I have been fortunate to spend large portions of my life living, working, and playing in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, the Rocky Mountains of the Intermountain West, and the wonderfully remote parts of Texas. The Adirondack Mountains which is where my family on both sides dates back to the 1830’s was where I spent much of my younger life. What an incredible place to grow up hunting and fishing,bskiing, canoeing, hiking, cycling, and watching an Olympic-bound older cousin training at, what was at the time, the only bobsled course in the United States, Mt. Van Hovenberg, just outside Lake Placid where the 1936 and 1980 Olympics were held. I then left for the bigger mountains of Colorado and the West just after graduating from college. I’ve done rough calculations and, from what I can guess, I’ve taken over 40,000 photographs. Of those, I would anticipate that half were of my adventures to wild places and communing with wild things. I just turned sixty-four but have been forced by a quickly deteriorating spine to dial things back such that I am no longer able to take the long road trips which were my life’s blood until just a few years ago. But I had a good, thirty-year run in Colorado and went on countless adventures throughout Colorado and into New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah. I am in the daunting process of going through them but will post some of those photos in written pieces to come.
About thirteen years ago, my younger wife landed a wonderful job in Texas and, since I was much closer to the putting a cap on my career, I joined her to come to where we now live in rural Central Texas, about an hour s drive equidistant from Austin and San Antonio. The closest I can get to my Colorado mountains and the Colorado Plateau is by driving the seven hours to what has become my favorite place in Texas, the Big Bend Region and Big Bend National Park (BBNP), roughly two hours south and west of El Paso. This is a very remote area of the United States, with some of the darkest night skies anywhere in the world. All part of the Chihuahuan desert which extends across the border and the Rio Grand deep into Old Mexico. I’ve spent considerable time roaming the area and backcountry camping in BBNP where I’ve hiked many a mile and enjoyed the last of my mountain biking and trail running days. In February of 2014, I made my first trip to the park and camped for six nights, seeing just four people on my daily hikes and rides. Heaven on earth! What a wonderful break from humanity and all things touched by man. It felt pristine and wild and was still largely undiscovered by the throngs of people I’d grown accustomed to seeing in other National Parks throughout the American West.
Central Adirondack Mountains, Ausable Valley Floor from the Family Homestead and the Ledges on Ebenezer Mountain (Rising from Behind the Family Homestead)
I would go on to make numerous trips to West Texas and the Big Bend region. Here are a few highlights:
Images from Fort Davis State Park Near Marfa and Various Locations in and Around BBNP. The last Photo is of the Chisos Mountains and Mount Emory. At Almost 7,825 feet, it Stands as the Park’s Highest Point, 2,000 feet Above the Valley Floor. The Rio Grand, Which Marks the Park’s Southern Boundary and Border with Mexico is at 1,875 ft.
Most of my travel to the Big Bend Region has been a solitary endeavor. While dogs are allowed, there are enough restrictions that it hasn’t been worth bringing them along. For me, having grown accustomed to sharing wilderness experiences with my dogs, this by itself is a difficult pill to swallow, but Big Bend is a Natural Park and such park restrictions are put in place for good reason. Plus, having a dog along for a long run or hike in 100+ degree heat with virtually no water to be found simply wouldn’t be a good idea, extending well into foolhardiness.
On one trip (Christmas of 2018)), my wife and dogs joined me for a West Texas excursion to the town of Marathon, an historic oil boom and railroad town, located roughly 90 miles north of BBNP. We’d rented a two room Sears and Roebuck catalog bungalow and used it as our base of operations. Though from San Antonio, she had never been to the Big Bend region, so I had the pleasure of showing her the sights. This included daytrips into BBNP and exploring the towns of Alpine, Fort Davis, and Marfa. Some of you may be familiar with the area around Marfa as it was the primary filming location for the film epic “Giant” featuring a young and beautiful Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, and Rock Hudson. But I fell in love with the less traveled and much less populated town of Marathon, where we were staying. When I wasn’t in the backvountry on previous trips, I stayed at the historic Holland Hotel which had been build during the 1930’s. But the only hotel time we spent on this trip would be having New Year’s Eve dinner at the historic Gage Hotel, in Marathon, another grand hotel from the same period, the heyday of the oil boom, cattle ranching, and the newly built railroad, which, back then, was the primary means of travel between Houston, College Station, San Antonio, Austin, and Alpine.
View to the North from the Town of Marathon, TX
The Historic Gage Hotel in Marathon. Texas
The Historic Holland Hotel, Alpine, Texas
To me, whenever I’ve taken a road trip to some remote location for another sort of adventure getaway, I attempt to mix in a couple of days on the tail end of that trip and stay at some historic hotel to clean-up, get a good meal, and some much needed rest before the return trip home. I have a number of favorites in Colorado. Victorian Grand Hotels which were built between 1880 and 1930 during the mining boom when these now resort towns were in their heyday. In West Texas, the Holland and Gage Hotels have served as my newfound favorite places to stay.
Needless to say, the Big Bend Region draws a lot more people now than it did during my first stay in 2014, but when compared to other National Parks in the country, it still feels relatively wild and it is not difficult to find places that are off the beaten path. I’ve spoken with several park rangers and within the National Park system, Big Bend has long been considered the crowned jewel for its rugged and remote nature and relatively few park visitors. Many senior rangers put in for it as their final assignment and remain in the area after retirement. It is, by any measure, one of the most priestine, beautiful, and wild places remaining in the American West.
Note; More recent photos were taken using a Sony Xperia I IV smartphone. The associated camera technology and capabilities are top tier.
