Breaking Rules, Tack, and Everything Else: My DIY Horseback Hunting Chronicle

[pacoalcracker]

About the only horses I've ever seen that would stand still for hours and hours untied and never move no matter what was going on were the Amish buggy horses. They must train them to ignore everything going on around them. I don't know how they do this, but it must take time and patience. I've seen them in parking lots unattended at various stores hooked to a buggy, yeah maybe there is a brake on that cart but that won't stop a horse if he wants to go. No way would I ever get off my horse and walk away from him to do something else when you are that far away from civilization no matter how well it was trained. My horse comes right to me with a particular whistle and that's how I trained him ( I watched Hidalgo too many times ) and I still wouldn't do it. Stuff happens.

 

[pbroski]

I always tie my horses when I stop on the trail for whatever reason. I use a quick release knot, so I can get going again quickly.

 

[pacoalcracker]

450, depends on the size/weight/condition of the mules' being used, deboning the elk or not and whether you are riding or walking. I would think the minimum would be 3 solid mules if you are walking out. 2 for the quartered-up elk carcass and 1 for a basic camp and the rack. Add a riding mule or horse if you want to ride out.

 

[pbroski]

I have a question and remember I haven’t started down this road yet but I will be. For a solo hunter, how many pack mules would be needed for an elk hunt? That’s bringing camp/elk out in one trip? I know a lot depends on your camp and I’m use to doing Super Cub fly-in hunts where you are limited to 50 lbs total for everything (food, tent, sleeping bag, clothes). Thanks in advance for info.

It depends on the pack-out distance, the size of the mules, and whether or not you are willing to walk out. A mule should be able to easily pack 30% of it's body weight for extended periods, more for shorter periods. You could probably get away with 2 mules for your solo hunts if you're willing to walk out leading the animals. Otherwise 3 mules. Keep in mind, the fewer the number of animals, the easier it will be to care for them in the backcountry. Keeping 3 animals fed and watered is a significant task for 1 person, plus hunting on top of it.

 

[ShootOkHuntWorse]

Very interested in following this. My wife’s horse, definitely not mine and I’d be murdered saying this, has already packed two elk out but I’ve been trying to convince myself to day hunt with him. She shoots pistols off of him, ropes off of him, and chases cows when possible. He’s such a good horse to us I’m worried as soon as I start using him more he’ll colic on us out of spite. Where are you located? It definitely changes the situation for riding. Here it’s thick steep timber with no real opportunity for off trail riding.

 

[Procision Arms]

About the only horses I've ever seen that would stand still for hours and hours untied and never move no matter what was going on were the Amish buggy horses. They must train them to ignore everything going on around them. I don't know how they do this, but it must take time and patience. I've seen them in parking lots unattended at various stores hooked to a buggy, yeah maybe there is a brake on that cart but that won't stop a horse if he wants to go. No way would I ever get off my horse and walk away from him to do something else when you are that far away from civilization no matter how well it was trained. My horse comes right to me with a particular whistle and that's how I trained him ( I watched Hidalgo too many times ) and I still wouldn't do it. Stuff happens.

A large majority of Amish buggy horses are off track Standardbreds. Racing them is my main business- they get tons of exposure to vehicles, ropes, equipment, etc from 18 months until they retire. They’re typically very gentle, have great minds and are iron tough compared to a lot of breeds. Can get them pretty cheap from people who want to retire them to good homes. Great horses for beginners in my experience.

We’ve been hunting with one the last two years, I would say he’s 90% as good as a good mule in the backcountry, but without the mule silliness you sometimes deal with.

 

[Procision Arms]

I have a question and remember I haven’t started down this road yet but I will be. For a solo hunter, how many pack mules would be needed for an elk hunt? That’s bringing camp/elk out in one trip? I know a lot depends on your camp and I’m use to doing Super Cub fly-in hunts where you are limited to 50 lbs total for everything (food, tent, sleeping bag, clothes). Thanks in advance for info.

I think two is a good number for a single guy and lightweight gear.

Ride one and pack camp on one going in.

If you kill an elk, debone and pack on riding saddle and walk out.

If you can’t or don’t want to walk out, then you’ll need 3, which complicates things.

With two, they always have a buddy with them. You can lead a single horse pretty much anywhere you can ride one, and it’s a lot easier to manage by yourself.

 

[Pony Soldier]

I think a question here is whether you have a mobile camp or a stationary camp. A mobile camp usually means you have to have a meadow or some source of available food. Most of my camps have been stationary which means I have to pack in enough hay (weed free) for my expected use as well as cut and split wood for my stoves. To protect the hay I have had to build corrals and tarp my stockpile. That has been a battle with summer range cows that would rather eat my hay than graze. Moose can be a member of this conflict. Pellots can be an option but again security is a consideration that has to be worked out and potentially can also be a bear issue.

Horses drink a lot of water and spring development is a component for both camp and stock. Over the years I have found the need to put in spring boxes with covers to protect the source as well as building water troughs and delivery systems. Dams to pool up water for stock start out good but can be hard to maintain with range cows who feel an obligation to wallow in the smallest pool and crap in your water source. The springs are often the source of green vegetation that attracts both game and cows.

