We had a short visit to the Onaqui mustangs earlier this week. We didn’t find the North herd till just before sunset in the burn area. Found most of the South herd were South of Simpson Springs. Great clouds and sunsets!
Finally getting around to processing and posting this second batch of images from my Pryor Mountain trip. I have never taken so many photographs, but I’m glad I did. It just takes so long to sort through many thousands images.
I know there are too many photographs, but I use this site to document the horses I photograph, so I apologize in advance for all of the pictures. As you can see, the Pryor Wild horses live in a magnificent area. The surrounding terrain is nothing short of breath-taking. Enjoy!
I just got tired of processing all of my Pryor Mustang photo’s and I was missing the Onaqui. Headed out a few days ago and photographed both the South and North Herd. I haven’t photographed the Onaqui for nearly a month! Not a lot of fantastic photographs but it was nice to see all of my favorite horses!
If you have watched the documentary “Cloud – Wild Stallion of the Rockies” on PBS/Nature (by Ginger Kathrens), this is her herd. Cloud’s offspring and siblings are in this herd today. The horses are also the reason Ginger started “The Cloud Foundation“, one of the most important and successful wild horse advocacy groups ever.
It took two attempts but I eventually made it back up to photograph the Pryor Mustangs. What an experience! The wildflowers were ridiculously beautiful. The weather was great. It was around 68 degrees in the day and cooler at night. These wild horses are indeed beautiful and easy to fall in love with! If you decide to go, be sure to check in with The Pryor Mountain Mustang Center in Lovell, WY. These folks are great. They will tell you exactly where the horses are and the best way to get there! PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT THE ROADS WITHOUR REALLY GOOD TIRES! The roads are absolutely brutal. The Pryor Mountain Mustang Center does tours for a fee and it will sure save you a lot of grief unless your vehicle is up to the task of getting to the top of the mountain.
I have never taken so many photographs in a trip, and these are the result of going through less than half of my photographs. The horses are magnificent and in great health. As you can see, there is a bit of snow left, and the horses enjoy standing in the snow to cool off and perhaps get some relief from the bugs. I hope to get up to visit this herd once more before winter.
It has been a couple of weeks since I was there and I hope to finish processing my photographs later this week, then I will post the balance of my images…
As you can see by the blood on the mothers legs, this foal is a newborn. Probably delivered the day we photographer them, June 1, or possibly May 29. We didn’t want to get too close, but as we observed the foal it seemed to be exhausted. Thankfully mom was very protective and kept all horses away from her newborn.
Several hours later, we saw the foal with mom ON THE RUN through the thick dust! The foal looked GREAT! It might even have blue eyes! What a beautiful sight!
I have wanted to photograph the Pryor Mountain Wild Horses for a long time. The lead stallion was called “Cloud” and Ginger Kathrens, (founder of The Cloud Foundation) has produced many movies and written several books on these horses and Cloud in particular. Cloud has since passed, but these horses are magnificent and live in a spectacular area in Montana. In the winter they live in the red-rock lower areas. In the spring, they migrate to the beautiful wild-flower covered meadows surrounded by pine trees.
I was probably 3-4 weeks too early. The very rough 4-wheel drive road (Burnt Timber Road) was very rugged. I nearly made it to the upper meadows but unfortunately snow made the road impassable on this day. I don’t believe the horses had migrated up this far either, but I could be wrong. The horses I did find were in good shape if not a bit skinny. They are smaller than the Onaqui mustangs.
Anyway, I was able to find and photograph over 20 horses in very different conditions than the Onaqui. I hope to return soon to get to the upper meadows and continue my interaction with these beautiful wild horses. I even found a few bighorn sheep as an added bonus!
I haven’t had a chance to post at least three trips to Onaqui. The latest trip was on April 28. So many photographs to process! But I did get a once-in-a-lifetime sequence I thought I would get posted. I believe the band stallion is Valentino (grey stallion). He is chasing another stallion, (the red one), at full-speed! The red stallion steps on a slick cow pie with his left front leg (image 25-27). His leg goes out from under him. He eventually hits the ground at full-speed. Notice that even while he is sliding, he is still trying to bite the grey stallion (image 57-62).
Unfortunately they eventually go behind other horses and I lose focus, but the red horse is still trying to fight (or defend himself) from the grey stallion. The red horse immediately got up and spent the rest of the afternoon taunting the gray band stallion. More images to come.
Finally made time to get back to photograph the Onaqui. I had been below freezing all week, so I was able to navigate the frozen roads unlike weeks ago in the mud. We found the herd that was usually on the South side of Davis mountain on the East of Davis. There were 100 horses in this group. After photographing for a couple of hours, we decided to try and find another group for the evening shoot. We spotted them North of the trough watering hole on the other side of the ravine. Luckily everything was frozen so we were able to cross. Great lighting! So many opportunities. Weather was 20degrees and windy but worth every frozen minute. The herd was in good health and great spirits. Lots of activity. As usual, a remarkable day with the Onaqui.
I spent a few days in Yellowstone trying to get good photographs of wolves and other wildlife. I was very fortunate to be able to document a pair of wolves taking down a cow elk they had been chasing for hours. Several visitors asked where they could find my Yellowstone photographs. I only had cards to by utahwildhorses.com website so I told them they could see them there… Nature can be cruel and uncaring at times but after all, it is nature. I will not post the actual takedown of the cow elk here. I will post those photographs on my other site: www.ighphoto.com.
I have tried to add comments to the wolf photographs, I hope I can get them to display, the comments will try and describe what was going on in the photographs.
I have always wanted to photograph the Sulphur Wild Horses Northwest of Milford, UT because many of these wild horses draw their bloodlines from the Colonial Spanish horse. (the first horses brought to America by Spanish explorers in the 1500’s according to the BLM website). These characteristics are the very characteristics that “the Ghost” had which are zebra stripes on the rear of the legs and a dark dorsal stripe down their back. I have always felt that Ghost was originally part of this herd and migrated up every few years to have his way with the Onaqui mares.
Well, just like many other herds, I found the Sulphur herd to be nearly impossible to photograph because they are so afraid of humans. I spotted about 25-30 horses from route 21 near the Pots-Sum-Pa turnoff. I took the turnoff and before I could even come to a stop the herd was on the run. (see the third photograph in this gallery)
Had a great sunset that evening and got up early the next day to try and find some less spooky horses. Basically the same result. Even with my 500mm lens I couldn’t get any decent photographs, (fourth and fifth photograph in this gallery). Given the fact that the winds that night must have been near 35mph and not very pleasant in my little tent trailer, I packed up and moved to spend a few days with the Onaqui.
Between very warm temps, drifted snow, melting snow and a lot of mud, getting within 4 or 5 miles of the Onaqui didn’t seem likely. I found the majority of the herd very high on Davis Mountain again, but it was impossible to get across the gully to get to the roads that were still miles from the horses.
I did find a small group of Onaqui on the East of Davis Mountain that was within a mile or two of the the main road. I spent the morning with them and returned that afternoon.
On two separate occasions the herd became very frightened and stampeded for the mountains. One, when a large, loud military airplane suddenly appeared over Davis Mountain, and that afternoon when a large cattle trailer drove down the Pony Express Road. It was the same type of trailer that the Onaqui were put into when they were rounded up and driven to Delta, UT. I have seen this happen when Blackhawk helicopters fly close by, but never with a large transport jet and never with a cattle trailer. I wonder if/when the herd will ever get back to normal….
