Last Chance Mustang

by Mitchell Bornstein

  “I’ve never known you to once arrive late for court,” Charles correctly observed, “and while I’m sure that the fury of a screwed-up horse can no doubt be severe, I would have to think that it pales in comparison to the wrath of an irate judge and a disgruntled client.”

  Charles was correct; I had a lot to lose. I was gambling with my livelihood and my future. Later that evening when I turned to Jamie for a sympathetic ear, one was not available. “Mark my words, you are going to regret all of this,” she said as she cut the conversation short and hung up the phone.

  The price of working with Samson was on the increase. Amy’s growing impatience, a mentor’s valid concerns, and Jamie’s ever-increasing list of grievances—none of it mattered. The more I was criticized, the more my tunnel vision further narrowed. I was committed to Samson, at any cost.

  At a time when most Americans were celebrating Thanksgiving and giving thanks, I was certain that Samson was thankful for my attention, my care, and, ultimately, my friendship. At the most basic level, I was thankful for being uninjured and still mostly intact. But on a more profound level, I was thankful for having Samson in my life. He was learning from me; I was learning from him. The fact that I understood a horse no one else seemed to get, the reality that I had given him direction and purpose and that he had chosen me as his friend, filled me with a sense of pride, worth, and accomplishment.

  Though I hadn’t realized it before this point, we both were affecting each other’s lives.

  {7}

  FROM EXALTED STEED TO EASY TARGET

  A dog may be man’s best friend, but the horse wrote history.

  —AUTHOR UNKNOWN

  Once the BLM captured Samson, he was one of 3,938 wild horses removed from Nevada in 2003, one of the 10,081 rounded up nationally that year. With 40 percent of the nation’s wild horse population gathered in the first decade of the twenty-first century, he was dumped into an overburdened, mismanaged system. As one of the 6,165 Mustangs adopted nationally that year, Samson then found himself in a strange new world. Through no fault of his own, he had been torn from his free-roaming, wild ways. And despite his innocence, for this horse and those like him there would be no going back. The reasons and justifications for their removal had been a century in the making.

  The start of the twentieth century saw 230,000 wild horses removed and shipped to service in the South African Boer War and 15,000 Mustangs shot dead in Nevada. Life would never be the same for the free-roaming wild herds. In twenty short years, overgrazing cattle had severely depleted and irreparably damaged the frontier’s great grasslands. The West’s vast ranges were dry and barren; modernization and industrialization were just around the corner.

  The Mustang horse—once prized for its endurance, fortitude, speed, and adaptability—soon found itself an essential ingredient in pet food and a necessary component in the production of glue, conveyor belts, clothing, and mattresses. Young men from across the nation quickly made their way west—seeking riches hunting and capturing the great, untamed American wild horse. They were called Mustangers, and at six cents per pound the free-roaming wild horse stood in their crosshairs. The famed horse of the frontier was now a ticket to instant fortune.

  The great American war against the Mustang had officially begun. No quarter was to be given and no compassion shown. The once majestic symbol of the frontier and the American way was under all-out attack.

  In the American West, the number of free-roaming Mustangs was on sharp decline. With two hundred thousand shipped to and having perished in Europe during World War I and the U.S. government successfully carrying out its eradication policy against the Indian herds, the onslaught against the wild horse was just getting started. When P. M. Chappel and his two brothers opened the nation’s first major meat-processing plant in 1923—Chappel Brothers Corporation in Rockford, Illinois—the canned food industry was officially up and running and the wild horse was in serious straits.

  In little time, two hundred similar plants opened across the country and an industry that processed 150,000 pounds of horse meat in 1923 soon processed 23 million pounds in 1930, followed by 50 million pounds in 1933–34. Along the Western Seaboard, towns that once raised chickens started accepting daily arrivals of railroad stock cars full of wild horses. Packed in like sardines, transported under special low “feed” rates, and not subject to humane transport requirements, the Mustangs suffered all the way to the processing plants. Industry was growing and building, and the Mustang horse was its bricks and mortar. Once praised by the explorer, the Indian warrior, and the cowboy, the Mustang was now nothing more than a commodity, a resource, a carcass.

