Hunting Desert Mule Deer by Horseback, Big Horns & Mt. Lions, and Model 54 Winchester. Pert 1 of 3

[Mustangs Rule]

PART ONE OF THREE



When I first picked up a Model 54 Winchester, I felt like I was holding an invitation to a prolonged adventure in a far away land, one filled with exotic wildlife and people who spoke unpronounceable languages.



The Model 54 was Winchester’s and also the United State’s first sporting bolt action rifle. It came out in 1925, when America’s safari hungry hunters were taking steamships to parts unknown. It introduced the then totally new .270 Winchester cartridge. This rifle and this round were both instant hits in the American West, and also for anyone hunting open country horned game worldwide.



For animals that could claw, gore and bite back, it could be ordered in the 35 Whelen. That was the full equivalent of Africa’s famous and formidable

9.3 x 62 Mauser. With the proper rifling twist and heaviest bullets, the 35 Whelen was and still is a serious thin skinned dangerous game round.



The model 54 was mixture of old and new. It had a place in the receiver for WW1 era stripper clips for fast reloading, very cool. And it was chambered for the hottest new American calibers like the 220 Swift.



Next,i it was offered in so many metric cartridges. The model 54 was America’s first international bolt action rifle. You could go all over the world, hunting exotic horned wildlife, where people spoke unpronounceable languages, and still get ammunition for it.



Sadly, so many 54’ s were butchered for scope use, their bolt and safety being committed to iron sights. So hard to find an unaltered original one now.



That bolt stood out so proud of the receiver, was not notched into the stock, so it was easy to grasp and work it African PH style. The rifle butt never leaves the shooters shoulder while rapidly “palming” the bolt up, back and forward then down, never losing the sight picture. With practice it can be so fast!



I bought my 54 in 1972, for peanuts. They were not viewed as collectible yet. Instead, they were seen as a rifle that needed expensive remodeling to accept a scope. Like a WW2 military Mauser 98’s. I loved the factory installed Lyman peep sights and the African fold down leaf sights on the barrel.

Mine was 100% original and in excellent condition, exampling excellent wood to metal fit, with such a fine bore!



It was second year production, 1926 and stamped 30 GOV’T’06. I really felt proud looking at that. It had that Midnight Sky bluing that was never used again. I felt like I just bought a ticket to some as yet unknown adventure.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



In 1973, by virtue of luck, will, a love of horses and the outdoors, I came to live in a well-built modern and very remote cabin at the base of one huge desert mountain. It was just north of the Mexican border. This mountain just dominated the surrounding landscape.



The cabin was four rough miles of dirt road to a rural paved road. Then 12 miles to a small town on a very formidable mountain road



An Old Miner had built this cabin on his gold mining claim. It had fire proof metal siding and metal roof. Not long after that he died. Through a series of co-incidences, I came to live there for free, just to protect it from being vandalized.



I never saw more deer in my life,

I saw my first Desert Bighorn and so many more.

I saw my one and only Jaguarundi

My model 54 and I were going to have our adventure.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



These desert mule deer were smaller than the Rocky Mt. Mule deer but were they ever beautiful! Their coats were lighter and brighter, golden in early and late low angled sunlight. They were long legged to be able cover lots ground searching for food and water. And their ears were size XL to act as blood cooling radiators.



That light color was meant to reflect the suns hot rays away rather than absorb the heat as did the darker coats of the north country deer.



The location of this cabin had the dice of fate roll favorably for me in so many ways. The immense amount of land surrounding it was a mixture of a huge odd shaped private ranch, BLM public land and state public land.



This ranch was really shaped irregular, with lots of big no trespassing signs, liberally placed by the ranch cowboys to scare off hunters. This was long before GPS devices. Hunters believed the signs, so plenty of public land was not hunted.



Power lines were brought in to service a distant winter desert retirement community and the electric lines were close enough to the cabin that an affordable spur line allowed it to have standard electric power. But no phone.



Once a month the meter reader would make a long drive for a bill that was always under $5, except in summer heat, when the AC was needed. That was when Electrical Service Companies offered real service.!



