Catch & Release
The Wild Horse Refuge is a private, non-profit 22,450 acre ranch where captured horses bought at auction are released back into the wild. Pat Craig bought the ranch in 2022 and since then has continued to buy horses rounded up by the BLM. This includes some well known horses like Michelangelo, seen below, offspring of perhaps the most famous of the known wild horses, Picasso.
These were the most magnificent wild horses we’d seen, moving freely in large groups, less divided into bands than elsewhere. Part of this was that the stallions had been gelded before leaving the BLM pens. No stallions, no battles, but also no offspring.
We watched as a herd of thirty or forty horses charged down into a valley and then up to the other side after they had seen us. Led by an “out of bounds” mare who had wandered into BLM lands before being rounded up, she was not going to be captured again. Neither were any of her herd if she could help it.
This was the Four Seasons of wild horse refuges. A hundred horses, just right for the acreage, and hay aplenty in the winter months, thanks to Pat Craig and his crew. No uncertain survival as in the BLM lands, where the winter months can wipe out much of the herd.
We drove up and down miles of dirt and two track roads, the reserve being over thirty-five square miles. The horses moved from grazing area to grazing area, only showing up at the water holes in the morning and evening. Heavy snow and rain from last winter meant a proliferation of new water sources throughout the refuge. Finding the horses was no picnic. We felt lucky to have had a glimpse of them..