The Chase Is On

In an earlier post I mentioned about some of my exploits on the Rez.

So today we'll talk about chasing the wild horses.

My friend Tim called me one day and asked if I wanted to go and chase Wild horses with his family. Are you kidding, you bet! lets go!

We went to Tim's parents house and got prepared and headed out. We drove out of the town of Warm Springs for about 15 miles took a left turn and headed into the hills for about another 5 miles and met up with Tim's brother Mike at a make shift corral.

Mike had headed up earlier to locate the horses so he told us where they were and they set the plan.

Now we all have seen how they do it in the movies. Mount up and chase them on another horse, right...wrong. Four of us got into a couple of new 1/2 ton 4WD Dodge pickups and headed out.

We headed out on a sorry excuse for a road and drove for about 3 or 4 miles and found the horses close to where Mike had said they would be, and then the chase was on!

Immediate turn and put the pedal to the metal swerving around anything big like rocks, trees, big bushes all the time keeping a eye on the horses. Well everything was going according to plan, we were able to get on the other side of the horses and Tim's other brother Daniel was on the other and we were headed in the right direction. Things were progressing well, until we came to a draw in the hills (small canyon) we were at the top of it so we did not have to go in it but Daniel did not have that choice, so over the edge he went. We slowed down (finally) to wait for the horses to show up on the other side, but no horses. About that time we spotted them headed out the bottom of the draw!

Things were not right so now what I had thought was fast before wasn't. Tim drove like a crazy man right down the bottom of the draw after them. Along the way we ran into Daniel and his buddy changing the rear tire.

Found out later that they clipped a stump...Clipped? They tore the whole side wall out lucky the rear end stayed in place.

Well we made it out the bottom! But, now the horses were headed in the wrong direction and no matter what we tried could not get them turned and headed in the right direction! Instead we just ended up running in big circles.

Finally here comes Daniel to the rescue we get them headed in the right direction and the chase settles down to a more orderly fashion. Things went well until we got close to the corral and Mike had been wondering what was taking so long and had rode out on his horse to see where we were. Not a real good idea but it did eventually turn out to be a good one.

Well the Wild horses spotted him and decided that this was not the right direction after all and took a hard right turn! So off we go again at break neck speed to try and turn them back again.

A couple of big circles later, we get headed back in the right direction and top the last hill and what do we see but Mike again! But this time he had his horse flat out with the wild horses hot on his back. Was quite a sight ! Really made you wonder who was chasing who. Now I will give one thing to Mike he was thinking he headed straight into the corral and the wild horses just followed him in.

So that was my first experience with chasing wild horses with my native friends. There is more, but don't want to bore some of you and the others will have to come back again as I will talk more about it sometime later....

It is what it is

Rod