Actually, on hot days the coolest place was in the gold mine.



The entrance was so huge I could just walk right in with my arms spread sideways. It was open, not creepy at all or filled with bats and snakes. The entrance faced the north and it really cooled down at night. It was like a “Stone Living Room”, carved out of solid granite, no need for timbers that could crumble. The floor was like a flat sandy beach. I thought the gold mine would be great place to hang a deer during the day.



I had a cot, chair and table in there with an old-fashioned typewriter.



---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



The Big Horn sheep were all over the mountain's higher reaches. I learned how and where and when to look for them. There were ample springs.



The deer were mostly in this mountain mid-level greenish folds and in lower small box canyons on the cooler north and wetter side. Access was long and hard on foot and coming home was steep uphill.



The weather and where the wildlife were could all change in a heartbeat with arrival of the summer to fall Arizona Monsoons which brought big thunderstorms up from the tropics. Both desert deer and desert bighorns have later breeding seasons and will drop their fawns and lambs to match these summer monsoons



Then there is “a green up” and the wild sheep and deer moved around much more.



On the flat dry lakes, called “Playas”, they could suddenly become very shallow wet lakes. Many animals actually chased these thunder heads and their tracks were all around in the mud: Big Horn Sheep, hoof tips were blunt, while desert mule deer, hoof tips were pointed. Birds came as did Mt. Lions.



Lions however, were never true residents of the deep dry deserts until cattle ranchers started drilling shallow windmill powered wells that filled cattle troughs. Then the lions came in and stayed. If wild sheep were not used to lions, they could suffer huge losses until they wised up, which they most always did. Then the Bighorns turned the tables on the lions.



Another problem that desert cattle ranchers caused, was creating stocks ponds with earth dams. They were and still are everywhere and denied entire watersheds the needed water to produce so many feed plants for wildlife.



And now there is new dark twist.



Larger more powerful tropical storms are going further north, carrying tropical mosquitoes with diseases such as encephalitis and dengue fever.

These cow ponds are disease pits. The worst mosquito attacks I have ever experienced were in the deserts. Small and vicious ones.



More on water



The shallow well for my cabin filled the tank with only about 2 feet of water during the dry summer. Just enough.



At some point the water smelled and tasted “off”. I checked it out and saw a half dozen ground squirrels and big rats floating all bloated with big swollen eyes. Lots of cleaning, chlorine bleach, drain and refill, then tightening up access holes for rodents was required. I boiled the drinking water.



Way above my cabin, at the base of the mountain there was a huge meadow in a mile long valley. Green through winter and spring, then dry during the summer until the monsoons. It had lots of buckwheat, and other rich grasses that when dried retained high levels of nutrition. Four miles away on a rocky, rough jeep trail, there was a year-round small creek that ended up disappearing into the hot desert sand.



Following it upstream, there was a Native American village site with bedrock mortar grinding holes. I ground the buckwheat I collected in the high meadow in them and made flower for buckwheat pancakes.



Further up there was rock art, made by people who spoke unpronounceable languages. Later, I would meet some of their ancestors, become friends and joined him just once when he hunted on ancestral land. I just tagged along, could not actually hunt there. Regardless, I sure learned so much from someone whose people who had been desert residents for 10,000 years.



Going back to the high meadow, at the bottom of it, there was a grove of large mesquite trees. They are great shade/nurse trees, are natural nitrogen fixers that fertilize the soil and offer protection to delicate green plants from too much sunlight. Quail loved being under them and were in great numbers.



I hunted them of course, with an early Savage model 24 410/22. It had the plastic stock and was my only other firearm.



Please wait to post a reply until I post Part 2 and Part 3. It would be nice to have them continuous.



Only take a few minutes’



Thank you

MR

i

 

[Mustangs Rule]

PART TWO OF THREE



After shooting some quail, (I reject the term “harvest”, game animals are not ears of corn!) I would pick some fallen dry branches. Roasting quail seasoned with true sage over mesquite coals is other worldly.



