Ken McNabb had an EXCELLENT program about Mustangs two years ago, probably available online. It destroys the romantic notion that they roam millions of contiguous acres. He showed how your Nevada ranch is rare, and most live in small groups in very small pockets. They usually eat bc ranchers take pity on them, feed them, and provide water. People who think that the BLM is doing a great job don' know how helicopters frighten them, and foals will break legs trying to keep up with a scared, galloping herd. McNabb recommends the old time herding with cow horses, and to keep them at the trot, which is the gait that an horse can maintain for miles at a time. No rider is gonna run their own horse into the ground chasing a herd of Mustangs, either.
People who don't know these things have been spending their lives in the suburbs and haven't ever seen the fences put up to let pronghorns get through. A horse cannot use these and will be trapped by fencing, bc SOMEBODY owns a LOT of land out west and there is fencing everywhere, and a lot of it has barbed wire. That scene in "War Horse" with the horse running through 3 barbed wire fences is a fantasy bc that horse would be dead. They also don't know that this economic depression has hit domestic horse owners, too, and some of them have dumped their horses on what they think is public land. Granted, initially a horse has something to eat and a dumped dog may not know how to hunt, but herds don't readily accept any new horse without a fight, and injured, wild horses aren't medicated by the BLM.
Big Government just makes me sick. They are bloated, anonymous and unaccountable.
