November 18, 2009 – Fence Removal Project

I am very interested in and highly supportive of projects that improve the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range. A while back, I found something that I thought was really in need of being done; there is a fence running through the PMWHR that I felt should be removed. Recall in my previous blog post about the evolution of the PMWHR that the original Range did not include any Forest Service land. The boundary back then basically looked like this:

Notice how the original boundary went right along that southeastern corner of the Forest Service (green) land. This was apparently fenced. Today, there is Forest Service land in the PMWHR.

Even though this area is in the PMWHR now, there are still portions of that fence from the original PMWHR boundary present along the BLM-Forest Service boundary. The fence in this area I am most concerned with is that section running along the east-west boundary line. This fence cuts through the Burnt Timber area, which is a very large area of the PMWHR. This is an area that is underutilized by the horses, and so it is an area where we’d like to see more horse use. The fence doesn’t totally split Burnt Timber into two areas; there are some areas, especially the canyons there, that the horses are able to get through the fence at. However, it would be a lot easier for the horses to move up and down the ridges of Burnt Timber if the fence wasn’t there.

I started talking with the BLM and Forest Service, and this summer the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center entered into a volunteer agreement with the two agencies to start removing the fence. Accessing the fence is pretty difficult, and I figure this is a big reason why the fence is still here today. However, we have figured out ways to best get to the fence and get it down; and my dad and I started this on November 11. There are two main ridges that the fence goes through that I’d like to see access opened up in; and we started with the west ridge, which is the bigger of the two. This is what the fence looked like before we started (feel free to click on the fence images to see larger versions of them):

After a few hours, though, we’d gotten the wire and a lot of posts out; and it looked like this:

In this first day of work, we were able to get almost 20% of the fence running through the west ridge opened up for the horses. We’ll just continue to do this, and pretty soon we’ll have it all opened up. In my blog post on AML, I asked the question of how AML can be raised. Making it easier for horses to live in underutilized areas is one way to do this. This is because it allows for a better distribution of the horses which can lead to better range conditions. I’ll discuss more specifics on living in this area in a future post.

It was fun to find some horses while we were out working on the fence. This is an area that sorrel roan stallion Tecumseh often spends time in this time of year.

Often I am just looking at them through a spotting scope, but it was nice being able to see them up close. Tecumseh’s foal, Jacinta, surprised me. When she was first born, she was looking like a bay to us.

We thought she might end up looking kind of like her dam Rosebud.

Even in September, we were still describing Jacinta as a bay.

Now, though, she is looking like she could end up being dun.

It’s interesting to see the progression of the colors of foals through their first couple years of life. It looks like Jacinta could turn out looking like her older half-sister Helenium.

Bay roan Beulah is the fifth member of Tecumseh’s harem.

Baja and his harem were nearby them, and I also found Lakota and Starman’s harems nearby. We have still been having very nice weather here, and so I’ve been able to spend some good time on the PMWHR seeing how the horses are. I look forward to going back out to work on the fence more so that the horses living in the Burnt Timber area have an easier time moving around in there this winter.

The Fifteenmile Horses

Since I learned of their existence, the Fifteenmile wild horses have intrigued me. Here was a herd, in relatively close proximity to the well-documented Pryor and Peaks horses, that no one seemed to be paying that much attention to compared to the work being done in these other two herds.

In trying to find further information on the herd, I learned a few things. Apparently the current HMA or areas near it were the site of the “first recorded wild horse roundup on federal rangeland.” This happened in 1938. I also learned that the Fifteenmile HMA itself was established in 1985, and it currently is 83,130 acres in size. But, again, the herd remained intriguing to me as I found that there really isn’t much in the way of information on specific individuals in the herd or anything like that. To help put the knowledge of this herd in perspective, here’s some text from the EA for the recent roundup that occurred:

“The Fifteenmile HMA was last gathered in 2004 to remove excess wild horses. Following that gather, approximately 80 mature horses were known to remain on the range, with a few foals. An aerial census in February, 2008 revealed a total of 232 horses, which was considerably more horses than were expected. Evidently, approximately 50 to 60 horses evaded capture during the gather in 2004, and were not known to be on the range. Based upon the February, 2008 census, it is estimated that the 2008 post foaling population of the Fifteenmile HMA will be approximately 280 total wild horses.”