The same went for cottontails. I made up some very very light loads for my model 54 30-06 A lead bullet pushed by 12 grains of Unique. More than needed for head shots on cottontails but great practice.



Mesquite is a member of the honey locust family of trees. Before the Caribbean white sugar industry began poisoning us, honey locust pods were ground for a sweetener in my native New England.



At lower drier areas the mesquite trees were smaller. Either way, any deer living on mesquite pods will be delicious.



Speaking again of something being other worldly, one day when going quail hunting, I saw the one and only Jaguarundi of my life. Normally they are a tropical wild feline, but they, and other exotic wildlife from Mexico traveled up into these mountains often. Rumors of the huge Jaguars still coming there would prove true some years later



This huge meadow/valley with the Mesquite tree groves was BLM public land, and as per the norm, cattle overgrazing kept it near constant state of dust. Then something wonderful happened!



The large spring that filled a cattle watering trough almost totally dried up. That was the end of running cattle there. There was still enough water however for game animals but not for a herd of cattle.



That was how it was when I got there! All the wildlife and the land had been recovering. Even the Desert Bighorn Sheep were in good numbers all over the high mountain. They were fully protected.



I did not find out till later that Fish and Game rangers would be parked and using spotting scopes miles away to catch wild sheep poachers.



After seeing me hiking up that mountain one day, they came over to check me out.



Sometimes I saw the desert sheep with binoculars. One of my heroes when I was in my teens was Jack O’Connor the great wild sheep hunter/

Thinking of him, I made many successful practice stalks. My goal was to get within a few hundred yards or less unnoticed.



When the Rangers came. was unarmed and explained to the Rangers that I lived at the Old Miners cabin and liked getting close to sheep sometimes. All was well and they shared lots of desert sheep knowledge with me, like when the sheep should be left alone.



For so long Desert sheep populations had very low numbers. So, I declined to put in for a tag even to earn points.



The same went for one of the rangers who was a biologist and hunter. He also refused to apply for a tag when wild sheep populations were so marginal.



When sheep numbers really did increase, I put in for the only tag offered for a huge all wilderness desert hunt zone. I drew it!



What enriched my time here was seeing so much of this country by horseback rather than any form of internal combustion horsepower.



My preference is horse farts not exhaust fumes.



I grew up on the edge of horses. I could just recall seeing my grandfather's farm worked by two draft horses, Dick and Dan. My mother told me stories of riding such beasts in from pasture, bareback when she was a girl.



My young world cracked wide open when my parents and I went to my maternal grandfather's farm one Sunday, as was our custom. I ran into the horse barn, and they were gone, replaced by shiny red used Farm all Super H tractor.



When 16 I worked on a quarter horse breeding ranch, mostly shoveling poop, lunging the yearlings in a huge round pen, keeping them moving in a circle by loudly cracking a bullwhip. Later I got to work with the breeder back in the days before artificial insemination.

Only women were allowed to actually train horses on this ranch. I came to understand why.



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Leaving my cabin, I could drive about 8 miles to the main canyon, where a woman horse trader/trainer had her ranch. She had plenty of horses, but a shortage of teeth.



She was a sweetheart of a trainer, started handling the foals right after being dropped. Tying pillows on their backs when they were nursing on mom. Picking up their feet up then too and straddling them. Such a great gentle way to “Not-break” a horse.



What she wanted was some easy-going horseman to ride her many of her young horses,,,,,, a lot. So I built a corral at my cabin and had a string of easy-minded willing horses to ride and finish them off.



I was spending most of every day on horses using my Buckaroo Bronc saddle with Oxbow stirrups, real old school. These saddles had a super deep seat, with wide wings for the pommel to lock your thighs under when a horse bucked up.



That kept you from becoming a bird in flight but if the horse ever went over on you it was as bad as bad could be. These saddles had narrow tree for the narrow chested horses back then that more mustang blood in them



Later quarter horses ruled. They were rounder. I preferred the narrower chested horses. The saddle stayed put better on them.



