Pryor Wild

I haven’t made any new posts lately because I haven’t been out to the range due to the weather. We had received a good amount of snow, and it has been cold since then. On the night of the 21st, air temperatures went down to around -24. Lows have remained in the subzero temperatures while highs are in the low teens. I was curious about how the horses were doing, so I went out the the range on the afternoon of the 22nd.

In these weather conditions, care must be taken not to disturb wild horses, or any wildlife, as they must conserve as much energy as possible. Thus, I had to rely on my binoculars and camera for watching then. I found a hill to spot from, and I was able to see a lot of horses. I right away saw the families of Sitting Bull (pictured below), Admiral, Bristol, and Coronado. Exhiliration was also in the area.

Two horses came out from a drainage between Sitting Bull and Admiral. One was dark bay and one was grulla.

The dark bay looked a lot like Santa Fe to me. His mane fell to the right, and he had a star. However, this didn’t make sense unless Santa Fe had lost his family and found a grulla friend. The grulla wasn’t his grulla mare, this was a stallion. The two were moving pretty quickly, I would guess they didn’t want to be in between Sitting Bull and Admiral. I only had a few minutes of time to watch them and photograph them before they went into another drainage. I later tried to find them, but they had disappeared.

Upon looking at my pictures, I noticed that the grulla had a left falling mane, a star, and had a distinct conformation.

This description matches the bachelor Flint. He is grulla roan, but he had already been losing his roan when I last saw him in the fall. Knowing this, it was easy to realize who his friend was.

Custer is a bay roan with a right falling mane and a star. I’d never seen him in the winter, so I didn’t know how much he lost his roan. These two had been up on Sykes Ridge, and had apparently come down with the bad weather. It makes me wonder if any other horses moved down from there and just weren’t visible that day. This also really shows how hard it can be to identify roans in the winter!

Scanning further up, I saw Corona and his family. This is how I most often see them - As a dark horse with two brown looking horses.

East of them, I saw another elusive stallion - the apricot dun Blizzard. With him were two grullas, and one was a foal. This isn’t what you would expect to see with him as he had previously just had a grulla roan mare.

I knew right away who it was though - Merlin’s former mare and colt foal.

I was happy to have solved the mystery of where Merlin’s former family had gone. It was interesting that I didn’t see his original mare, but she could have easily been on the other side of the hill as the family ended up moving there after a while.

Extreme winter weather is a natural selector for the Pryor horses. However, we have had mild weather prior to this, and so the horses were able to get good and fat. It doesn’t surprise me that I didn’t find any missing horses, though, as these horses are in a good area to winter in. It will be interesting to see some of the horses who winter further up the mountain.

I think it is really interesting to see and learn about other wild horse herds. One I have learned a lot about recently is the Spring Creek Basin herd of Colorado. Every wild horse herd has its own unique stories to tell, and there is now a blog where you can go to read stories about this herd. I’d really recommend checking it out!

You can find it at http://springcreekwild.wordpress.com/.

The basin got some snow yesterday and early today. This afternoon the clouds covering the Pryors moved off providing a glimpse of the fresh snow on the mountains. Here is a panoramic photograph I put together of them this afternoon.

I made a quick trip to lower Sykes this morning. It was chilly but nice and sunny. The overall quality of today’s photographs isn’t the best - The AF sensor on my camera went out, and so that, combined with the really cold wind, made it hard to keep my eyes clear for good manual focusing.

I saw a dun horse standing alone on a hill, and I thought it could possibly be Shaman. However, upon getting a little closer, I saw that it was Starbuck. He’s still a bachelor, and so this really makes me wonder where Merlin’s former family is. The Dryhead bachelors were also near him in the junipers.

I was really excited to see Corona’s family. The only time I’d seen them all year was through binoculars or a spotting scope as they are one of the most elusive families.

Corona is a dark bay stallion with an unmistakable face marking. He is the son of Sam and Sorita, which makes him the full brother to the mare with Sitting Bull.

Corona was one of the first horses that I saw after I started seriously watching the horses. Back then he was a bachelor. Before I knew his “real” name, I always thought of him as Tornado as his face marking reminds me of a tornado. More often than not, Corona would be alone as a bachelor. We also seemed to find him in the most remote areas. I guess this personality is still reflected today in that he is so hard to find.

Corona’s mare has one of the more unique colors of Pryor horses.

I’ve typically seen her described as a bay. She does look like a normal bay; however, she has a dorsal stripe.

My first real horse interaction viewing took place with her. Driving through Bighorn Canyon, she came running down the road being chased by a young dun stallion named Cibeque. He had apparently taken her from another stallion. The sounds of their hooves on the road and their high pitched calls to each other were pretty memorable. As far as I know, no one else saw this happen as he only had her for a couple days. The BLM does not even have record of this happening. This makes me wonder what else happens that no one else ever knows about.

Their daughter was one of the first foals of 2007 born. She was born a red bay color with a big star on her head, and so she was named Halo of the Sun in honor of her star and her father’s name.

