Wild Mustangs roam the prairies and sage covered ranges in 16 (plus) areas of Wyoming. The Wyoming Bureau of Land Management oversees 16 Horse Management Areas (HMA) scattered throughout the state. The combined areas total over 3,600,000 acres and host roughly 3,700 horses. The Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range straddles the northern Wyoming boundary near Lovell, WY, but is not listed on the Wyoming BLM HMA map.
In 1971 Congress Created the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act. The act recognized horse’s place in American history and set aside areas in many states for them to continue to roam. Wild horses, or mustangs, can be a hot topic for some. Opponents suggest they are an invasive species, taking up space on public lands, and have no rights to be protected. Mustang lovers take the polarized viewpoint and fight equally hard to protect them. If you are so inclined, check out Mustang – Wikipedia. The link covers the issues fairly well.
I tend to fall on the Mustang lover side of the issue. Very few of the mustangs we might find today have any bloodlines that can be traced to horses brought back to the Americas by the early Spaniards. Instead, our wild horses are more properly defined as feral horses — descended from once-domesticated horses. Some of today’s horses may have been introduced into the American West by trappers, traders, settlers, and gold miners, and those horses probably intermixed with descendants of the 16th century Spanish horses.
Over 50+ years, the Mustangs we see in our HMAs have reverted to their wild ways — and that’s where I come into the scene.
A Horse is a Horse of Course: A wild Mustang looks essentially the same as any horse you might see grazing in pastures along most roads in the U.S. At least for me, the two aspects that distinguish them from domestic horses are the dramatic backdrop of their surroundings and the fighting behavior of the stallions.
Herd Dynamics: I’ve been photographing the wild horses for quite a few years now. My earliest digital shots were taken in 2006 at Rock Springs, WY. I became immediately hooked! Wild horses are unlike any of the large animals I see here in the Tetons. A herd can consist of 75 or more animals, made up of small bands consisting of a stallion and three to five mares, some with offspring. Occasionally, a stallion will be content with only one mare, while others manage to hold on to eight to ten mares. Around the edges, satellite stallions watch for an opening to steal a mare or two of their own.
A Band’s Stallion must constantly run off the pesky challengers. Unlike bison, moose, elk and deer that pair up or gather harems during the fall rut, mustangs stallions maintain their bands year round. Stallions tolerate a young stallion with his band until they become old enough to challenge him.
Mares usually drop their foals in May or June and go back into “season” within around nine days. As a result, May and June are the active months with stallions fighting and chasing off challengers. All images on this page were taken on a single trip to McCullough Peaks HMA in mid May of 2015.
Watching Paint Dry: The horses spend much of their day grazing on grasses mixed in with the sagebrush. It’s usually easy to fill card after card with individual horses, standing or grazing. Occasionally, a mare will graze to within feet of me. Without a lot of notice, two stallions posture for a few seconds and then rear up to kick or bite a nearby stallion. Action can be intense yet sometimes very short lived. Action is often more predictable near the water holes.
Most stallions are covered with bite marks and scars. The older stallions have more of each. Mares are often smooth and clean. Neither will have ever felt the tug of a comb or brush, nor will have ever worn a horseshoe.
The Wild Horse Topic is Complicated: Congress created the act that protects “wild horses”. After over 50 years of roaming their allotted ranges, they are truly wild in nature, regardless of their linage. All you have to do is spend a day with them to understand that fact. Wild horses have few predators. If left alone, their populations can double in three or four years, and without regular roundups, they could graze themselves out of their ranges. The “gathers” put horses in the BLM’s holding facilities faster than they can be adopted, taxing the BLM’s budgets. The sometimes brutal nature of the gathers draws public scrutiny and the attention of news media. To complicated matters, the BLM lands allocated for the horses are designated as “multi-use” lands —sometimes leased to sheep herders and cattle ranchers. Horses must compete on the leased grazing lands. I have yet to visit a Wyoming HMA that anyone would consider “prime lands”. Instead, most of them are on large tracts of meager, dry sagebrush flats. Year round food is limited and water supplies are even less dependable. Lawsuits by both sides are constant.
The act that protects the animals also puts them in jeopardy.
“To promote healthy conditions on the range, the BLM determines what it calls the Appropriate Management Level (AML), which is the number of wild horses and burros that can thrive in balance with other public land resources and uses. Wild horses and burros that exceed AML (which is 26,715) are to be removed from the range, in accordance with the 1971 law, as amended.” Source: Wild Horse and Burro Quick Facts – Bureau of Land Management
Once a herd’s Appropriate Management Level is exceeded, the BLM is required to gather and remove excess horses. Like I said, the topic is complicated.
The Invisible Backdrop: If you to scroll back up the page and view each image again, the preceding section might change the way you view them. Politics and lawsuits are constantly at play, yet the horses on the range have no knowledge of any of it. Stallions fight to hold on to their small group of mares and foals from young stallions willing to fight (at times) until one of them is hurt. Unlike lions that kill the offspring of their defeated predecessors, stallions adopt all foals into its new band willingly and will fight to protect them. Young stallions often assemble with aging or defeated stallions until they can recover. Once they see a hint of weakness in another band stallion, they begin their new challenges. To a passerby, the wild horses on the range might appear like other domesticated horses along the highway, but that would be far from accurate!
If you are interested in seeing Wild Mustangs, do a few Internet searches on the topic and click on the links at the bottom of this post. Information is plentiful and readily available. My favorite Wyoming HMAs are the McCullough Peaks area (outside Cody, WY) and Little Colorado / White Mountain area (outside Rock Springs, WY). Both are roughly 190 miles from Jackson. A four wheel drive vehicle with good tires is recommended. The areas are remote and primitive, so go prepared with water and snacks and a full tank of gas. Many areas have cell phone service if you get into trouble. The map below identifies all 16 Wyoming HMAs and the links under the map takes you to a specific page for each area.
Wyoming HMA Map
Adobe Town | Antelope Hills | Conant Creek | Crooks Mountain | Dishpan Butte | Divide Basin | Fifteenmile | Green Mountain | Little Colorado | Lost Creek | McCullough Peaks | Muskrat Basin | Rock Creek | Salt Wells | Stewart Creek | White Mountain
Likely to Leave Another Mark: All of these images were taken in May of 2015 at McCullough Peaks. I’ve been there many times and know the area fairly well now. You can pick up a map of most areas at the local BLM offices and you can learn a lot by simply viewing Google Maps for an area. Water holes and streams play an important part in the horse’s daily activities, so look for and find them. I’ve never found these mustangs to be aggressive towards humans, but be sure to use caution when in the field. I’ve heard of a few stallions willing to chase photographers back to their vehicles. I went back to the same area in October, but found almost no fighting between stallions. I’ve been there in the winter, hoping to get dramatic fighting scenes against the snow covered sage, but they appeared to be content to graze the day away. Over the past few years, the BLM has been darting the mares with PZP to inhibit reproduction. That seems to be working, as there have been very few foals on the ranges.
The title on this page is defined as Wyoming’s Fighting Stallions. Most of what happens daily is well orchestrated and fairly predictable. A band stallion will always stand between his mares and a potential younger stallion threat. He moves his mares away from the threat by “snaking” them to a safer area, but will turn and confront a chasing stallion. Sometimes, a little posturing is all it takes. Other times, biting and kicking is required to settle the dispute. Still, most of the day is spent lazily grazing before heading to water.
Image Comments: Images on this page were taken with either a Nikon D800 or D4 and a Tamaron 150-600mm lens.