October 13, 2007 – Baja’s family

After a week of sunny days, today turned out to be a little more chilly and rainy. However, it didn’t look as bad as it had been in previous weekends.

Heading up the road, we saw Starman and Mescalero’s families. Higher up, the road was muddy and the fog was thick; so I turned around. On the way back down, Baja’s family was out in an area called Cheyenne Flats. Baja, the son of Looking Glass, is a tough dun stallion.

Baja has two mares, a blue roan and a dun.

He also has a two year old grulla filly, who is from Chino’s family.

Baja also has two grulla yearlings in his family.

One is a colt and one is a filly, and they can often be hard to tell apart. Though the colt has developed a two tone mane that helps, I still find myself using their wither bars to differentiate them. (Wither bars are stripes that come down the shoulder area perpendicular to the dorsal stripe.)

The colt has very sharp with bars. The pointy mark on his shoulder is the left wither bar; it isn’t part of his mane. He also has a couple smaller ones behind that main bar.

The filly’s wither bars are more broad and smudgy.

There are also two foals in Baja’s family, a colt and a filly. The colt is a very light grulla color.

The filly is dun and looks a lot like her big sister did when she was a foal. Her big sister is the filly that is now with White Cloud.

Seeing the family was great. They had a large area to themselves in the mid-elevation areas of the mountain. They also had some nice puddles in the road to give them a private water source. Starman’s family was even lower while Mescalero was also moving down the mountain onto ridges. These are areas that the horses use in the cooler parts of the year as long as there is water or snow available for them. When you hear of the Pryor horses being divided into three subherds, this is what splits the mountain horses into two subherds. Some go down Sykes Ridge while others, like Baja, come down the Burnt Timber area. With the recent precipitation and cool weather, we may see more horses move down the ridges to their winter range.

October 9, 2007 – Merlin’s family

On October 9, I woke up to a really beautiful morning. I had some extra time, so I went out to Bighorn Canyon to see if I could find any horses. I saw Admiral and Sam at Crooked Creek Bay, but I didn’t see any horses at all on Mustang Flats. As I was coming back, I saw horses walking down the road near the turnoff to Devil’s Canyon Overlook. I recognized the family as Merlin. Though I’d heard of other people seeing them, the last time I’d seen them was July 13. I stopped on the side of the road to watch where they were going.

Merlin’s grulla mare was leading the family. She is a very beautiful horse with many stripes and a two tone mane.

The family’s grulla stallion Merlin was in the rear. He is a half brother to Sitting Bull and Durango, and his mother now lives in the mountains as Teton’s dun mare.

The two have a beautiful grulla colt this year. He has many stripes on both his front and back legs. He also has wither bars coming down each shoulder.

The family moved past me and turned down the Devil’s Canyon Overlook Road. I watched them from the top of a hill.

They eventually moved off the road and down into a drainage. I moved a little closer to find them resting in some junipers.

I had to get back to town and couldn’t see what they ended up doing. This isn’t an area you often see the horses in, so I wondered if they were just passing through. However, I talked to two other people through the week who also saw the family in this area on separate days. There is a water source that isn’t too far away, so the family may stay in this area for a little more time. It is lucky to find them in such an accessible area as they had been more elusive this summer.