Cecilia Wilson of Blackhawk is fascinated by the horses she sees driving in more rural parts of Colorado. She’s been wondering for years: What’s the deal with these horses? Are any of them wild?
“When you get off (Interstate) 70 and go more on the back roads, there are a lot of horses there. And I’m sure some of them are wild, or feral,” said Wilson, who has lived in Colorado since moving here from Iowa in 1977. “I actually asked AI, ‘how can I tell the difference between a wild horse and a domesticated one?’ And AI did not have an answer.”
Horses are everywhere in Colorado, part of the state’s Wild West DNA. But a vast majority of horses you can see from the road are domesticated.
There’s about 1,300 wild horses roaming free across Colorado. They’re not easy to find, according to Judy Cady, president of the advocacy group Friends of the Mustangs.
“It really depends on where you're driving," she said.
It’s possible to catch a glimpse of wild horses off of some of the dirt roads in areas like the Sand Wash Basin in the state’s northwest corner, Cady said. But you’re not likely to be passing through on a run-of-the-mill roadtrip.
“Oil and gas people are out there. Cattle people are out there, but the normal people aren't really on these roads … You'd have to have a purpose to be out there. You wouldn't just be out there driving around,” she said.
But you can find them if you want to go looking in the right areas, according to Pat Craig, founder of the Wild Animal Sanctuary, which oversees 240 mustangs at a 30,000 acre ranch not far from the Sand Wash Basin.
“There's definitely opportunities for it. It's just not mainstream up and down the I 76 corridor or I 25 or I 70,” Craig said.
Colorado’s mustangs are spread across four federally managed ranges; the Sand Wash Basin, Little Book Cliffs near Palisade, the Piceane East Douglas southwest of Meeker, and the Spring Creek Basin in the southwest corner. There’s also tons of wild horses on the Ute Reservation, Craig said.
So if you find yourself on a dirt road in a remote corner of Colorado, how can you tell if the horses you see are wild?
There’s some pretty obvious markers. Like enclosures.
“If they're behind the fence, you can pretty much guarantee that they're somebody's horses. There's a lot of people that have ranches that might have horses that they don't necessarily use or ride much, but there's still a domestic horse … [even if] they look kind of wild,” Craig said.
Also, if you pull the car over, a wild horse will probably run. A domestic horse will probably stick around at least long enough to see if you have a carrot.
“They'll let you walk up to it at least,” Craig said.
Mustangs tend to be smaller than domesticated horses.
“They have to survive. They don't need all that extra weight,” according to Craig.
Keep an eye out for messy hair, as mustangs are a little less well-groomed than their domestic counterparts.
“They'll usually have longer manes that are tangled, just unkept … So they'll have long bangs, long manes, and a lot of times they're just knotted here and there,” Craig said.
Cady from Friends of Mustangs notes that if you can train them, horses born wild make for hardier riding horses. She has two mustangs, Spirit and BJ. She calls horses that are born domesticated “city horses.”
“I have to really babysit city horses,” she said. “These mustangs can go anywhere … What I like to do is ride out on the range. And it’s rough country.”
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