Wild Mustangs

 An article in today’s (10-10-22) Washington Post caught my eye: “A Horse Ran Away with Wild Mustangs.”

While on a camping trip 8 years previously, the horse’s owner awoke to a horse herd galloping by and when he looked out the tent flap, he saw his horse running along with them. He searched many times through the years in his efforts to reclaim him, but it was to no avail. Eight years later a Bureau of Land Management officer returned him.

This story was of interest to me because I can still add some facts of it into a story I’m finishing for the Western Writers “Roundup” magazine. It stated 71,000 wild mustangs roam the West, but with drought conditions, they are surviving in poor condition. The BLM culled large numbers from the one herd the run-away horse ran with and resulted in this particular horse being returned.

When World War One ended the demand for horses ended. Ranchers who’d rounded up herds for sale to European buyers suddenly found they were worth nothing and released them to fend for themselves on the vast grasslands of the West. Farmers wanted heavier draft type and didn’t want them. My Grandpa Bueling referred to them as “bronchos” and was known to have tamed and trained some. My dad enjoyed the history, and I remember his going to Fargo to look at some that arrived in cattle cars.

A horse sale a few years back took place at the Wishek sale barn where National Park athorities sold culled horses from the ND Badlands. They were wild; the only way they could run them in the sales ring was to have them led slowly by a saddled horse and rider. That kept them settled. By the way, the attendance of interested onlookers like myself filled the seats at the sales ring necessitating a closed circuit TV being set up in the nearby community center.