses for me and my kids.

Not a lot. We kept four mares and one stud, and brought in three or four colts each year to work with.

The only thing I was more dedicated to than the horses was my rifle. But, no, I never even tried to shoot from the saddle. I would give the horses a bucket of grain and shoot from just across the fence from them while they ate their treat. This desensitized them so that when I spotted game in the hills, I could drop the reigns on the ground and shoot from the trail in front of or beside the horse without it shying.

As for accurate fire from the saddle? No it is not anything like shooting from offhand. Until you have attempted to hold the crosshairs on a target at 200 yds from atop a saddle, you will not understand. But consider that the horse is a living breathing animal with a beating heart about ten times the size of yours. Every time he takes a breath, your ass changes in elevation by a couple inches. And I have never heard of a horse trained to hold his breath while you squeeze off a shot.

I have tried laying the scoped rifle over the seat of saddle while standing on the ground, attempting to put antlers on a deer at two to three hundred yards. Hell, I could not hold a 12X scope steady enough to even focus on the deers' heads. I had to walk away from the horse and find a tree to lean against.

Popping ballons with blanks, or even bunnies running through the brush at fifteen yards yards is one thing. But shooting MOA at three hundred yards is another.

And let you know about a Brown bear in/near camp long before it is seen, smelled, or heard. Which is kind of handy. Just learn their vocalizations.

A friend in Isaho, his brother, and his dad all hunted elk off horses they could shoot from. trained them themselves. Said the elk would often not spook from a mounted person like they would from foot hunter. And their horses would often tell them of elk they had yet to see themselves.

You can walk with the horse on your side facing the critter. Have yet to see the animal that's able to count legs.

i still have some pictures on the computer of his daughter competing. they are something to see. i seem to remember one of them got some vaquero's a ways back for a christmas present. long time ago.

when i saw the movie jerimah johnson, the scene where he shot with the gun laying over the saddle, made me laugh so hard my wife bought me a thompson center 50caliber hawkins kit. which i built.
never used it around a horse tho.

Speaking of Westerns, Ulzana’s Raid is the only one I can think of where the success of the cavalry pursuit hinges upon the management of horses and the fatiguing thereof.

On much USFS ground, game is used to seeing horse and rider all through the summer. Multiple use allows grazing and where cattle go, cowboys will be there to direct their grazing and care for the animals.

I have also ridden close to game animal. But, of course, I have walked quite close to game animals (well, deer anyway. Elk are much more wary) during the opening days of season.

Often, early in season, if you avoid looking directly at a deer with both eyes, do not walk directly toward the deer, especially staring at it, the deer will not recognize you as a predator.

I have walked or ridden to within easy rifle range of many deer while the animal watched me approach. One early morning, opening day of season, I was riding through an aspen thicket and a spike bull elk stepped around a bend in the trail into full view at less than ten yards. I only had a cow tag that season, so I just sat on my horse and we three (me, horse, and elk) just looked at each other for about thirty seconds. The elk slipped away down the side of the mountain and was silently gone. But when I brought my eyes back forward, a small four point buck had taken his place in the trail.

I drew my scoped 30-06 from the scabbard under my left leg, then swung the left leg over the saddle horn and slid off the right, uphill side of saddle. The deer took two jumps which brought him from due North to due East of my position. I lifted the rifle and found an antler tip in the 12X scope. Then followed the antler down to the base of the skull and shot the deer in the second vertebrae. All while he just stood broadside and looked at me.

Sure, I could have pointed the rifle forward over the horses ears and killed the deer, but I would rather lose the game than subject my horse to that muzzle blast.

I particularly remember one day in about six inches of snow, about forty years ago, I walked on open ground toward a pair of deer on an open slope above and ahead of me. They stood and watched curiously as I approached. I decided I was in a good position at 250 yds for a shot.

But instead of falling backward onto my butt and rolling to a prone position, I fell to my knees and then to my belly. The deer interpreted that as a lunge in their direction and took off around the mountain.

I had to hike another 1/2 mile and gain another 500 feet elevation (where the snow was now 10 inches deep) before catching up again and filling my tag.

I promise, that is a mistake I never repeated.

I think it would be too. That said, I have a jockey friend who is almost completely motionless when she races. She's artful.

As a kid I killed plenty of deer off a horse with a bow, but never with the horse running. Shooting running deer off moving swamp buggies and air boats isn't very hard once you learn to not shoot till your eyes, barrel and target meet. Most people get excited and use the spray and pray technique.

The only way I'd have one is, if it was it was making me money, otherwise they're just eating and chitting.

Kinda like kids, huh?

killed my firs elk after my mule spotted it and stopped. i did dismount

i have had a couple i could shoot a 22 off of squirrel hunting.-and hit a squirrel.

Very informative post. Brought up things I hadn’t considered. Never thought about a horses breathing, but makes a lot of sense.
7mm

Yep, every thing he said.

A trot is the fastest way for a horse to travel in an energy efficient manner. Many, if in good condition, can trot for a couple hours, then walk a ways, and trot again.

When I wanted to go five miles or more quickly, and could put the horse away at the end, I cantered a 1/4 mile then trotted 1/4 mile, and cantered 1/4 mile, and trotted 1/4, etc.

But if you intend to cover ground, as in a 100 miles or more, you walk and trot and lead the horse. A young man in good physical condition can out travel any horse on Earth (a rider on his back exacerbates the situation), over the long haul. The horse must be given several hours each day to graze and replenish his energy reserves, where a man can carry enough staples at his waist to last him a week.