Add onto this above text the fact that 377 horses were gathered in 2009, and there were an estimated 10 to 15 horses not gathered. Also, the fact that a significant number of horses had left the HMA further complicated the ability to fully understand the population. With all of these mysteries, my curiosity finally got to me; and I set out to find these horses. Surely it wouldn’t be that hard to find wild horses in a population that is estimated to be just over half the size of the current Pryor population in an area approximately twice the size of that in which the Pryor population lives, right? (Sense the sarcasm here?)

After driving from Worland, I finally came to the HMA boundary.

The landscape of the Fifteenmile HMA is really interesting. It ranges from colorful badlands to areas with grasses, brush, and even some trees. There are definitely a lot of possible hiding places for wild horses in there.

It was a little while before I started seeing stud piles, and shortly after that I found a group of horses. This was a big group, 18 horses, and it had multiple mature stallions among the mares.

The horses were very wild. They would stare and then run a little and then stare some more before running a little more. They weren’t really running away, just moving their position relative to me; and so I was able to photograph them. I was a ways away so these are some edited photographs.

There were two stallions out of this group, this sorrel and grey, that seemed to be really agitated by human presence. I was able to get pretty good looks at them as they were often running a perimeter around the rest of the horses.

Eventually, the horses all moved away; and I didn’t want to bother them by further pursuing them. I spotted a group of horses out in the distance at the base of a large hill, and so I set out to figure out how to get to them. In the process of driving up a random road, I was really surprised to see another group of horses run down the hill. I stopped and sat quietly as I knew they would soon be running around me.

They stopped momentarily to check me out. This harem was more typical of what I was used to, with a single stallion, mares, and what seemed to be a couple offspring. This view was short lived as they soon took off again. They apparently went to a pond I had passed earlier before heading out of sight.

I never figured out how to actually get to the other horses, but I did get some good views and determined there were 8 horses: 4 pintos, 1 buckskin, 1 bay, 1 sorrel, and a dark horse that looked black to me but could have been bay.

I had a very enjoyable time in this area, though it is thus far seeming to be a difficult area to find horses in. If there really are only 80 to 85 horses left on the HMA, I managed to get up-close views of nearly 30% of the herd, not counting the 8 horses I saw in the distance. I am very much interested in further determining what exactly is out there in the future, and I hope to find others who may know more about the herd or are interested in learning more with me. I’d also love to hear more from others who do monitoring of the herds they live near. I am becoming more and more interested in local wild horse monitoring projects, and it would be great to build further relationships with those who I’ve not yet become acquainted with.

October 23, 2009 – Other Gathers

Though the Pryor horses get a lot of attention, there are actually two other wild horse herds in the Bighorn Basin besides them. Both of these herds recently had gathers too. I got some figures from these gathers from the BLM today to post here.

The McCullough Peaks horses are near Cody. They were gathered last week. During the gather, 191 horses were brought in with 94 horses being removed and 97 being released. Of the released horses, 34 females were treated with PZP. They also estimate that there were around a dozen horses not gathered.

The Fifteenmile horses are near Worland. They were gathered this week. During the gather, 377 horses were brought in with 307 horses being removed and 70 being released. No females were treated with PZP. They estimate that there were possibly 10 to 15 other horses not gathered.

The 401 total horses removed from the McCullough Peaks and Fifteenmile HMAs were taken to Rock Springs where they will be made available for adoption. There will be more gathers in other parts of Wyoming in the upcoming weeks as well.

October 5, 2009 – Stiles Update

The weather has turned cold up here. Many areas around here are receiving snow, especially the mountains. The Pryors have snow coming down pretty low, but we haven’t received any significant snow here in Lovell yet.

It shouldn’t be long now before Stiles heads down to New Mexico, and he is doing very well up here. He was with the veterinarian to get gelded last week, and he is recovering very well. Stiles has now made many more friends at his temporary home.

He’s also making all of us like him a lot. My mother has described him as a gentleman. He is still a little apprehensive of us, but he is perfectly happy to come up and eat from our hands now.

Even with his new friends next door and his calmer attitude, he still acts like a wild horse. He even maintains two stud piles – He has one in the round pen and another in the corner of his adjoining sheltered pen.

Despite this, it seems as though Stiles would make an excellent companion given time and patience. It will be great to see him running wild with his future family in New Mexico too, though.

I’ll be making another visit to the wild ones soon, as soon as the weather settles enough for me to hike around and find them. I should be able to get to some of them a little later this week, and I will post more on what I see too.