Category Archives: Summer

Buck Brannaman and the Horses of New Mexico

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Red

(Wild Horse by James Marvin Phelps)

It’s been a tough summer for the horses of New Mexico.  The news has been filled with stories about a starving herd of wild horses near Placitas and the ongoing debate (pro and con) about the proposed horse meat processing plant in Roswell.

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(Photo by David Betzler)

It was a relief to leave behind the heartbreak and rancor of those horse stories and drive out to Trinity Ranch in Lamy to attend a Buck Brannaman horsemanship clinic last weekend.  A red-tailed hawk soared overhead as Dave and I set up our folding chairs.  Behind us in a nearby corral, a horse whinnied loudly as we settled in.

Outfitted with a microphone headset, Brannaman was in the middle of the arena surrounded by the class participants each standing by his horse, holding a lead in one hand and a training flag in the other.  It was day two of a four-day clinic and Buck was telling a story about his father counting squares of toilet paper.

The 2011 documentary about Brannaman was my introduction to his natural-style horsemanship which encourages the rider to see things from the horse’s point of view. My own experience with horses has been limited to a few vacation trail rides where I was either  dragged under low-hanging tree branches or bounced back to the barn by a bored horse looking for a bucket of oats.  Although I am an unlikely candidate for a spot in the arena, something about Buck’s plainspoken approach (Don’t make me look over there and see you loafin’) compelled me to check out his horse clinic.

A little ways into the ground work exercise, Buck could see that one of the riders, Laura, was have trouble; her pretty black horse was skittish and unresponsive.  He took the horse to the center of the arena where she continued to rear her head and whinny.  Buck showed her what he wanted using his training flag in his calm, unflappable way, over and over.  Within fifteen minutes the horse was more gentle and receptive, hooked on to Buck, recognizing and accepting his leadership.  Handing the reins back to Laura he said, “. . .  probably when you go back to work you’ll ruin half of my work, but that’s just because you haven’t learned all this yet.”

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And, what about the toilet paper story?  When Buck and his brother were kids they enraged their father by using more than their allotment, probably got a whipping for it, and were in trouble for a week.  Buck remembered that a few years later when his stepfather, Ray Hunt, got angry with him for leaving a gate open and letting a cow get out.  But after the chewing out, Ray let it go; it was over.  Buck’s lesson from that, “. . .(Ray would) make his point and get out.  It wasn’t vengeful.  It wasn’t malicious.  He simply did what it took to be effective to get a change and he was done.  In and out.”  And that’s pretty good advice even if you never get on a horse.

It’s Wednesday night.  The Valley Meat Company has still not been able to begin operations at their horse meat processing plant in Roswell due to a restraining order. Good people are taking hay to the Placitas horses and Buck is probably already in Colorado.  He starts his next clinic in Kiowa on Friday.

Starry Nights in New Mexico

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Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

-Walt Whitman

Tonight I watched Venus set in the west behind the Jemez Mountains. It seems like weeks since it’s been clear enough to check out the summer sky.

Copyright Darren KirbyI

Photo by Darren Kirby

I turned off the lights in the house and went out on the portal where I had a clear view of the Big Dipper overhead.  To the south I could see Scorpius with the red star Antares at its heart and Sagittarius, shaped like a teapot.  Chet Raymo’s book 365 Starry Nights is still my favorite star-watching guide.  I used my original copy until it fell apart and had to buy a new one; it has great line drawings and just the right mix of mythology and science.

To find out  which planets are in view this month I went to EarthSky’s website and discovered that if I get up early enough I will be able to see the trio of Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury.  Not likely . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bluestem Pack – July 2013 Update

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Mexican Gray Wolf by Don Burkett

“What’s a wolf without her pack?” by Karyn Dodier Snow Poems 2013

Every time I read Dodier’s one-line poem I am reminded of F521, the original alpha female of the Bluestem Pack.  Last year I wrote a story, “The Missing Wolves”, about that family of endangered Mexican gray wolves living in the White Mountains of Arizona.  It seems fitting that my first blog entry should be about them.

What follows is a brief history of the pack.  More information is available on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s website.

Outfitted with radio collars and released into the Blue Range Wolf Reintroduction Area (BRWRA) in 2002, the alpha pair (M507 and F521) learned quickly to hunt elk and deer and after their first year in the wild rarely bothered livestock.  They raised several litters of pups before M507 was killed by illegal gunshot in 2006.  F521 and the other pack members managed to raise the pups-of-the-year after his death and by the next breeding season M806 had joined the pack as the new alpha male.  F521 and her new mate produced a litter of pups, but it would be her last. At ten years of age she was getting old.

In 2009 F1042, one of F521’s offspring with her first mate, became the new alpha female of the Bluestem Pack.  F521 began to travel alone, sometimes running with the Fox Mountain Pack.  In December of 2010 she was shot and killed in New Mexico near the Arizona border.

F521’s legacy lived on as the Bluestem Pack continued to thrive, having new litters each year, but last summer  M806 was killed.  Once again, the pack succeeded in raising the new pups without their alpha male. That is where my story left off.

I thought about the wolves frequently as fall turned into winter.  At the end of the year the Mexican Wolf Reintroduction Project’s interagency field team (IFT) reported that the pack had at least seven members.  I wondered if  they would manage to have another litter of pups; it seemed unlikely with few potential mates for F1042.  But early in January of this year the IFT released a male wolf (M1133) near the Bluestem’s territory  hoping that he would bond with F1042.  It was an important event for the pack and also for the long term success of the Mexican gray wolves–no wolves had been released into the wild since 2008.

But the wolves didn’t bond.  The newly released M1133, traveled alone in areas where he was unlikely to find other wolves according to a press release by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD) so the IFT recaptured him.  Again, the survival of the Bluestem Pack seemed uncertain.

And then to my amazement, the June  Monthly Project Update  reported that F1042 was denning (staying close to the area where the pups would be born and raised) and had three to five new pups.  I emailed Susan Dicks, a wildlife biologist, with the USFWS and she confirmed that the Bluestem Pack has a new alpha male.  Not much is known about him, but he appears to be an uncollared  wolf.  The IFT will attempt to learn more about him in upcoming survey and capture operations.

So the Bluestem Pack lives on.   Soon the pups will begin to travel with the older members of the pack, running through alpine meadows, weaving through stands of ponderosa pines and aspen trees, learning to hunt elk.