There’s none of the hustle-bustle and “insiders-only” atmosphere that you’d feel at a local livestock auction barn, where most of the buyers are old pros and a newcomer hardly knows what’s going on. No, here all is done with simplicity and casualness. Facility manager Pat Hofmann kicks things off with a spiel on how things are done. 

Much of what Hofmann says pertains to after-the-sale matters. Buyers “adopting” these wild horses must maintain required standards—which include inspections from BLM employees, sometimes without advance warning—and the strictures stay in place for an entire year. After that, the “adoption” becomes final.

He talks about things like fences—they’re supposed to be 6 feet high—and about feed. “You could put grain in front of them,” he says, “but they probably won’t know what it is.”

This big (200-acre) place is not the typical wild horse adoption site. It’s really a sort of regional feeding-and-care facility for managing the wild horses and burros until they can be dispersed out to the “real” adoption locations, which lie in locales throughout the four-state region of New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Sales are held here only because it is convenient for local (southern Oklahoma) buyers. Some of the horses are sent out to prisons in Helena, Okla., and Hutchinson, Kan., where they are gentled and broken by prison inmates and later adopted out.

In the sorting pens, a snorty bunch of youngsters skitters about anytime anyone ventures too close. With these wild things, the younger the better, it seems, and many of the offerings here are weanlings. 

In all the pens and alleys the fences are the same—higher than the average person’s head. In some of the sections, the top rail, a steel tube, is bent. It’s the early arrivals who try those sorts of tricks. 

PHOTO COURTESY OF BLM

This morning as the sale begins, Rachel Manriquez, an 8-year-old from Edmond, Okla., with her parents in tow, has taken a fancy to two of them: one a roan filly, the other a bay stud colt. Her parents will pick up both of them for a mere $125 each. No one even bids against them. That’s not uncommon. And burros sell for much less.

Seeing these horses brought down the alley to the loading chute is a different experience than seeing domestic animals worked. Like about five times faster. Somehow, everyone manages. Hofmann works the horses while riding one of the program’s “mascots,” a buckskin named Radar that was once a wild horse himself. 

Bob Mitchell, regional manager for the program, said that in the 23 years since the nation began its Wild Horse and Burro Adoption Program, some 200,000 animals have been adopted through the various regional offices.

“Locally, we’re adopting, in our four-state area, about 1,000 per year. Nationally, the figure is around 7,500 per year. What we’re trying to do is get the population numbers down to management levels in the Western ranges—which is about 27,000 wild horses. Currently the number is at about 37,000. We want to maintain an existing program out there, but just need to reduce the numbers further, and the adoption program is the only outlet that Congress has allowed for that.”

This location gets horses to its satellite adoption centers—accounting for most of that 1,000-per-year total, but here in Pauls Valley they only adopt out about 200 animals per year, and their carrying capacity is about 300 animals at any given time.

Chris Tincher, public affairs specialist for the local BLM, says that recently one of the program’s mascots, a horse they called Charlie Brown, was adopted out for “just under $2,000.” 
“Dakota is now our veteran,” she says of the remaining mascots. “He’s the one I’ve taken to school programs lately, and TV appearances. He’s so gentle now that when the girl scouts come out, he’ll lay his head on their shoulders, just to be sure he isn’t forgotten. He likes to have his picture taken. He’s a ham.” 

On a later day I come back and ride the pastures with Hofmann, he on Dakota, the 8-year-old palomino, and me on Radar, the 6-year-old, fresh from the correctional facility. They’re both well-behaved. The adoption program has graduated some fine alumni, including one horse that they say has gone far in national reining competitions, and another that has been a top performer in dressage. The dressage horse was bigger than most of these mustangs, being about 17 hands high, Hofmann says. The average horse here runs about 900 pounds or a little less, and about 14 hands, fully grown. But they are used for anything for which a domesticated horse is used, Hofmann says. 
I’d never been to a wild horse facility or auction before, and I never would have expected to find one in South-Central Oklahoma, and—most surprising of all—just across the fence from the place where I grew up. Yes, this property adjoins my family’s former home place, just across the north-side fence. (See related item).

We turn a couple of pens of horses out to pasture—as soon as the gate is open they rocket away like Seabiscuit—then we ride across to the north side, where I get a good look into my old home range. 
But it’s the wild horses themselves that are the real attraction here. The thing you notice first about these animals is how much they run. It’s that long, fluid lope—a gait for covering ground effortlessly, efficiently, swiftly. And they run as a herd, bunched up. With their long manes and tails flowing, they make a picturesque sight.

Hofmann said that they are especially that way when they have just been turned out to pasture. Nonetheless, these horses run more than domestic horses would, galloping first to one end of the pasture, then milling together, pausing, then taking off at a high canter for the other side… and back again. “You can’t ride one down,” Hofmann said. “A lot of people use them for trailriding or endurance riding.” 

He says that buyers wanting gentled animals can also consider the programs at the correctional facilities. “It costs a little more—maybe 750 dollars to get one maybe not quite as broke as this one [Dakota], but almost as broke. I think it is well worth the money spent. If you figure out how much it’s going to cost you to feed one just to get it up to that point, it’s going to be more than $700. And it’s good for the inmates.”

This office of the BLM will hold its annual Wild Horse and Burro Expo Oct. 7 to 10 in Ardmore, Okla., where past buyers will bring their animals for show, and prospective buyers can buy a wild one for themselves. For information on that or any other aspect of the BLM’s program, log onto their website at www.wildhorseandburro.blm.gov . Their toll-free national number is 866-4-MUSTANGS. 
Meanwhile, at Edmond, Rachel has been making much headway with her new charges. Her dad, Alex, remarks on how smart they are. “They’re anxious to see us. By the end of the summer, they’ll be really tame.”

Rachel’s mother, Valerie, says they all have much fun with the horses. “The filly, the red roan, is named Scarlet Mae, and the colt, the bay, is named Brego [sounds like Prego]. The colt is more skittish. But we’re learning patience from them.”

BLM has just leased another 200 acres down in the river bottom, leapfrogging what was my family’s old place, which wasn’t on the market, and they’ll soon have room for hundreds more mustangs. That’s going to mean a lot more happy adoptive families too.

AC

There is more inside the May/June 2004  issue of American Cowboy magazine.  
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