The oxbow stirrups were just a round metal ring, sometimes wrapped in leather and they offered an entirely different ride than modern more triangular stirrups with flat bottoms. Now riders keep their heels down



With Oxbow ring stirrups cowboys rode with their toes pointed down, hence the need for big cowboy boot heels. This involved a much deeper commitment with your foot. It could really help not losing your foot with a bucking horse, but if things went bad, they could go terribly bad.



Still, I preferred oxbow stirrups and a Buckaroo Bronc saddle.



The big private ranch had a riding trail on it for public use that allowed going from the low desert to the mountains. That was very good of them. I dropped down from my mountain cabin riding on a green appaloosa gelding.



It was a hot day left the trail to catch some shade in a grove of mesquite trees alongside a dry arroyo.



A herd of range cattle were bedded down there, and we spooked them. For about the longest 5 or 6 seconds of my life it was “horns, hooves and cactus” on both sides. I rode out the cattle stampede.



I know that saddle save me from getting thrown and trampled. At the end I will include a site with a painting by the western cowboy artist Frederick

Remington titled “Stampede” There is a cowboy in it riding for his life.

Look close at his foot, he is riding with Oxbow stirrups with toes pointing down.



I did a lot of shooting around the corral too, until the horses treated a gunshot with a yawn.



That woman horse trainer also raised and butchered goats and would do that around her horses then put the butchered goats on them. Some were easier about it, others not so. Those that were accepting would be candidates for hunting horses.



Come fall I had two horses to hunt deer with but long before that I got to really know this desert mountain, surrounding canyons and the wildlife by horseback.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



I began to realize that this entire area, with the cattle gone, not being hunted much at all for either deer or predators, not being run over by ATV’s and with State Fish and Game Rangers regularly paroling for sheep poachers, was becoming an ideal model for range and wildlife restoration. And was doing it on it’s own, becoming wilderness again



No better example could be had than the Mt. Lion and deer relationship/ratio.

Everywhere I rode on or around that mountain, I kept seeing the tracks of just one Big Tom Mt. Lion, who was patrolling “His Territory”.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



When I left for the west two years earlier, in my modest F-100 camper van, my library consisted cardboard box with three books in it



One, was a complete volume of every story Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about his fictional hero, Sherlock Homes.



Two, was a hard-to-find paperback copy of “Game in the Desert” by Jack O’Connor. I now have a leather-bound reprint of my favorite book by my teenage hunting hero.



The third book was a hardbound copy of “A Field Guide to Animal Tracks” (1954) by Olaus Murie. Every elk hunter should know and honor him. When the west had been turned into an overgrazed, and poisoned feedlot without fences, when there were only a few pockets of elk left, his vast field research

turned the tide. He has, with full justification, been called the “Father of Elk Restoration in North America”. Inspired by his tracking skills, for many years

I lived to track.

 

[Mustangs Rule]

I am going to have to finish this later, Something has really gone wrong.

 

[Mustangs Rule]

PART THREE OF THREE



I measured that one Big Tom Mt. Lions stride, straddle, track depth in various substrates, measured every intermediate pad of all for feet, every toe pad and with a protractor. I measured all the angles of every toe for all four feet.



I was tracking the same Big Tom everywhere.



Next, other than him and a few of his “ladies and cubs” there was not one track from a sub-adult male, anywhere in his realm.



This is what a true wilderness was like. The old king kills or runs off any potential competitors. If he is killed by hunters or gets weak and dies, then the vacuum will be filled with lots of young sub-adult males. During this period the deer population will fall with excess predators, until a new Big Tom establishes dominance again, drives sub adult males off or kills them. Then the lion population crashes and then deer and Bighorn populations can rebound quickly.



All these deer were here because the cattle were gone, and there was no need to protect them by hunting lions. The actual lion hunting was done by the Big Tom. All that equaled no sub adult male lions and more deer.



That is how real wilderness works. It does not require our “fixing” it, but it does require our protecting it mainly by letting it be and keeping cows out.



I gave the two Fish and Game Rangers an invitation to drop by my cabin anytime. A couple times a month they did. One was a field biologist.

They were curious about my observations and I was curious about theirs.



The year before there had been a flyover count of both deer and bighorns. This mountain and it’s canyons was doing very well.