Halo is now a more complex color - She is looking a lot like her mother. I was also surprised how mature she is already.

She also seems to have a dorsal stripe like her mother.

Seeing Corona’s family was definitely a great experience. I am really looking forward to seeing how Halo turns out, but I also really hope that they always are elusive. I wish more horses were like them, where you only get a good look at them about once a year.

Our original plan on the 4th was to head up Burnt Timber. We just weren’t seeing a lot there, but we could see that there were many horses around lower Sykes Ridge. We headed back down and saw Lakota’s family on our way.

I noticed that the dun yearling wasn’t with them. The next day, I found out she had gone back to her family with Santa Fe. I’m still unsure of where Lakota’s black yearling daughter is, but there are many Burnt Timber horses we haven’t seen since she left.

Lakota’s foals are looking great and are very striking. The filly is looking like she may be a liver chestnut roan like her mother is.

Once on lower Sykes, the first family we found was Sitting Bull’s.

Their daughter is looking a lot like her mother still. Remember that this is the December foal from last year; she is now a yearling.

Bolder’s family was nearby them.

However, Shaman wasn’t with the family. At this time, I am still unsure of where he is.

Bristol and his yearling filly mate were near them.

Walking from them, I saw Coronado’s family. His filly foal is looking just like him.

It appeared that they were getting their minerals from the red dirt.

Teton’s family was also nearby.

A distance away, I had a nice surprise - I found Merlin.  And he had Starbuck’s family.

The gash on Merlin’s mouth looked pretty well healed.

The two year old filly, Durango’s daughter, seems to be looking prettier each time I see her.

The mare and her colt foal are also looking good.

By the time we got back to the road, it was getting dark. I saw Sam and Hightail, though; and there was enough light to photograph them.

It was an excellent day for viewing, but there are still some unanswered questions that I am curious about.

On the 29th, we decided to see what we could see on Burnt Timber. The first horse we spotted was the bachelor Doc. He was alone then; he’d been spending most of his time with the older bachelor Two Boots this summer and fall. I won’t be surprised if the two are back together again next time I see them, though.

Higher up, we found Littlefoot and White Cloud’s families. They were on an island ridge in the middle of Big Coulee. It was a long ways away, but we could use our binoculars to determine that they were all present.

Littlefoot and his filly were up higher on the ridge.

White Cloud and his family were lower in the trees.

That was about as high as we needed to go, so we started back down. On the way down, we spotted Lakota’s family.

Santa Fe’s family emerged and started moving toward Lakota’s family.

As they moved closer, the filly foal in Santa Fe’s family saw the yearling filly in Lakota’s family that had been part of her family. She ran to her and interacted with her.

While her family watched, their foal hung out with Lakota’s family.

The proximity of the two families soon caused tension to arise between the two stallions.

This caused the filly foal to run back to her family.

Once the families were all together again, they drifted apart. Lakota’s family went into the trees while Santa Fe’s grazed in the area.

By this time, it was pretty late; and so we went home. We could see down into the Lower Sykes Ridge area and saw a number of horses, but it was too dark to identify them at that point.

We made a trip to lower Sykes Ridge in hopes of learning more about Merlin and Starbuck’s families. The first horses we encountered were Exhiliration and his former family members.

He was sleeping in front of a juniper.

Admiral, his mare, and her daughter were nearby. Admiral’s winter coat really shows his golden-red highlights.

Seattle’s family was higher up in some junipers. I didn’t really get any pictures of them as I’d seen them earlier, and it would have been hard to not bother them where they were.

Further up from them we found the Dryhead bachelors - Medicine Bow, Fools Crow, and Fiero. Medicine Bow’s winter coat really shows his dun factor; his dorsal stripe is really dark this year.

Further up from them, we walked out onto a point that provides a good view of some areas that horses are often at. In the distance, we spotted Durango’s family. I was very eager to see them, especially the foal.

Durango’s colt foal was watching his father graze below when I arrived.

If I were to pick the most outstanding foal of 2007, I think I’d definitely pick this one.

The colt eventually roamed down the hill to his father, and his mother soon followed.

I’m very eager to watch as Durango’s colt grows up and moves into his final color. With the pictures I have posted of Durango’s offspring, it is pretty obvious that he has some strong genetics that create very pretty horses. Durango’s father, Sir Lancelot, was also a very striking stallion; he looked a lot like Durango and his son Blizzard.

Seeing the bachelors and Durango’s family was a perfect Christmas present. But there are still some unsolved events on Lower Sykes Ridge that will be reason to return.

These past few weeks have been super busy for me, and so I just haven’t had much chance for using the computer and creating new posts.  However, I have been out on the range a few times since then and have some interesting photographs and stories to share. I’ll be working on getting these up tomorrow. In the mean time, I thought it would be interesting to show this photograph as it’s the kind of track most people never get to see in the wild.

That belongs to someone in Seattle’s family.