Older photos were shot with an HTC M7 or a Motorola Edge (3rd Generation), phones also known to have superior picture taking capabilities.
According to the site Enviroliteracy, the following screenshot shows number of the African Wild Dogs (AWD’s) remaining, as of March of this year, to be around 7,000 individuals with just 1,500 listed as adults.
The key to understanding the relationship between being formally listed as endangered (the AWD made the ICNU “Red List” list twenty-five years ago) and attempting to predict how long a given species has left in based solely upon scientific research, the most important of which has to do with the minimum number of breeding pairs required to maintain a healthy gene pool (for that given species). Obviously, no one can be certain but studies have indicated that the number hovers around 300.
Science has already spent decades researching endangered species of all kinds, with more research going into some than others. “Higher-order” mammals, whether sea or land-based, seem to get the most attention. It makes sense that we would be the most concerned about the creatures with which we have the most in common. Social behavior, language, habitat, overall intelligence, and other characteristics. This research has led to a much greater understanding of the creatures we most respect and admire. Because they are generally at the top of the food chain and would be the most harmful to the ecosystems surrounding them were they to disappear, endangered predators and species that are strong bio-indicators garner the most attention. Though not as heavily studied as certain bears, tigers, lions, wolves, whales, and some porpoises, the African Wild Dog certainly warrants ample consideration. The ecosystems in which they are found and the other creatures within them would topple, creating a domino effect and many other species would be brought to the brink of extinction, or worse, simply disappear not long after the demise of the AWD.
There is more pressure than ever on those of us who truly care to redouble our efforts such that more people around the world join the fight to protect existing AWD habitat and push for the creation of additional habitat by funding conservancy programs to procure lands which are adjacent to the patchwork of existing protected areas and national and state run wildlife preserves. The concept is already at work in other parts of the world through organizations such as the Nature Conservancy. The point is is that there are real world mechanisms in place to acquire additional lands on behalf of endangered species. I don’t see why, with appropriate funding, the same concept can’t be put use in parts of Africa where the AWD still has a toehold. Perhaps it’s already happening and I’m just unaware of such doings.
I wake up each morning with an anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach with grave concerns for this planet and its inhabitants knowing in my heart that it may already be too late for turning things around. There really isn’t much time remaining for the world’s most endangered species, twenty, perhaps thirty years. But then I have a talk with myself over a cup of coffee and realize once again that we’ve got an immense obligation to threatened species everywhere and that no matter how bleak things may look, we must have the resolve to fight our best fight and if it should come to it, go down swinging.
First, I’ll add that poaching isn’t something that only takes place in faraway lands. It is a significant problem right here at home, in the US.
As with most conservation issues, it’s like peeling an onion with each layer getting closer to the core. On the face of it, many of us view poachers as bed men doing evil deeds, but it can be far more complicated than that. If you look at the problem of the black market for animal pieces and parts as being an evil entity with its roots stretching far and wide, you’ll find that once you get far enough out from the root ball, you’ll reach the poaching aspect of the illegal trade. Things are a bit different in the different areas around the world where poaching exists. You may even find that poachers can sometimes be good people doing evil deeds. In Africa and India, for instance, some of the poachers are poor farmers or herdsman from the neighboring tribes and villages. The gravitational pull for those who become poachers is quite strong in terms of putting food on the table for their families. Poachers receive a small fraction of what a given animal is worth to a wholesaler within his other country and that fraction is miniscule as compared with what those same pieces and parts are fetching at the end of the line, where they are sold to dealers in countries like Japan. But as little as a poacher makes on their end, it is more than they can possibly make on their crops and livestock alone. So the incentive is extremely tempting. Add to that that there are cultural differences which make it easier to kill these animals than we in the West can comprehend. In many cases, tribesman are histlorically accustomed to hunting many of these now threatened and endangered species. I can’t say that the paradigm is the same in every impoverished country, but it is certainly similar. I would anticipate that the poaching problem is bad enough that if a particular poacher is caught or killed there’s another right behind him awaiting his turn to carry the AK.
On the other side, you’ve got guys who are paid some paltry sum to put their lives on the line protect these animals from being poached. In relation to the size of the territory they are responsible for, the number of paid rangers is very small. It is not unusual for a poacher and ranger to know one another or even belong to the same tribe and live in the same village. Graft is a very real problem for a ranger who simply gets paid to look the other way. Of course, the rangers aren’t nearly all on “the take”. But the point is, on this level of the problem, it is more complicated than it might appear to be. That being said, friendly or not, these poachers are a cog in what comprises the wheels of poaching and they must be stopped. More funding is needed so that park rangers aren’t so easily tempted to break the laws that they’re paid to enforce. There are state sponsored anti -poaching organizations and there are the smaller game management entities that are generally not-for-profit associations that operate on shoestring budgets and their anti-poaching personnel are completely out-numbered by “the bad guys”. Being a ranger for this kind of conservation effort comes with serious dangers and many rangers are simply killed in the night while out on patrol. They could use the help of privately owned mercenary companies that have been in place contracting to the US military in the neverending wars in the Middle East.Though this is an expensive option, it is possible to obtain the funds necessary to get these wildlife advocacies the help they need if the right people get involved.
The way to solve the overall problem is to work it from both ends towards the middle. There are already international laws in place to put an end to world trade in animal pieces and parts, but they are not as effective as they should be because the law-breakers aren’t punished to the fullest extent of the law. Often, they are simply fined while being allowed to continue. Corruption runs amok. Laws “without teeth” are of little value in the fight to put an end to trafficking in animal parts.