I shared my Big Tom Mt. Lion tracking data and my conclusions. They agreed and added more of the lesson they learned.



One of the most critical factors in a Desert Bighorn restoration project is having enough feed. Four jackrabbits equal one deer or one sheep. Having sufficient number of coyotes and bobcats is critical to control jackrabbits. The desert version of these medium predators are too small to represent a serious threat.



I was reading last year about a bighorn sheep restoration project in a place I knew very well. The first thing that needed to be done to insure enough feed, was ban predator hunting to keep the jackrabbit population low. The southwestern deserts are a different world than up north. Next they got rid of the cows and put the windmill shallow wells out of service.



The last thing we talked about was the abundant quail. Their biggest threat were ground nest egg eaters like foxes and ring-tails ( like small raccoons).

What kept the egg eaters under control were bobcats and coyotes.



One day I shared all this “new information” with my Native American friend.

He smiled. He said his people learned such things thousands of years ago.



That was why his people rarely killed predators, especially bobcats and coyotes around their villages, because they killed rattlesnakes



My Native American friend hunted with an ancient Savage 99 chambered in Savage 300 It was his grandfathers only rifle, his fathers too, and then his





Deer Hunting season.



One of the real great things about some of those model 54’s was how very thin the Schnabel stock forend was. About as thin as a Model 94 where it counts, where your knee lays against the saddle fender. If there is a fat bump there, it will bother your knee pretty quick. My model 54 was fine.



I decided not to go to the mesquite forest to hunt deer. It was far enough that I would have to drive my truck and get there just before dawn.



Instead, I wanted not to use a motor vehicle, and simply saddle my horse and leave directly from my cabin. I had two horses to use but two was too much.



I chose a young Appaloosa gelding I had named “Jug-head”. Appaloosa’s have the most homely eyes and extra sensitive cancer prone skin. This horse belonged to the Lady Trainer and I had rode and worked him more than any other.



(Years later I would have an Appaloosa of my own. He was a wonderful horse but developed cancer around his mouth and had to be put down. No more Appaloosas !)



I had not rushed the season, waiting until there was several chilly days. Better for meat care and better to have the ever present rattlesnakes not be active.



Jug-Head and I left at first light, right from my cabin. The only time constraints being the morning thermals. On the north side they would be falling till about 8:30 to 9 AM.



It was a 45 minute horseback ride down the canyon to an oak tree with lots of green plants under it from the fall monsoon rains. It had big horizontal spreading limb about nine or ten feet off the ground.



I had ridden there weeks earlier doing my deep scouting. I cleaned up the dead branches under the limb. There was an exposed root. With a little garden shovel in my saddle bags, I dug it out enough to feed a rope under it.



About 150 yards further down there was a small spur to a steep box canyon where the Desert Mule deer were often bedding.



Hunting is 90% scouting and prep with rest being 10% luck.

,

It was about 7:30 when we got to the oak tree. I ground tied my horse to the root, and left him to graze on a long lead rope, that had been part of his training. I took his saddle off.





I had taken out the “screw in” fine peep sight, which just left the big hole as a fast “Ghost Ring”. Jack O’Connor did the same thing with his model 54. With a jackknife I had scrapped the flat little piece of brass on my front sight. It was now shiny. Good thing, this box canyon was narrow and shaded.



I replaced my cowboy boots with a pair of brown tennis shoes, and took off my wide brimmed cowboy hat, and replaced it with a baseball hat.



My binocular strap just barely went over my head. That is how I made it so the binoculars would stay high and tight against my chest.



My favorite size binoculars are 6 x 30.



They have such incredible depth of field. They can focus from close up to infinity. They are so simple, with no center focusing mechanism. Just adjust each individual lens to match that eye and you are done. The are so quick and cheap, can be bought used on EBay for under $50. Mostly all made in Japan, some were stamped made in “Occupied Japan”.



I checked my binoculars to make sure both lens offered a crisp focus near and far. They did,



There is a sailing term called “Land Jive” It describes all the things one does until that moment when you undo your bow and stern lines from the dock cleats and push off, free your boat from all contact with land and catch your first luff of wind.



