Roosevelt Revisited

Roosevelt has fast become one of our most favorite national parks.  With its rugged terrain, a beautiful climate during autumn, and a wide variety of animals (including wild horses!), the park is a true gem.  We were excited to arrive and set up camp.  This was our second visit to Roosevelt, and we wondered if we would see more of the wild horses that we photographed last year.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

I became immediately worried, however, when we discovered that the park had hired a helicopter to dust herbicides for a non-native weeds infestation.  It quickly became obvious that the horses were spooked and would be very difficult to locate.  

To my delight, however, we found the Coal Vein herd on our first morning in the park.  The Coal Vein herd is led by the white stallion:  the first wild horse that I ever photographed.  Although he was as beautiful as ever, he was limping badly.  (Later, when I blew photos of him, it appeared that he had a terrible gash on his inner left/front leg.  I don't know if he received it in a fight or fell.  I pray that he will heal completely.)

When we found the Coal Vein herd, I was excited.  I was in a fairly good position to take photos, and the light was perfect.  Slowly, I inched closer to the herd, using the sage for partial cover.  The horses were obviously aware of me but continued grazing peacefully. 

Suddenly, the sound of the chopper came tremendously close, startling us all.  The horses went on high alert. 

The chopper rose out of a gully not more than a hundred yards from us.  The herd spooked and ran, trying to get away from this noisy red beast.  

I was heartbroken on many levels.  It was so difficult to watch the stallion limping to keep up with the herd.  I had lost the perfect photo op.  I also knew that the herd was so spooked that they would probably head to the backcountry.  If they did, I knew that we wouldn’t see them again.

The chopper continued working from sun up to sundown over the next several days.  As a result, on Thursday we did not see a single animal other than bison and prairie dogs.  I was terribly disappointed, knowing that as long as the chopper was around that horses would be scarce.

The bison remained on the move during our entire visit, seemingly completely unconcerned about the noisy chopper.  A herd of over 60 bison crossed the road in front of us one morning.  We watched a herd of about 30 cows and calves walk across prairie dog town to graze on the other side.  We also had several herds walk right through the campground.  (Please read our “What’s More Crazy:  Running with the Bulls or Showering with the Bison?” post for the exciting details of one of those forays!)

We spoke about leaving the park earlier than scheduled because of the chopper.  Thankfully, however, one of the park rangers told us that the spraying finished Friday afternoon.  By Saturday, we were seeing horses again, as well as other animals.

Saturday evening, we discovered a herd that we hadn’t seen last year.  The herd had two young colts.  It was great fun to watch them play together.  The dark colt seemed to be an imp, instigating all sorts of mischief in the herd.  The second colt was precious and had one brown eye and one blue.

 Sunday morning, we found my roan stallion and his herd with the skirted mare again.  It was so wonderful to see them.  

We also discovered a huge red stallion that is primed to take his place as leader of a pack of his own.  This stallion may well be the brother of the colt we had seen earlier.  They both are the same color, have similar markings, and each have one blue and one brown eye.

 On our last morning at Roosevelt, we had an amazing interaction with another stallion.  We got up early to make the wildlife loop before breaking camp.  Early while driving the loop, we spied a herd that had two white horses in it and pulled over to see if it was the Coal Vein herd.  The horses were so far away that we needed binoculars. 

We jumped back into the truck and drove about a quarter mile up the road to see if we could get a closer view.  We couldn’t, so we returned to our original position to watch from a distance.

As soon as we set up with the binoculars again, one of the white horses stepped away from the herd and disappeared around a hill.  We quickly dismissed this horse because he had a salt and pepper mane.  Over the next several minutes, David and I stayed in position, trying to determine if the remaining white horse was the white stallion. 

I heard the distinct clopping of hooves.  When I looked up, to my utter amazement, the horse with the salt and pepper mane was walking right up the road towards us!  It quickly became obvious that he was the stallion of the herd, coming to check us out.  

The stallion walked slowly in front of us, looking us up and down, stopping no more than fifteen feet from the truck.  Then he walked past us, sniffed some flattened horse poop in the middle of the road, and dumped on top of it, as if to say, “this is my territory.”  He made another purposeful circle around and trotted back to the herd.  Wow!

It was difficult to head back and break camp.  Although it was time to go, I wanted so badly to continue interacting with the horses. 

Again, Roosevelt did not disappoint.  And again, we are planning our next return.  The herds are familiar to us now and have become part of our lives.  Also, the story of the white stallion needs an ending… hopefully a happy one.  Will the red stallion take over a herd or steal several mares to build his own?  Hopefully, we will discover the answers on our next adventure to Roosevelt… and, hopefully, that adventure will come again very, very soon!