While not perfect, the poaching problem in the US has been reduced, with steep fines and substantial jail time levied on offenders. Still, highly organized poaching is the same most organized crime and can be fairly sophisticated in their cryptic ways and means of evasion.
The best thing we as simple citizens of the world can do is see that our people on the front lines are closely backed and that related anti-poaching programs ascend the ladder from being grassroot efforts to amply funded organizations with appropriate structure and enough “boots on the ground” to make a palpable difference. Make no mistake, this has gone from being a back-burner issue to one of serious urgency with mind-blowing consequences if we don’t act, in earnest, in the here and now.
Archery Elk Season, 2013 Various Pics of camp trailer, the San Juan Mountains, me and my partner, Kelpy
My background includes fifty-three years experience starting with hunting whitetails (both rifle and bow) with my father in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York, not far south of the Canadian border. The year was 1973 and I was just twelve years old. I would go on hunting with my dad throughout my teen and college years until I moved to Colorado after graduation where I continued hunting for both deer and elk. I would alternate years, hunting archery season one year and go rifle the next. But I missed numerous seasons due to conflicts with my project load at work. I remember the sacrifice and the strong yearning to be in the woods. That feeling would stick with me for months.
That first year hunting in the West was in 1984 and I was just twenty three. I already had eleven years under my belt when I began my hunting journey as an adult in the best physical condition of my young life. And I did so as a soloist with just a few exceptions. Not that I would have changed anything, but my career in engineering meant that there would be times when I couldn’t breakaway. For me, that was just part of the game if you wanted to hold on to a good job in the mountains of Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah. I hunted big, rough country alone, without the aid of horses or an ATV, and would regularly cover eighteen or twenty miles in a day. For a long time, I was a competitive mountain athlete and was constantly training for an upcoming event or for the simple pleasure of being at the top of my game. Forever waiting for hunting buddies to catch up was not my idea of “fun” and I learned quickly that I enjoyed the solitude far more than the companionship – with the exception of being with my father and later, my nephew when he came of hunting age. Other than those exceptions, I would spend the rest of my hunting days going it alone.
I have hunted in every kind of weather Colorado can serve-up. Snow storms were my favorite. As an accomplished alpine and backcountry skier, I’ve skied hundreds of miles in the backcountry of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming and was more than comfortable in deep snow and temperatures ranging from ten degrees to twenty below. Horizontal rain, sleet, hail were no fun, as was the case on warm days, but they didn’t keep me in camp. In Colorado, archery seasons are nearly a month long, taking place from late August to late September and some years, it doesn’t cool down until a couple of weeks into the season. This meant hiking around at or above treeline shouldering a twenty-five pound pack and sweating through my shirt and hunting pants and having to stop once or twice a day, strip down, and hang my clothes to dry. I’d put on another layer to thwart getting chilled while my clothes were drying. This was just part of staying safe and it’s so dry in Colorado, that the drying process would typically last no longer than twenty minutes. Time for a sandwich and I’d be on my way again. For the first ten, or so, years, I had entire areas pretty much to myself but, sometime in the early 90’s, the Colorado Division of Wildlife, in its infinite wisdom, crammed a two week long muzzleloader season into the last two weeks of archery. Muzzleloading had become a trend to be reckoned with, bringing thousands of additional hunters and their money into the state each fall. While growing in popularity, archery hunters quickly became the minority and with the muzzleloaders growing in such numbers, many of whom were from out of state, I began to feel pressed for space. In came the mega-travel trailers and ATV’s along with groups of hunters ranging from four to a dozen. Many of these guys waited and looked forward to their hunting trips all year long (I couldn’t blame them) and their presence in, what were just a few years earlier, wilderness settings made it feel more like a school playground than a wild place where large, wild creatures roamed freely. Back then, when it was archery only, there were seldom enough archery hunters in a given hunting unit to have any sort of long term impact on the animals that called these places home. Often, I could hunt for days before seeing another hunter. In retrospect, it was the end of an era. A time in my life that I’m thankful to have had. I’m now sixty-four and have no one left except for my eighty-five year old dad who remembers these times in the way I do. He agrees and has stated that, for all of the same reasons, he had it even better than I did, hunting for most of his active years well before the woods were full of people and the sounds of trucks and ATV’s everywhere, and some bonfire party just a few hundred yards from what either of would consider an ideal camp.
Hunting in Colorado and many other Western states has become a huge industry. In a few states, hunting and fishing is the primary breadwinner for the state and it is the means by which many small western towns exist. The woods have become super-saturated with the sheer magnitude of hunters such that the deer and elk have changed their movements in order to avoid the mass onslaught of people roaming the woods with guns and blaze orange every autumn. The elk can no longer be found in or near their historical places, places they called home for centuries during this time of year, which included mating season (also known as “The Rut”). One reason that I’ve always enjoyed bow-hunting over rifle hunting is simply the bow and how quiet it is. Additionally, it makes hunting much more challenging than if one were toting a rifle. With a bow, it’s not unusual to shoot and miss but not scare your intended target in the slightest as opposed to the ensuing chaos a shot from a high-powered rifle can bring. The gun shots are typically followed by the sound of ATV’s and trucks driving around on the network of Forest Service access roads in an attempt to locate the downed or injured animal. Once the shooting starts with muzzleloader season in mid-September, most of the wildlife in any given hunting area all but moves out, often seeking refuge on the private lands below and staying there for several months or, depending on the location and the inclination of the individual landowners, the animals might stay straight on through to the following spring.