For me that point in hunting comes, when I load my rifle fully, with a round in the chamber, check my safety, walk away with my rifle in my left hand and little squeeze bottle of ashes in my right hand. I checked the wind.



The air currents were falling and in my favor. Now I was really hunting!



When I did my scouting I flushed a covey of quail as I entered the box canyon. I needed to watch out for that and go in extra slowly to allow the any quail to just run away and not flush.



------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



I recall a low desert deer hunt when the wind was in my favor and I was in the final stage of desert deer wilderness tracking hunt that had gone on for days. When darkness came, I would just go to sleep where ever his tracks took me. Then in the early morning I would pick up the trail again, my favorite hunts.



This took me to a mesquite tree grove, and I could see the bucks antler tips moving with the branches of little mesquite tree he was eating seed pods from.



Nothing could go wrong now. Then I walked past a roost tree for these small desert owls and they flushed Game over!



------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



I expected these deer would be bedded by now, so I was looking for ears and antlers sticking up in the grassy brush. While scouting I found lots of deer beds all over this box canyon plus so many fresh droppings.



After about 10 very slow moving minutes going in, about 80 yards away on the canyon side, I saw three bucks laying down with just their heads up, all in this tangle of branches, antlers, twigs and brush. No clear shot possible.



My experience is that while whitetail deer just explode and are gone in flash when frightened. Wilderness Mule deer however, unless totally scared, will stand up for two or three seconds to assess a potential threat before running away.



From behind a tree, I was looking at all this with my binoculars and I made clicking sound with my mouth. All three bucks heads perked way up, were now looking right towards me. I picked the one I wanted and dropped my binoculars to my chest and picked up my rifle.



Then I made another clicking sound.



Three bucks stood up. My shiny front sight stood out clear. One buck collapsed, two ran away in their up and down bouncing gate with their heads cocked and their ears folded back to see behind them while going forwards too.



The middle-sized buck lay dead. He was bigger than the runt, and I spared the much more mature buck. It is so bad for the deer herd’s gene pool for hunters to always try to kill the best.



It was easy to drag him down to mouth of the little box canyon. Then I walked up, saddled Jug-Head and rode him back to the dead buck.



I put the lariat loop around the bucks 3×3 antlers, dallied the other end around the saddle horn and we dragged this buck up to the oak tree with the big overhanging limb.



It was important to put two ropes on his antlers. I threw both over the limb. I wrapped one around the saddle horn, the other dropped near the exposed root.



I led Jug-Head forward, the deer rose up high. I dropped his reins. Jug-Head stayed still. The lady horse trainer did a good job teaching him to be “ground tied” when the reins were dropped.

 

[Mustangs Rule]

Gonna have to do a part four.

 

[Mustangs Rule]

The second rope I tied to the exposed root, then backed my horse up and took the rope off the saddle horn. The buck was hanging free.



I tied Jug-Head up to a small tree limb, then gutted and skinned out the buck. When done, with a little juggling and grabbing I managed to get him on my saddle without him ever touching the dirt.



I walked home leading Jug-Head with the buck on him



The Lady Horse trainer would always bring a mare and her foal into a horse trailer and let the foal nurse over and over in there. Horses so trained think of mothers milk when going in a trailer.



The mouth of the gold mine cave looked just like an open trailer to Jug-Head.



I had driven a railroad spike into crack in the top of the cave. With a little juggling I got the buck off and hanging then backed Jug-Head out and put him in the corral. Without question Jug-Head was the best hunting horse I ever rode. His training was second to none.



---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



One spring day I was driving downhill on the only straight smooth part of the dirt road going to town. A huge mountain lion loped across the road right where there was a major game trail.



I put the clutch in, turned the key off and slowly and quietly coasted down to where he crossed, barely moving and stopped at the crossing.



My window was down, there he was, the Big Tom, the totem animal of this entire desert mountain ecosystem, was waiting for me, only ten feet away.



