America's Native Horses
by Annamaria Tadlock

Section 4 - Mustang Hunters

When horses began to be replaced by machinery, attitudes toward them changed. In the early and mid 1900’s, as the land became less free, horses began to be viewed as pests rather than assets. Some wild stallions-- called “Mormon horses” by ranchers -- would coax ranch mares into a wild herd. In times of drought, wild herds competed with cattle for grass and watering holes. , In Nevada, in 1897 a law backed by horse and cattle ranchers was passed to allow the shooting of unbranded horses over the age of one year to solve the ‘mustang problem’. The horse hide market exploded, but domestic stock suffered. Men began to shoot and skin ranch horses because they were easier to hunt than mustangs. One man lost $12,000 in ranch horses to mustangers in on year. Horse owners and locals who had to deal with the problems of rotting horse carcasses left on the ranges were outraged and in 1901 the bill was repealed.

Professional mustangers would catch horses and resell them as mounts. They used a number of methods; Sometimes horses were chased down and roped, chased by a number of relay riders, herded into huge corals like giant funnels, caught in rope leg holds, cut off from watering holes, or chased into a herd of tame horses which made it easier to control the herd. However, mustanging was very difficult. Every horse that got away would learn from its experience making it harder and harder to catch them the next time. Some wild stallions became famous for evading captors and were only stopped by a bullet. Anthony Amaral in Mustang writes that with every system created, “the hardiest and most intelligent horses, the best horses, continued to escape.”

Amaral’s book, describes many stories of cowboys and the mustangs they would persue. One golden palomino stallion, called El Rio Rey, became famous for his ability to outrun domestic horses. A group of men decided to tire him down by running relays. They ran his herd for 18 miles until the herd had thinned down to just the stallion and four others. El Rio Rey popped his tail into the air-- a sign of defiance-- and after the final rider had run his horse to exhaustion, he knew he’d never catch him so he pulled his revolver and shot the stallion in the head. His own horse stumbled and his gun went off, killing himself. His body was found near the stallion’s. Men occasionally died while mustanging, and many good ranch horses were run to death in pursuit of a wild band.

The pet food market and use of motorized vehicles in the 1950’s provided an opportunity for cowboys to make an income by selling mustangs by the pound. Mustang herds were drastically reduced when cowboys began to run down herds of wild horses to sell them to slaughter plants. Wild herds were massacred -- even the fastest mustang couldn’t outrun machines. Horses were sometimes run off cliffs, chased with vehicles until they collapsed, or roped and tied to tires they would drag until they fell from exhaustion. Some mustang herds survived when ranchers would claim the herds were theirs to save them from mustangers. Other herds were forced into the most inhospitable areas of their range. Mustangers began to use aircraft equipped with sirens to run the horses out of rugged areas.

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