  As demand for the Mustang as a tool of industry grew, “Mustang Fever” gripped the nation. Magazine articles published in the 1920s depicted Mustang hunts as exciting, challenging, alluring, and enthralling. Chasing down a Mustang horse was not just sport, but it was also a business, and a profitable one at that. Mustangers could make a name and fortune for themselves and rid the range of the feral, invasive, outlaw wild horse. By 1925, the State of Montana had placed a bounty on all free-roaming wild horses and four hundred thousand Mustangs were dispatched in short order. The verdict had been handed down—Mustanging was glamorous, lucrative, and a public necessity. Fueled by profit motive and driven by machismo, the Mustangers showed little respect for their four-legged victims.

  On the hunt, many old-time Mustangers often employed creasing to down their prey. An act that entailed shooting at and grazing the spinal nerve, which runs along the neck, creasing temporarily stunned and incapacitated a wild horse long enough for it to be roped. As recounted by Frank Dobie, the Mustanger had to be an expert shot: “Creasing, too, was a kind of sport—without sportsmanship. If a rifleman wanted to kill a horse, he did not aim to crease it; if he aimed to crease, he frequently killed.”10 If the Mustanger was a crack shot the horse was off to slaughter; if he was anything less than a marksman the downed animal was left behind to die a slow, painful, lonely death.

  Still other Mustangers relied upon snares that fastened around a horse’s neck or leg. With broken legs and necks more oft than not the norm, felled Mustangs were left behind to yet again suffer an agonizing end. While creasing and snares were commonplace, other Mustanger techniques included shooting fleeing horses in the eyes, using trip wires to sever tendons, poisoning water sources, and constructing traps around water holes. Often, herd mares were captured and then released with nostrils sewn shut and horseshoes bent around their lower legs as a means to slow a herd’s movement. With a 25 percent fatality rate during the chase and inevitable mortality upon capture, whether transported to slaughter or not a pursued Mustang was doomed to a painful and gruesome demise.

  By the 1930s, the Great Depression gripped the nation. With 67 percent, near 25 million acres, of range destroyed by cattle and overgrazing, the once-rich western grasses no longer provided a viable forage source. Grasslands that had a cattle-carrying capacity of 22.5 million head in 1880 were now able to service no more than 10 million livestock. Concern for the fate of the American range was growing and Congress responded by passing the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934. Named after senator Edward Taylor, the Act established grazing districts, land allotments, and a permit system, while classifying 143 million acres of public land according to its suitability for crop development. The Taylor Act further established a government agency—the U.S. Grazing Service (the first incarnation of the BLM)—that supervised all land allotments, livestock permits, and animals grazing upon public lands. At the time, cattlemen paid mere pennies in fees for each grazing animal; today, stockmen pay a meager $1.35 per head.

  Local advisory boards were established in each grazing district to help the Grazing Service manage and supervise land allotments and permits. Comprised entirely of cattlemen, the advisory boards were anything but Mustang friendly. These stockmen, long since searching out validation in their quest for the annihilation of the wild horse, finally had justification and the force of law to s
upport their crusade. The Mustang—not the sheep and cattle—was to blame for the destruction of the frontier’s rich and plentiful grasses. It had ravaged and raped the range; the feral horse of the West had to go.

  The Grazing Service’s position on the free-roaming Mustang was apparent when in 1939 then acting director of grazing Archie Ryan declared, “A wild horse consumes forage needed by domestic livestock, brings in no return, and serves no useful purpose.… .”11

  Long since identified as a feral and invasive species, the free-roaming wild horse lacked the protections of the safe harbor provisions of Section 9 of the Taylor Act, which mandated the allocation of forage for all local “native” wildlife. With the knowing consent of a newly formed and powerful government agency, the assault on this nation’s wild herds was ratcheted up to a new level. The cattlemen now had carte blanche to rid the range of its one true companion and an army of destitute and homeless young men to fight their crusade. The time had come: the time to replace the free-roaming wild horse with cattle and sheep and to wage an unchecked, all-out attack on the American Mustang.