The native Americans often captured wild horses simply by walking them down. It might take a week, but it is entirely possible. Terrain in which you can hold the wild horse off of water makes the task easier.

In my teens, twenties, and early thirty, I could, on foot carrying my rifle and ammo, beat any horseman from camp up the mountain, (2500 feet elevation in six miles) to our favorite scouting position by about half the time it took them to arrive. And I could beat them back to camp as easily.

I brought a few horses home from a mountain lathered like they had just run the K Derby, and I never got in the saddle.

Horses are good for packing crippled old men, like I have become, or fat, out of shape flatlanders not used to elevation in the mountains. They are unsurpassed for carrying game back to camp. And they are wonderful for short fast sprints such as cutting off a cow trying to escape, running around a mountain to get ahead of game you saw headed that way, or for short, intense cavalry charges.

But about five minutes is all a horse can give you at peak performance levels. A quarter horse, about half of that. That is the reason horse races are limited in length, and endurance races are closely monitored.

A marathon might well be won by a trained athlete over a bareback horse, and definitely by the athlete over a horse carrying a 200 lb man, saddle, and bit of gear. An endurance racing horse typically averages about 7MPH, while the better marathon runner often exceeds 9MPH.

A little onion. Some seasoning salt. Light pepper, DONT over cook, and good to go.

There is actually a race in Arizona each year pitting people versus horses.
https://managainsthorse.net/

That website has a link to past race results. It appears that runners beat the riders in both 25 mile and 50 mile events last year.

Makes it easier to understand how Apache men, women and children on foot could cover ground faster than mounted cavalry over the long haul, especially over difficult terrain.

Yes, when one is used to running every where you go, one has little use for a horse. Except for specific duties like hauling a travoise, or getting you up close to a running bison to deliver a lance. But even then, it was easier to just drive the bison over the edge of a cliff.

A good athlete, and the American Indian was every bit of that, just does not need much of a head start on a horseman. And he will never be caught.

Note how closely relay stations were spaced for the Pony Express.

that event if i remember right, started when i was in the jaycees. humans almost always won, and that is somewhat rough country the race is held in.
as i remember, sort of. there was a lot of beer envolved in the planning of the race.

as a kid i remember my dad who was born in flagstaff in 1902, telling of a annual hopi indian race where they would run from the east side to the west side of arizona in a race. His comment was those short legged guys actually had an endurance atvantage in the long distance runs.
as to the apache, all one has to do is go down into southern arizona in the mountains and you understand why the army wasn't very effective against them. rough country horses couldn' handle it much less the anglo troopers vs. the apache.

there are some fantastic stories of horses that made unbelievable runs during the opening of the west. animals used hard daily were amazing.


Pony Bob Haslam & the Longest Ride
Robert Haslam, aka Pony Bob, 1908
Robert Haslam, aka Pony Bob, 1908

When Pony Bob Haslam was buried in Chicago, Illinois, 52 years had passed since the Pony Express first ran. He was 1,700 miles away from his old home station. For the last six years of his life, he had toiled as a clerk at the Congress Hotel.

Still, when he died, the newspapers of the day printed glowing tributes. “Pony Bob Haslam, Who Knew No Fear, Dies in Chicago — a man once famous throughout the United States for his courage, endurance, and skill.”

“Pony Bob,” by which name he is most famous, was a Pony Express rider in the Old West and credited with making the longest uninterrupted ride during the brief duration of the Pony Express. He was born in London, England in 1840 and as a teen, immigrated to the United States. He made his way to Salt Lake City, Utah where he worked on a ranch and as a government messenger. He was at home on a horse. He was loyal, brave, and committed to getting the job done. Pony Bob fit the model for what a Pony Express rider should be.

In 1860, he was 20 years old when he was hired by Bolivar Roberts, a Pony Express Division Superintendent in Carson City, Nevada. He helped build the stations and was assigned the run from Friday’s Station (State Line) to Bucklands Station near Fort Churchill, 75 miles to the east.

Haslam is credited with having made the longest round trip ride of the Pony Express. He received the eastbound mail at Friday’s Station during a time when the Paiute Indians were on the warpath. Area residents were frantically working to fortify their property against war parties whose signal fires were blazing on every peak for a hundred miles. When he arrived at the Carson River, 60 miles away, he found that the settlers had seized all the horses at the station for use in the campaign against the Indians.

He went on without a relay down the Carson River to Buckland’s Station 15 miles farther. Here, his relief rider was so badly frightened over the Indian threat that he refused to take the mail. Within ten minutes Pony Bob was in the saddle again. He rode 35 miles to the Carson Sink; got a fresh horse and made the next 30 miles, without a drop of water; changed at Sand Springs and again at Cold Springs; and after 190 miles in the saddle, turned the pouches over to J. G. Kelley at Smith’s Creek.

After a rest of nine hours, he retraced his route with the westbound mail. At Cold Springs he found that Indians had raided the place, killing the station keeper and driving off the horses. It was growing dark. He rode his jaded animal across the 37-mile interval to Sand Springs, got a remount, and pressed on to the sink of the Carson River. Afterward, it was found that during the night he had ridden straight through a ring of Indians who were headed in the same direction in which he was going. Finally, he reached Buckland’s Station, without a mishap and within four hours of the scheduled time. The 380-mile round trip we the longest on record for the Pony Express.

My family has run stock in Idaho since 1904, and I beg to differ...
Horses clodding up a stream bed over rocks will spook elk in a frikken heartbeat!
But I've only 68 horses right now, and killed more elk from horse than not...

Wow...