Wild Horses

20 Jul 2010--Did a little sightseeing yesterday, northeast of here up to the Lovell, WY area. Went to the Bighorn Canyon Nat'l Rec Area, which is in the Bighorn Mountains, and the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range, which overlap each other.

The Wild Horse Range was the 1st refuge established in the US, in 1968, and provides refuge for a distinct breed of horses, desendants of horses brought to the New World by the Spanish Conquistadors.

I don't know how big the Rec Area is, but the Wild Horse Range is over 38,000 acres and it is only a small part of it. This pic says there are 120 wild horses, but the lady at the center told me there are currently about 150. She also told me that instead of conducting round-ups as they have in the past to try to keep the herd at a manageable number, they now shoot the youngest and oldest females every year with darts filled with birth control substances to keep the numbers down. I am showing these pics just so you can see what it is we were driving thru looking for the horses.

Before we saw any horses we stopped at Devil's Overlook, a place we were told we might see some Bighorn Sheep. We actually did see a few, way down in the canyon, but couldn't take any pics for you. We could just make them out using the binoculars. Cathy is crouched down to try to get out of the wind...I swear this state must be the windiest of any in the country.

Here I have a stitch photo (click on it) of one side of the canyon, and then a video of the other side. It was the area in the stitch pic that we could see the Bighorn Sheep.

This is a stitch photo of the area we were driving thru looking for the horses. Click on it.

And then we finally found our 1st harem, boldly walking down the side of the road. The lead hose is the mother of the baby, and the black horse in the rear is the father. The other 2 are adolescents. The best part of this, which I didn't get on video unfortunately, was when the black male realized we were watching at the car, he lowered his head and very aggressively looped out on the road and then chased the mother and baby horse off the road into the brush on the side. We had read something back at the Center saying the males used this body posture to herd their harems, so I was really surprised when it was happening in front of us.

This is a different harem, notice how the baby has quite a bit of hair around the midsection...we don't know why (haha), just thought I'd point it out! You have to enlarge the 1st pic to see some horses.

Here is a short poem about the wild horses I took a pic of at the Center.