  By the close of the 1930s and start of the 1940s, the assault on the Mustang was at full tilt. In Arizona one thousand horses were shot dead in Sitgreaves National Forest, and in Oregon four thousand Mustangs were removed from the equation. As America fought in and ended a second world war, wholesale “range clearance” was in full force and effect. Scapegoated for range destruction and degradation, Mustangs across the West dropped in the tens of thousands as water holes were poisoned and Mustanger bullets felled entire herds. In Nevada, an additional one hundred thousand Mustangs were dead and fewer than four thousand remained. The offensive against the American Mustang was at a fever pitch, and with the aid of modern technology things were about to get worse.

  In its ongoing battle with the Mustangers, the already-undermatched Mustang found itself pitted against a new foe from which it had no defense: airborne fixed-wing assault. With the advent and initiation of aerial roundups, Mustang hunters could trap entire herds with far less human labor and effort. The continued survival of the nation’s free-roaming herds seemed cast in doubt until one fateful day in 1950 when a young woman pulled behind the tailgate of a stock truck trailing a steady stream of blood down Nevada’s Highway 395.

  Her name was Velma Johnston and she was a woman who had spent a lifetime battling adversity. Diagnosed with polio and fitted into a three-quarter, nearly full-body cast at the age of seven, Velma knew the meaning of pain and suffering. “Here comes Humpy!” the kids would shout as she passed by with drooped eye, drooped jaw, displaced teeth, and uneven shoulders.12 As Velma recounted, it was a terrible existence for anyone, let alone a child: “… there was always the pain. And the adults who discovered my ‘pitiful’ condition and wondered what on earth would ever become of me, as though I was deaf, too, and not able to wonder myself what would become of me, since they mentioned it.”13

  Those who ridiculed Velma and callously trampled her feelings had no idea of her fortitude and tenacity and what she was destined to accomplish. Velma would soon wage all-out war against the Mustangers, the cattlemen, and all those who had Mustang annihilation in their sights.

  Velma followed the bloody stock truck to the slaughterhouse, where she watched the unloading of horses with buckshot wounds, missing eyes and hooves, and bloody stumps where their legs once were. It was a sight that would have sickened the hardiest of souls. When she inquired as to what had caused the gruesome scene, Velma was given a very matter-of-fact response: “Oh, they were run in by plane out there.… No point in crying your eyes out over a bunch of useless Mustangs … they’ll be dead soon anyway.”14 Velma had grown up with animals and they had provided her with comfort from a cold and reclusive existence. Her father, Joe Brown, often sang the wild horse’s virtues: “Mustangs are born in the wind.… They drink it, that’s why they can run so fast.”15 The harsh, apathetic explanation provided at the slaughterhouse was like dropping a bucketful of bloody fish into shark-infested waters. It was a huge mistake and a call to attack.

  Velma was prepared to pounce; her crusade to save the wild Mustang had officially begun.

  Gravely troubled by the plight of Nevada’s Mustangs, Velma first took her concerns to the BLM’s Reno district office. There officials told her that the Mustang was an inbred, mongrel, feral creature that proliferated like vermin. Even worse, the officials advised Velma that the Mustang posed a serious threat to forage resources, sheep, and cattle grazing. The only good that the Mustang served was as chicken feed and pet food. In other words, the only good Mustang was a dead Mustang.

  Sadly, to this day these sentiments and beliefs still echo throughout various parts of the country.

  The BLM officials’ words were cold, harsh, and eye-opening. Velma was on notice: her fight was going to be a one-woman crusade. In search of knowledge and facts, she sought out local ranchers who provided her with critical information. Sheep, and not wild horses, ravaged the range, the ranchers advised. Long since blamed for rangeland degradation, the Mustangs were actually good for the frontier’s vast grasslands—their manure reseeded it. As for the purported ever increasing and uncontrollable Mustang population, inclement weather and natural predators would continue to keep mortality rates high and reproductive numbers low. The BLM, it turns out—not the ranchers—wanted the wild horses removed from the range and knew exactly what to say to raise the local population’s ire.