Rather than descend en masse with the main herds, splinter groups comprised of fifteen to twenty, up to thirty individuals will move into heavily treed (often referred to as “dark timber”) and steeper and more rugged terrain on north facing slopes (to escape the remaining warm days) until driven downward as the early, heavy snows, and cold temperatures begin to encourage them to move down low enough to survive the winter and any remaining hunters. It is only after hunter-pressure ceases in mid-Dembember that they again move about more feely to get to better sources of food and warmer temperatures associated with dropping a couple thousand feet in elevation.
What I haven’t mentioned but is a tremendously important factor in the survival of the species is the major interruptions that occur during the critical time of breeding season which takes place (approximately) from mid-September and runs through a large portion of October. This is where things get complicated and the long-term impacts from hunting can be seen by comparing the health of the gene pool from forty or fifty years ago to that of today. Because these results vary depending on where a particular herd is being studied, the topic warrants a much more thorough analysis than I can present here but I may make an attempt in future writings. Suffice it to say that there has been an overall deleterious effect due to hunting pressures and differing herd management protocols from state to state. I believe it has gone so far as to become a very big example of animal cruelty. Imagine you and your chosen mate attempting to do just that while being shot at and chased for weeks on end, never afforded the luxury of stopping and remaining in one place for long enough to be successful in this primally driven endeavor. Now imagine what it must be like for a mature, dominant bull elk to marry with as many females as he can, all the while being challenged by other bulls on top of being shot at…for up to two months a year! By the time the rut is over, the cold snows and winds of winter take over while many of these bulls are a hundred pounds underweight and too stressed to survive yet another Rocky Mountain winter.
Unfortunately, after spending thirty years in Colorado, I had the need to relocate with my wife to Central Texas. We found a place far out in the country on a slice of land and live a good life here with our three dogs. My last hunting trip was to Southwest Colorado with my dog, Kelpy, for the whole of archery elk season in 2013. I’d not hunted there in several years and in that brief period of time, hunting as I had known it for so many years had come to an end. I’d hunted this same area in 2010 but it seems that it had been “discovered’ during the three years I’d been gone. I got in there a couple of days before the season opened to find a good, out of the way place to camp, well hidden off the Forest Service access road. I was roughly thirty-five miles in on that road, and the country it serviced was steep and uninviting. My dog and I spent a wonderfully quiet night under the stars. The next day would be a long one, hiking some 20+miles reconnoitering the area. I located some elk about ten miles in from camp and observed them for a couple of hours before heading back. By now, there were a number of other camps within a few hundred yards of ours.
All things considered, this wasn’t too bad. You couldn’t see my campsite from anywhere on the road, and I sensed that no one knew we were in there. The elk I spotted weren’t accessible by road or ATV and were far enough away that it would be unlikely that any of these guys would get that far off the trail I’d used to get within five miles and the next five were gotten only by hiking off-trail. I was well prepared and knew the area well. I spent the next three weeks hiking out in the early morning after I had taken Kelpy on our run, and back an hour or two after dark. As I had expected, the first week was almost too warm to hunt as the animals wouldn’t be moving around much and mostly remaining bedded down. The next week brought torrential rains and I hunted mornings but spent afternoons with Kelpy in my military tailer reading and catching up on rest. I wanted to be ready when the weather broke, which it did for a couple of days when I was able to call-in a couple of smaller bulls. From the tracks leading in and out of the area, I knew there was one big bull in there, amongst a four and a five point and around a dozen cows, spikehorns, and yearlings.
I would get just three days and three opportunities at the medium-sized bulls, and then two days of snow followed. The temperature dropped a good twenty degrees and I hunted through the storm being careful to stay on a perimeter of a couple hundred yards. What I was waiting for was another break in the weather, which came along with eight inches of cold, dry snow on top of mud from the rains, which had saturated the ground. I had just two days left and now that I had my weather and the clock was ticking fast, it was time to employ some more aggressive tactics. I would slip in closer letting out a good close-range bugle and a lost cow chirp. I got some cow chirps in return and could hear what I knew was the big bull approach toward my position, which I changed before he got too close. I had a clean shot at sixty yards but thought I could bring him in closer. I let out some grunts and that lost cow chirp, and that did the job. It was getting dark quickly as he circled a bit while at about fifty yards but much of his body was now obscured by a bunch of deadfall…maybe six or seven downed fir trees. I stayed put, waited for as long as I could before darkness descended. Forty yards but no clear shot. Right about then (this is a situation to always be aware of) I was “made” by a couple of curious cows checking on the lost cow call. I would have heard them were it not for the freshly fallen snow. I don’t believe they even saw me at first but the evening breeze had gone from being in my favor, to swirling just the littlest bit. I’m pretty sure they’d winded me until they saw me draw back in the direction of the bull in case he somehow presented me with a shot. He’d picked his way through the deadfall up to about thirty five yards, turned and ran in the opposite direction, as did the cows. I was crestfallen, with nothing to do but go over it in my mind while making my way uphill and back towards camp. Going for a big bull during archery season is more miss than hit, so the turn of events hadn’t surprised me. While I didn’t beat myself up over it, I was bothered by it enough that instead of using my one remaining day, I decided that I was done for the year. I was exhausted and may well have run into trouble getting an animal out on the off-chance that I did shoot something. It wouldn’t have been a smart thing to do.
A huge saving grace, my forever best friend, Kelpy, was happy to see me stagger back into camp. We embraced for a moment before getting ourselves fed and going on our nightly walk. I’d played it through in my mind on the long and dark hike back to camp. Relative to the circumstances, I had made no mistakes. Don’t get me wrong, I have made a number of mistakes when in-close with large bulls during past archery seasons but had learned something during each of those encounters. Downing a large bull like that one was is no mean feat. So many obstacles to overcome just to have a chance at one. He was a big-bodied six by seven of probably seven or eight years. That’s a long life for a any bull found on public lands during hunting season.
