The Rodeo Club used wild (feral) horses as bucking stock for our rodeo. The rodeo started in the 1930s. Eventually a Montana rodeo producer provided the stock. When World War II started, many of the cowboys joined the military. While they were gone, the rodeo continued, but it was too expensive to hire a producer. Local ranchers brought in horses that were tough to ride or hadn’t been tamed, and calves to rope.
As tractors started taking over the work of horses, many of the ranchers sold their horses to packing plants. Others turned a few head out into the forest or to areas of their ranch where they would be out of the way. Most of them kept a few head of riding horses around, and when those horses got older, they were put out to pasture as well.
Two of the ranchers in our country had hundreds of horses. One in particular had several thousand head on various pastures, some within a very few miles and others not so close but accessible for those who love to chase horses…