ECOTOURISM PHOTOGRAPHY
Reading the Herd
Onaqui Mountain Wild Horses · Utah
I've always dreamed of seeing wild horses.
I was on my way back from a road trip visiting friends in Salt Lake City when I discovered there were wild horses outside the Bonneville Salt Flats. I turned to my partner and said, “Why not?”
It was February, and it had been an unusually warm, dry winter. That was, until it was time to drive home. We headed towards the horses in a heavy snowstorm.
On our way, I briefly researched where to go. I found little information other than that you can find them in the Onaqui HMA, or “herd management area,” on BLM land. I scrolled through Facebook groups looking for recent sightings and clues about where to find them. I had little luck.
They felt inaccessible and elusive, and even more so in the winter storm.
We reached the turnoff towards the HMA in the late afternoon, sunset looming. We stopped the car to assess the conditions. Snow had been drifting across the dirt road, and it was hard to tell how deep it was. A few sets of tire tracks approached the turnoff, a couple inches of fresh snow already collecting in them, but each one curved back the way it came. There were no tire tracks leading into the HMA.
"Our odds don't look great, Hogan."
"The roads and weather aren't looking great either."
“What if the storm worsens and we get stuck? We don't even know where the horses are.”
Why not try?
And so we made the turn.
Our first glimpse of Onaqui wild horses in the distance through the windshield near dusk.
Three wild horses forage through the fresh snow as the daylight fades.
The horses move toward the truck. Between grazing, the paint repeatedly lifts his head to look toward the distant hills.
We found them. Despite the road conditions, the weather, and having little idea where to look, we had actually found three wild horses.
We positioned ourselves on a side road, and as night fell, the horses moved closer. They pawed through the snow for forage and wandered around us. I had spent many years riding and showing horses, and in that moment, watching three wild horses didn't feel all that different from watching horses grazing in a pasture.
I was over the moon to have found them, but three horses quietly grazing didn't satisfy my curiosity.
The three horses eventually moved on. Nightfall and the snowdrifts stopped us from following any farther.
Before setting up camp, we darted back into service to give ourselves the best possible shot at finding them again in the morning.
Back in service, it was dark and we were tired. Every minute spent researching was another minute of sleep lost.
After 45 minutes of sorting through everything I could find about wild horses, one detail stuck:
When a horse lifts its head and looks into the distance, look in the direction they're looking.
I immediately thought of one of the three horses we'd seen earlier that evening. Between grazing, the paint kept lifting his head and looking off toward the hills.
Maybe there were more horses over there.
We camped overnight. That morning, we drove back to where we'd last seen the horses. One horse stood off the side of the road, looking out toward the hills. We followed where it was looking with our binoculars, but didn't see any more horses.
I felt confident in what I'd read and observed, so we drove a little farther down the dirt road. Sure enough, another band came into view over the crest of the hill.
A small band of Onaqui wild horses graze beneath the mountains as the sun rises, our first sighting after camping in the HMA.
Overnight, the storm had lifted, and by morning the mountains rose up behind the horses. There were so many more horses than we'd seen the night before.
It was 13 degrees that morning. We parked the truck and started walking toward the horses, zigzagging to avoid deeper drifts and following patches where the wind had blown the snow thin. Despite our best efforts to pick a shallow path, we still postholed through the snow, leaving my leather boots soaked through.
Leaving the truck behind and picking a path on foot through the windblown snow.
We walked until we found a place to stop and observe from a distance.
Some horses grazed and pawed through the snow, while others stood watching bands in the distance.
Others laid down and basked in the sun.
The herd spreads across the basin in smaller bands.
I was surprised to see so many of the horses were laying down, knowing that horses only tend to lie down when they feel safe from the possibility of predators.
A stallion paws through the snow for forage. While walking from the truck, I noticed how sparse the grass was under the snow, mostly frozen dirt. Only a few stalks poked out of the ground. I remember thinking to myself about how little forage there seemed to be for the amount of calories it takes to sustain a horse through winter.
It was cold, but after walking out that far through the snow, I wasn't in a hurry to start making my way back to the truck. The longer I stood and watched, the more I began to notice.
I started noticing how many horses were watching other bands in the distance. Every time a horse would look into the distance, I would follow with my binoculars. Without fail, there would be a band in the distance.
The three horses we'd found the night before were still together the following morning, hanging out as their own band on the very outskirts of the herd.
Every horse in this band was facing the same direction. Despite my best efforts, I never figured out what they were looking at.
This white horse was my favorite. He stood peacefully, dozing off.
The same stallion I'd watched pawing through the snow earlier pins his ears as he herds the mares in his band.
Way off into the distance, I kept watching the same stallion challenge other stallions from different bands. He would rest between challenges, then out of nowhere start galloping off to challenge another stallion.
He lost every time.
A stallion trots between bands.
Hooves started thundering.
I left the HMA that day with a huge smile on my face, completely in awe of wild horses. As we drove out, we passed a sign that read Pony Express Route. The Pony Express came right through here?
In the 1860s, mail was carried over 1,800 miles along a route called the Pony Express that spanned from Missouri to California in as little as 10 days.
I had always had a picture in my head of what that route might have looked like, but all of a sudden, it felt like I was stepping into the boots of a Pony Express rider. I swiveled my head around to look at the mountains. This is what it actually looked like.
My mind started flicking between curiosity and excitement. Was this herd of mustangs already here at the time of the Pony Express? Could they be descendants of the Pony Express horses that came through this basin?
As the momentum of my curiosity grew, the more expansive the subject of wild horses became.
Questions about wild horse behavior and how to find them gave way to questions about the public lands beneath their feet, their role in the history of the American West, and paleontological finds like the Hagerman Horse. The further I fell down the rabbit hole, the more I started to weave together ideas and topics that had seemed completely unrelated at first glance.
Where could I see more? What else didn't I know?
I read about wild horses the whole 1,000 miles back home. By the end of the year, I found myself again in HMAs in Wyoming and North Dakota, binoculars in hand.