Depending on where you are in the Western US, several things have impacted the relative livelihoods of various wildlife over the many years of hunting and game management practices. Different states manage game animals in different ways and certain states are fairing better than others. While Colorado has the overall largest number of elk that call it home, the herd as a whole is not as healthy as places like Idaho and Arizona, but I’m not an expert on land use. Administering conservation practices against huge revenue generating fish and game activities on millions of acres of land with overlapping jurisdictions between the state wildlife agencies, the USDA Forest Service and the Federal Bureau of Land management) is a huge and highly complicated job. But the statistics taken over many years strongly indicate that some wildlife management practices work far better than others. Otherwise, the health of our country’s deer and elk populations wouldn’t be so different when comparing big game states against each other. The only thing that stands in the way of each state adopting the best overall strategies to maintain healthy individual animals and appropriately sized herds is money. As with most things, there is a strong countering relationship between managing for quality and managing for quantity. In my opinion, Colorado sells far too many elk tags to have a sustainable, healthy herd, and the overall health of Colorado’s elk has been in decline for decades. States that place more emphasis on herd quality don’t sell more tags than their herds can sustain over a long period of time.
Another significant change that I’ve witnessed over the years with elk is the amount these animals are verbally active. Hunters use various calls to get the elk communicating with them in an attempt to call their quarry into shooting range. The most exciting part of calling is in learning how to call a big, mature bull from where he is, perhaps, three or four hundred yards distant and, while continuing to call, use that little bit of time to get yourself situated and prepared to shoot should the opportunity arise. The idea is in getting your bull so focused on fending off this particular challenging bull (you) that he momentarily drops his guard and approaches straight towards you, as you draw your bow and launch a well placed shot. This is probably one of the single most captivating moments in all of outdoor sports, the feeling that you’d just accomplished what you set out to do at the beginning of the season.
During my last few hunting seasons, I began to hear an unusual trend and, by the time this season rolled by, I noticed that the elk were barely “talking”, that there was much less vocalizing than in any of my prior hunting seasons. With so many people calling or attempting to learn, the elk have become much more selective in what they discern as genuine, or false. It should be obvious that the time to learn is well before the season begins. All it takes is one bad call and the elk you’re after may choose to vacate the area, leaving you and your fellow hunters high and dry. There are many types of calls on the market but, in my opinion, reed calls can be the best. You just slide the little disk into your mouth and learn to use it such that you seldom let out a suspicious call. It can take years of practice not only in terms of the technical aspect , but in learning enough about why, when, and how elk communicate to know the when’s and why’s as to your own calling. As gratifying as “talking with the elk” can be, the fact that they’ve all but ceased must have farther reaching implications that don’t bode well for these animals. Imagine the disruption to humankind if we could no longer communicate using verbal language, even if it were limited to a couple of months a year. And that’s assuming they revert back to normal behavior once the combined hunting seasons come to an end. I would guess that that’s not nearly the case.
These things have conspired to make elk hunting much less enjoyable (at least for me) than it was fifteen years ago. It has bothered me enough to call an end to my years as a hunter. For years, affluent hunters have been paying large fees, including the cost of highering a guide and paying for a private lands hunt that they find to be the most desirable. Game processing is typically included. The pay-hunts like these don’t interest me and even if they did, I don’t have the kind on money to afford the associated $5K to $15K, or more, for a tag that would only be good at the game ranch I had chosen. While archery hunts of this nature have their place and have success rates of seventy-five percent, a public lands archery hunt averages around twenty percent. But, for me, I put more emphasis on the quality of the total experience and refuse to pay someone else to take me to the elk and do so enough times that I finally get my bull. I wouldn’t do it if you paid my way.
To have an opportunity like I had just a day before season’s end was a thrill I would not trade for a large bull on an expensive paid hunt. As a wonderful bonus, I had brought along my best friend, my dog, Kelpy, with whom to share the experience. That put my trip over the top! After driving down into Cortez, getting a hotel, cleaning up, and getting a good night’s rest, we were on our way home with just 1,670 miles to go! I am forever grateful for my years of roaming Colorado before it evolved into one big “sacrificial park” (where everyone goes so that other places may remain pristine).
This is one of my most prized photographs. I wish I had a higher-resolution picture, but, for me, back in 2009, it was either my Blackberry or my faithful 3.2 meg Canon Digital Elf that I kept at all times in the glovebox of my truck. I carried that tiny camera with me since Canon came out with it in the late 90’s. It was great for just about everything, including shooting video, except in the event that years later I’d want to have some of my many great shots blown-up into something of “wall hanging” size. Still, I am lucky to have this pic at all as the subjects were virtually impossible to capture without the aid of a good telephoto lens.
I was living and working in Cortez, Colorado, running a new operations office for one of the larger natural gas exploration and production companies in the US. This one was headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma with operations throughout the Western US, including Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah. My job had me both driving long distances between assets and going back and forth between offices in Bloomfield, New Mexico, Durango, and Cortez in Southwest Colorado. Between where my work has taken me and my outdoor interests and activities, I have had the luxury of seeing wolves, mountain lions, bobcats, lynxes, wolverines, black bears, grizzlies, foxes, coyotes, eagles, ospreys, and virtually every prey species associated with that food chain.
