October 19, 2007 – Burnt Timber

On October 19, I went up Burnt Timber with some visitors. There was a good amount of snow in the mountains, and so I figured there would be some horses that had moved down into the middle elevation flats called Cheyenne Flats. Upon arriving, we didn’t see any horses on the flats. I scanned Sykes Ridge with my binoculars and didn’t see any there either. As I looked up Cheyenne Flats I saw a black horse pop out. I was getting ready to drive us up a little closer when he started running in our direction. At that point, I recognized him as Stiles, the stallion who is usually with Teton’s family.

As he ran closer, he started calling out very loudly. He didn’t seem to have any concern for us, though; and he ran right past us while calling out.

As he neared the end of the ridge, he stopped and let out another series of loud calls. He started to run back and then stopped near some trees. He turned and looked at us before calling out again and running into the trees and down into an adjacent canyon area.

We continued up the road and eventually saw the families of Looking Glass, Lakota, White Cloud, and Starman. We also saw the bachelors Two Boots and Doc together. It was fun seeing those families, but it was really great to see Stiles like that. I would guess he had gotten separated from Teton’s family and was very upset about it. He may have caught their scent coming from the canyon area as we didn’t see him at all after that during the day.