  Armed with facts and educated by firsthand accounts, Velma’s advocacy campaign kicked into full swing. In no time, opponents had labeled her “Wild Horse Annie.” She responded by insisting that her friends and colleagues start addressing her as Annie rather than as Velma. Intended to discredit her efforts, the nickname had only bolstered Annie’s resolve. She was soon a force to be reckoned with and an advocate who could not be ignored. Annie’s campaign to save the American wild Mustang met its first success in 1955 when the Nevada legislature banned the use of motorized vehicles and airborne herding during roundups. Four years later, Annie won a second apparent victory as Congress passed Public Law 86-234 or what came to be known as the “Wild Horse Annie Law.”

  Sadly, both the state and federal statutes went widely ignored and unenforced. In the Nevada desert, Mustangs by the thousands were shot from above, tied to truck tires and pursued to exhaustion, and run into death pits. Eyes were shot out, tendons sliced by trip wires, and lungs exploded from overexertion With two laws on the books, Mustangs in Nevada and surrounding states were still being chased, tortured, brutalized, and then slaughtered. Opponents of the Mustang horse rejoiced over Annie’s empty victories—Annie saw both as a dry run. The Mustang breed was fading from the American landscape and Annie was just getting started.

  By the end of the decade’s first year, congressional committees held sixty draft bills that sought to protect the nation’s free-roaming wild horses. Many years had passed since Annie’s fated encounter with the bloody stock truck, and in the interim she had perfected the art of advocacy, mass appeal, and mass marketing. Made famous with the 1966 publication of Marguerite Henry’s book Mustang: Wild Spirit of the West, Annie was a hero to school-age children across the country for both her early battles with polio and her Mustang preservation efforts.

  With a captive, convincing, and enthusiastic army of soldiers at her beck and call, Annie mustered the ranks and yelled, “Charge!” Thousands upon thousands of letters soon flooded the Washington, D.C., postal system. The nation’s greatest nonwartime letter-writing campaign saturated and inundated the Capitol Building and the White House. The American people and the children of America had spoken; the time had come to stop hunting, brutalizing, and murdering America’s wild Mustangs.

  The American taxpayer and voter had communicated a mandate and on October 4, 1971, Congress responded—forwarding to the White House a unanimously approved bill that spoke to public demand and outrage. Then president Richard Nixon affixed his signature to the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Bur
ros Act of 1971 and on December 15 the nation finally had a law intended to safeguard the free-roaming wild horse. It had been a long road for advocates such as Wild Horse Annie, Hope Ryden, and the countless others who had dedicated years to the cause. It had been an even longer road for the tens of thousands of Mustangs who had suffered and perished decade after decade.

  The wild Mustang that had filled cans of pet food, provided hide and carcass to the captains of industry, and been an unwilling and overmatched target in a cruel, bloodthirsty, and compassionless sport was now safe and protected—or so most thought.

  By late 1971, the country had a law that protected the nation’s free-roaming wild horses and the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service were charged with enforcing, implementing, and managing its provisions. The Act dictated that:

  … wild free-roaming horses and burros are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West; that they contribute to the diversity of life forms within the Nation and enrich the lives of the American people; and that these horses and burros are fast disappearing from the American scene. It is the policy of Congress that wild free-roaming horses and burros shall be protected from capture, branding, harassment, or death; and to accomplish this they are to be considered in the area where presently found, as an integral part of the natural system of the public lands.16

  With over 90 percent of the wild horse population roaming on federal rangeland, the lion’s share of the work fell to the BLM. Soon, an entire new jargon came to be associated with the wild horse: “Herd Areas (HAs),” “Herd Management Areas (HMAs),” and “Appropriate Management Level (AML).” These terms of art and the accompanying statistics would reveal, in the years that followed, a telling and disturbing story.

  Consistent with the ’71 Act’s directives, wild horses were to be managed at then current population levels. A low wild horse population estimate would guarantee that in the years to come fewer horses would occupy the range. When the BLM projected that 17,300 wild horses roamed federal lands in 1971, the estimate was both unscientific and artificially low. A decade later, a National Academy of Sciences Report concluded: “The 17,000 figure is undoubtedly low to an unknown, but perhaps substantial, degree.”17 The same report further found: “Forage use by wild equids remains a small fraction of the total forage use by domestic animals on western public ranges, regardless of whether the actual number of equids is in accord with the censuses or somewhat higher.”18