Natural Gas Processing Plant, North-Central Colorado(Courtesy The Williams Compnies)Living off–the-grid, near Hesperus, Colorado Gas Plant near Bloomfield, NM (Courtesy The Williams Companies)
My piece of the above project in North Central Colorado was relatively small in relation to the total cost and seven-year build cycle, but it was an important role and pleased me greatly to be a part of such a team of engineers and project managers. Including construction hands, hundreds of people had a hand in the work. I was responsible for designing and building the station inlet and outlet piping and equipment for this plant, which, when completed, became the largest gas processing facility of its kind. The area was called the Piceance Basin, and its location provided me with incredible opportunities to go on long runs with my dog and view untold numbers of elk and deer, and make the drive to flyfish the Flaming Gorge of the Green River, in Utah. Traveling to and from the site from my office in Cortez gave me even more wildlife viewing opportunities, including herds of wild horses in the distance. Unlike the rough, high desert ecosystems of so many other places that contained these animals, I can remember thinking that these wild horses (in the Piceance Basin of Central Colorado) had it made. Plenty of grass, water, and suitable terrain. I don’t think these horses had cause for much travel and probably lived their lives within thirty miles of their birthplace. But the point I wanted to make here is that oil and gas basins hold plenty of wild horses, thousands, and the horses have remained in this county even during the construction of larger projects and they continue to inhabit these pockets of extractive industry like mining and oil and gas production. Employees generally leave these horses alone, so their fear of mankind appeared to be non-existent. As long as they are left to be wild horses and do as wild horses do, they have no reason to move from a perfectly good area. There were large pockets of private range held by the nearby ranching community, so these horses had abundant access to those lands, and the area got plenty of snow and rain each year to keep the tall grasses in excellent condition. Unlike other parts of Colorado and certainly rangeland in Nevada and Utah where there is too much competition from both wild and domesticated animals, such as sheep and cattle, where the rangeland and all the creatures it supports are in serious need of management.
Over the span of thirty years in Colorado, I have had many otherwise rare opportunities to view thousands of animals in their natural environs. Wild horses were among the rarest. The picture was taken in an area I had come to know well. It is on a slice of BLM land which adjoins the Southern Ute Native American Reservation to the south and the protection of Mesa Verde National Park to the east. The entry to this particular area was accessed via BLM road that was often open to the public. I would hike with my girlfriend and dogs, go for extended runs and ride both my mountain and motocross bikes all over the related trails. Seldom did I encounter another human being and it had become an area I felt quite strongly about. If I did run into anyone, it would be a hunter, or two, in the area to hunt coyotes. I was a hunter myself, purely elk, and almost exclusivley good-sized bulls during the month long archery season, and, while I am vehemently opposed to hunting coyotes for sport, their populations do need to be maintained and, in Colorado, a bounty could be applied to a corpse as long as the hunter held to the strict number of animals they could take with the proper licensing. Contrary to public opinion, these guys don’t tend to be monsters but are out enjoying nature in a fairly pure form, not leaving messes of campsite garbage in the field or, the thing that bugs me most, making all sorts of noise or breaking out a boombox and knocking back a few beers, and “plinking” (walking around with a smaller caliber gun and shooting at old cans and bottles scattered about these kinds of areas) which really weren’t far outside the city limits). Depending upon where you are, the combination of drinking and shooting is 4illegal and I’ve put an end to these nefarious activities myself on many occasions.
This particular location had become somewhat sacred to me because BLM could decide on any given day to close the main access gate out by the highway, so I didn’t want some group of lawbreakers ruining the access for everyone else. It was just a ten minute drive for me to get there and park, and take off on a long run with my dogs. You could say that I was vested in the place and didn’t want to lose such a recreational opportunity so close to home, particularly since I effectively had my own splinter-herd of wild horses to enjoy. Since I mostly ran with my dogs, I had them trained to leave the wild horses alone, but that was only when I made sure to keep us well away from them, at least by a quarter-mile, or so. While with the dogs, I maintained a rule for the three of us that we never got close enough to bother them in any way.
But there were days when I purposefully went alone to stalk this small herd to get in close enough to observe them for a couple and hours and, with any luck, snap a few good photos. As part of the greater Mesa Verde herd, they numbered between ten and fifteen individuals with the usual hierarchy, a single stallion and possibly a smaller stallion as tolerated by the big stallion, six or eight mares and several offspring. Depending on the time of year, this would include a couple of this year’s foals and several yearlings from the previous year. This is what the herd would be comprised of at its healthiest. Some days I’d have to run several miles, including some doubling back, before I’d spot them amongst the thick pinon, juniper, and sage. Rarely were they out in the open sage as they are shown in the photograph, but it had snowed several inches of heavy, wet snow overnight and the change to morning temperature had come up just enough to cultivate a thick fog which gave them a sense of security. Plus, they were cold from the hard night and needed to be up and about grazing and trying to get warm, catching whatever few rays of sun making their way through the low-slung clouds. There was no wind, so it was an absolutely perfect opportunity to close most of the distance by walking through a draw filled with pinon trees and rocks. I knew this draw, and by the time it ended, I would be within seventy five yards of them. I remained in the cover of the top of the draw and watched them mill about, pawing the ground to get at the grass beneath. I probably observed them for an hour before the urge to carefully approach and try to get a series of pics took over.