How many times I had crossed his trail, then backtracked to see he had backtracked first. We got personal, crapped on each other’s crap, and peed on each other’s pee. I found many of his kill sights. I wished him well and was grateful for him chasing away or eating all those sub-adult males.



On some level, in which time is measured in “Kalpas” the deer and the Wild Sheep were grateful too. Because of him, they prospered.



We just looked at each.



If I wrote about what passed between us, what happened next, you would think me to be either a liar or crazy, so I will say no more.



This entire adventure was now complete. In a few months I moved away. That was in 1974, Fifty-one years ago. I did not hunt again for several years, doing other things, going to other places, where people spoke unpronounceable languages.



I never hunted with my Model 54 Winchester rifle again, but now and then I like bringing it out, holding it and remembering.

MR

Winchester Model 54 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Mustangs Rule]

The stampede painting

The Stampede (1908) by Frederic Remington – Artchive

www.artchive.com

Now I am DONE!!!!!
So much having to break it up.

 

[Mustangs Rule]

Ohh go to the beginning PART ONE
.
No way I could have done this backwards

 

[Slam]

Thank you for a well written, entertaining story.

Foot placement in stirrups: My father was a polo player and my mother an accomplished professional equestrian. As a youth my brothers and I were expected to help exercise the ponies several nights a week. We received the same three commands on a regular basis: sit up straight, toes up heels down & stay out of the horses mouth.

Having witnessed two people get thrown off with a foot hung in a stirrup and dragged for quite a distance my main saddle has break away stirrups.

 

[Mustangs Rule]

Thank you for a well written, entertaining story.

Foot placement in stirrups: My father was a polo player and my mother an accomplished professional equestrian. As a youth my brothers and I were expected to help exercise the ponies several nights a week. We received the same three commands on a regular basis: sit up straight, toes up heels down & stay out of the horses mouth.

Having witnessed two people get thrown off with a foot hung in a stirrup and dragged for quite a distance my main saddle has break away stirrups.

Regarding my oxbow stirrups, you are right beyond right, in the context of a modern world where kids never ride a pedal bike nowadays without a helmet.

I disliked equally Harley Davidson and Japanese motorcycles. I adored classic British made motorcycles like BSA, Triumph and Nortons. I loved wind blowing through my hair. When helmets became required, I sold my last one.

Those old cowboy boots had slick leather soles and heals.
About 8 years ago i needed new soles on the last really "old school" pair of cowboy boots I owned. I took them to a real old school shoemaker who I am sure it dead now.

He was one of the last shoemakers who was able to put a rounded arch in boots to match the round at the bottom of an Oxbow Stirrup. Otherwise riding in them would hurt as the weight of our body was concentrated on two points on the outside of our arch, rather than being evenly spread out.
Riding with Oxbow stirrups was a completely different ride.
It took the flex of the ankle out of the equation.

Would I use them now at 77 years old, NO. But that was a different window of time. Walking any distance in those boots with such tall heels was a chiropractor's nightmare, but I was young, and the cowboys i hung out with were young, and they hung on to old ways.
I am glad I had the opportunity to live out such a wild and wooly window of time.
Some nights after riding all day, I did not even come home.
I just slept under the stars with a saddle for a pillow. Then got up in the morning to find my well hobbled horse.
My greatest horse adventure was riding the Camino de Santiago across northern Spain. I road in a very cushioned English style saddle, with my heels down.
Thanks for the response and words of wisdom.
Here comes a song for you.

youtube my heroes have always been cowboys - Search Videos

www.bing.com

 

[longbow51]

Thanks; very well written; evocative of a time many of us miss.

 

[Mustangs Rule]

Thanks; very well written; evocative of a time many of us miss.

https://www.tiktok.com/video/7348963530932047109

 

[EKYHunter]

Posting these for @Mustangs Rule.

 

[Caseknife]

Good story, @Mustangs Rule. I have two Model 54 30 Gov't 06 rifles both still with the Lyman peeps.

 

[F250]

Great story. I too have a Model 54 in .270 . It was purchased by my grandfather who passed before I was born, inherited by my father who passed and then inherited by me. Taken a couple mule deer with it.