This would be the closest I’d gotten to them. I crested the head of the draw and, standing behind a couple of small pinon trees, I slowly stepped out into the open and stopped, just standing there looking disinterested and away. Two things could happen. They could quickly collect themselves and bolt or, because I wasn’t acting like a predator trying to sneak up closer and I was in the open, in full view, coupled with the idea that these horses had gotten to know me at a greater distance, they might just hold their ground and let me approach by another ten or fifteen yards. I did not want to blow this opportunity, so I decided I’d go roughly ten more yards and take some photos. It was frustrating not having a camera with a powerful zoom where I would have remained in the sanctity of the head of the draw and gotten my pictures from there. But getting this close had worked in my favor because I got to watch them form a defensive circle, with the powerful gray stallion pointing himself toward me and the mares closing-up around the young. The lieutenant took a spot toward the back of the circle. I was now standing about fifty yards away and had begun taking pictures. I was pretty certain that they wouldn’t oblige me for long, so, after ten minutes, the lead mare gave the sign and began to walk off with the others falling in behind, and the stallion remaining in back, always between me and his harem. I marveled at his size, looking very much like a weight-lifter on steroids. His head, neck, shoulders and hind quarters were massive and obvious even under his thick winter coat. I watched until they all but disappeared into the mist and walked the two miles back to my truck. I’d been fortunate to locate them so close to the BLM road that morning. They could have just as easily been five or six miles into the sage to the south.
I’d had a triumphant morning but, because of the dim lighting conditions and snowy, monochromatic background, this one pic was the best I could get. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell my girlfriend of the encounter. It was an extremely rare glimpse into the lives of wild horses.
Credit iheartwildhorses.comCredit Rod DoughertyCredit blogspot.comCredit Terry SpiveyCredit Sandy SharkeyBLM helicopter (Credit American Wild Horse Campaign)Typcal holding pen (Credit American Wild Horse Campaign)
The plight of the Amican Wild Horse goes back for centuries. Among scholars, it is generally thought that the American Wild Horse is a descendent of those horses which came over during the discovery of the New World by the Spanish in the fourteenth century not long before the Aztec and Mayan peoples of Central America and Mexico vanished, many due to European disease brought to the shores of North America by the Conquistadors and other conquering factions, there were thousands of horses left behind, never to be shipped back to where they came. I could certainly be wrong about this as it flies in the face of what has been historically taught by people far more educated on the subject than me, but I believe that rather than a few horses wandering off and becoming feral, I contend that it was hundreds, if not thousands purposefully left behind rather than taking up valuable cargo space on the returning vessels headed back to their native European empires. It didn’t make economic or pratical sense to round them all up and return them by ship to their native lands while most of the explorers would be returning by the skin of their teeth with all sorts of plunder. It takes a lot of effort to hunt-down and annihilate or enslave tens of thousands of lesser armed natives. There would be additional militant explorers traveling further and further north over the following centuries and, by then, native American cultures in Northern Mexico and the what would later become the Great American Southwest had discovered these beautiful creatures of European descent roaming about by the thousands. Over the next several hundred years, many of these horses would be domesticated and become the single greatest factor in the advancement of the American Indian Horse Culture, which now spanned any number of tribes from the Great Plains in the heart of America to the great Pacific Ocean of what would eventually become California, Oregon, and Washington. The wild horses continued to evolve into mixed-breeds from various parts of Europe into a slightly smaller and stockier lineage that was predominantly from being once domesticated on the European continent and various other places in the world that had specialized in breeding their horses for a number of different purposes, to going back into the melting pot to take on new traits, as dictated by the new environments they found themselves in. Over the course of the next three-hundred years, more horses were brought to the Eastern shores of the New World, some of which would invariably spill into the American West both during and after the Indian Wars when various strains of horses from around the world were unleashed onto the Western landscape. There were also horses left behind from the American Civil War. As these horses were captured and reintroduced to domestication, the American West became a giant crucible of domestication and breeding.
All sorts of factors would define what would become the American mustang and what their regional popultions might be at a given time. As natural predators were eradicated throughout the Western United States and the cycle of naturally occurring fire had changed drastically due to larger and larger areas of white settlement, the ecology behind the history of the American Wild Horse became tremendously complicated and mired in debate. I will not attempt to cover it here. Suffice it to say that Wild Horse management is complex and seldom will you find three experts in ten who agree on the kinds of policies that need to float to the top and become legislation. Combine that with the fact that environmental conditions for these animals change considerably from region to region and state to state. Each herd has its own set of special circumstances that combine to help that herd thrive or see it struggle, on the edge of oblivion.
The thing that I find most disconcerting is the language used on the many sides to the equation is different when it comes to defining what species of flora and fauna are truly native to this part of the world. This is because species that are determined to be native get first billing when it comes to the level of managed protection they are given. The debaters tend to throw wild horses (and centuries old populations of wild burro) in with cattle and sheep, though one could argue that wild horses have been here far (hundreds of years) longer. If the legislators at the top of the food chain were to view this one difference as point of fact and were to capitulate, it would change everything downstream of that single perception. But even this gets complicated because of good, old fashioned American capitalism. Ranchers of both cattle and sheep are paying custumers when if comes to range management policies. Though each rancher pays an inordinately small contribution to operate their leases on BLM and Forest Service lands, as a whole, it amounts to a tastey sum of funds for the goverenment. There are no users of public lands that pay the way for their precious Wild Horses and these animals, all ungulates, compete for the same grass and water, which, in the drought-stricken west, is at an all time premium. Still, look at the term “Wild Horses” and you’ll see the word “Wild” as the chosen descriptor. We all know that these animals represent the truest form of wildness, as we look upon them with nothing short of awe. I think we’d all agree that there is nothing more breathtaking in this world than fixing our gaze on a herd of wild horses out doing their thing, “being wild”. Why would we dare think that these animals don’t deserve every protection afforded other wild and native creatures?
_______
Some facts as put forth by Wild Horse Advocate Laura Moretti:
“Fifty million years ago, a small dog-like creature called Eohippus evolved on the North American continent. In fact, this forerunner to the modern horse was traced to the Tennessee Valley. After evolving into Equus and disappearing into Asia and Africa presumably 11 to 13 thousand years ago, the horse returned to our soil with the Spanish in the early 1500s. From their hands, a few escaped onto the American canvas and reverted to a wild state.”
“According to Western writer J. Frank Dobie, their numbers in the 19th century reached more than 2 million. But by the time the wild horse received federal protection in 1971, it was officially estimated that only about 17,000 of them roamed America’s plains. More than 1 million had been conscripted for World War I combat; the rest had been hunted for their flesh, for the chicken feed and dog food companies, and for the sport of it. They were chased by helicopters and sprayed with buckshot; they were run down with motorized vehicles and, deathly exhausted, weighted with tires so they could be easily picked up by rendering trucks. They were run off cliffs, gunned down at full gallop, shot in corralled bloodbaths, and buried in mass graves.”
“Like the bison, the wild horse had been driven to the edge. Enter Velma Johnston, a.k.a. “Wild Horse Annie.” After seeing blood coming from a livestock truck, she followed it to a rendering plant and discovered how America’s wild horses were being pipelined out of the West. Her crusade led to the passage of a 1959 law that banned the use of motorized vehicles and aircraft to capture wild horses. In the end, it was public outcry that ended the open-faced carnage — and it came from the nation’s schoolchildren and their mothers: in 1971, more letters poured into Congress over the plight of wild horses than any other non-war issue in U.S. history; there wasn’t a single dissenting vote, and one congressman alone reported receiving 14,000 letters. President Nixon signed the bill into law on December 15, 1971. And so the Wild Free-Roaming Horse & Burro Actwas passed, declaring that “wild horses and burros are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West; that they contribute to the diversity of life forms within the Nation and enrich the lives of the American people; and that these horses and burros are fast disappearing from the American scene.” The Act was later amended by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 and the Public Rangelands Improvement Act of 1978.”
Credit: Laura Moretti in “The History of America’s Wild Horses”, American Wild Horse Conservation
2024: The BLM’s 2024 estimates show a marked difference of 73,520 federally-protected wild horses and burros on BLM-managed public lands as of March 1, 2024. I have no idea as to such a major discrepancy from 2023 to 2024, but using the higher number as a reference, almost 74,000 is nearly three times what scientists estimate public lands can sustainably support.
I say, “says who?!”
A quick Copilot AI search reveals these population estimates from the turn of the nineteenth century to most recent estimates. You’ll note that wild horse numbers over the last two hundred years are very similar to estimates of North American Bison over the same period, though I have seen estimates during the highpoint of bison populations as high as sixty million. I have also read 6 million. Who the heck knows except to say that, at their peak, various species of American Bison were found throughout North America and not limited to the American West and they were mighty and many.
Wherever you choose to get your numbers, what is important is that the populations of American Wild Horses have fluctuated wildly over the centuries.
More recent numbers reflect the ongoing policy, efforts (and failures) to manage and protect the wild horse populations in the United States. One thing that stands out since 1971’s Free Roaming Wild Horse and Burro act is the misuse of the term “federal protection”, which is front and center in the language of this act, but has yet to be seen while these horses have been administered by BLM and other agencies acting under the auspices of the federal government.
Because herd numbers naturally vary considerably on their own and land use policy is an ever-changing storm, and, because the wild horse is generally out of the public eye unless it is in severe difficulty (when their numbers drop so low that herd gene pools are no longer viable to create healthy individuals) or someone catches a BLM helicopter which is alamingly close to the horses being rounded up for separation to public sale, or shipment for euthanization, and that one video gets loaded to YouTube and goes viral, the public finally gets to see what’s going on public (BLM administered) range-lands throughout the Western US, every year. The media only covers their plight when numbers become dangerously low or when verifiable reports of mistreatment get leaked to the public. Each time this happens, perhaps once every six to ten years, there is a huge public outcry to save these animals. Things go so far as to get heated between members the government and wild horse advocacies or people who simply care enough about what’s happening to take action and take a militant stance. Personally, I’m currently of that mindset myself and believe, as with many controversial issues, there comes a time when it becomes a final solution. The only solution. The debate has been raging since long before I was born (in 1961) and, while important legislation has been passed which should have been the template for protection of these precious animals, the government allows its agencies free reign in acting in any manner they choose. The time has come for anyone and everyone who feels a deep affinity for these key players in the history of the American West, the beautiful and historically necessary creatures that evolved alongside mankind, to choose a side: that of the American Wild Horse or their nemesis, the United States government. I want nothing more before I pass than to see this issue resolved once and for all, leaving the grandest symbol of the American West to run free for generations to come. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t care how it happens, as long as it happens. Time always tells and I have a deep-seated feeling that if we simply leave things to time, there will one day soon be no more Wild Horses to debate over. They will be forever lost to time.
Please do something. Give to a wild horse advocacy group, educate yourself on the subject. Go to YouTube and see what happens during these BLM Wild Horse roundups. I guarantee that once you come to know what’s actually happening out there on “Public Lands”, you won’t be able to help yourself from getting involved. Many people travel to these Wild Horse roundups (the times and places are a matter of public record) to prevent mistreatment that would otherwise happen, well away from watchful eyes. The more eyes we put on them along with obtaining the names and positions of those responsible, the more we can provide much needed pushback on agencies such as the BLM and the local infrastructure that is in place for them to hide behind. Many people have a hand in the destruction and are compensated for their part in the doing.
You must be logged in to post a comment.