Unless the camps are in the creek bottoms with everyone else, they can be a time consuming challenge.

Over the years my camps have been 3-5 miles in from the end of the road. Two horses are the minimum for a walk, three with a ride. Add meat and you just have multiple trips. More stock requires more infrastructure and a lot more work. Unless you like to search for horses, a corral of sorts and still tie them up will ensure you sleep sounder. Because of the amount of work 1-2 partners will make camp more feasible.

Over my early years I found everyone wanted to share your camp but few wanted to contribute. I have moved on to day hunts by myself or with a dependable partner or son.

 

[yycyak]

TRIP REPORT – OCT/24

So I had a plan to chase bighorn sheep for a day (Yes, a casual sheep hunt - Laughs in Albertan.) I’ve backpack hunted these guys lots, but with the horses it’s something new. I also wanted to shake down the plywood gongshow panniers some more.

Mandatory disclaimer: I’m not an expert. I don’t claim to be an expert. I mostly don’t know what I’m doing. Carry on.

Lesson Learned: Getting ready takes forever.

“Casual” horseback hunting isn’t really a thing for a guy like me. You guys with land/barns/tack sheds, different story. I have to drive out to the boarding barn. Catch the horses in the pasture. Hook up the trailer (I’m not a skilled trailer guy – That’s a separate post.) Load the horses.

THEN hit the road for 2 hours.

Then find a spot to park. Remember, I’m not a trailer guy. I’m paranoid of getting stuck somewhere and can’t turn around. Yes, you can always unhook the trailer and fix things, but that’s dumb and I’d rather not.

Then unload the horses. Brush them down, tack up. Sometimes it’s a fight to get a bridle on. Organize your gear, get some stuff in panniers, weigh the panniers, get the rest of your personal stuff in saddle bags, get yourself organized (Boots, gaiters, bino harness, etc), get panniers hung, get your rifle scabbard hung. Try to not forget anything.

Okay now you’re ready. You’ve burned close to 3.5 hours, if not more, just getting to your spot and ready to ride out.

So a casual 8am leave-my-house (which I used to do a lot with a backpack) is not a great idea with horses. Or at least isn’t for me, yet. I need to get faster at this.

NEXT

Ponies are tacked up. Let’s start walking to the trailhead.

Lesson Learned: Long lead ropes are helpful.

I run 12ft lead ropes. I didn’t invent this: I read some stuff that some outfitter mentioned bout it. They are 5/8” diameter rope that I had laying around in my garage.

You can keep your one horse on a short lead, and keep the other horse on a long lead, and walk down a trail that way, still holding on to both ropes.

Long lead ropes mean you can walk 1-2-3

They are also long enough that you can lunge/work a horse on them if needed. Although in the middle of the mountains, I don’t think you’ll find a great timber-free place to try this…

We get to the first big obstacle of the day: A river.

My pack horse is older (15ish I think) and she has seen it all. But my new guy hasn’t. The little I know about him is he’s from a flat-land grain farm, and hasn’t really seen mountains, timber, deadfall, or rivers. I’ve worked with him a bit on creek crossings, but a actual river would be new. So we give it a shot.

I’m anticipating a wide stretch of water to be mind-blowing for the gelding, so instead I lead the horses parallel to the river, to some shallow riffle sections. That gets us about as close to the opposite side river bank as we can, before I mount up and give it a shot.

Success! Gelding hesitates a bit, but with a bit of convincing, he gets across. Mare follows without any issue.

The opposite bank is steep, so I get off once across, and lead the ponies up the bank.

Problem: How the heck do you properly mount while ponying a horse?

You don’t know what you don’t know. I have no idea how to properly do this. I try to mount, and my gelding takes a few steps forward. (**This is bad. Train your horses to not do this. I’m working on this.**) I’m trying to hold his reins in my left hand. I’m holding the pony rope in my left hand. The mare wants to walk behind the gelding, so that when I swing my right leg to get over the back of the gelding, I’m catching the packhorse’s lead rope.

Okay, hold the rope in my right hand. Check-check with the left on the reins, swing over, right leg comes down over rope. Mare swings to left, slightly pulling me off balance. Spidey sense kicks in, toss the lead rope. Control gelding. All good, no rodeo.

Ride to mare, grab dangling lead rope. Definitely happy that my mare is somewhat herd-bound in situations like this. (Other times it sucks so hard.)

Anyway, this part needs work.

NEXT

So we ride off, and all goes well. Wind is howling, which seems to put the horses on edge. We go for about 3km, and stop at the base of the valley. It’s already mid-afternoon, and I don’t really want to try to cross the river in the dark. So I’ll glass from here and see what I can see.

I see nothing. (See, thrilling hunt summary right here.)

(Note: There’s nothing in those hills except quads and drunken crown land campers, so I’m not worried about blurring the skyline)

Okay, time to head home.

Same problem: No idea how to properly mount with a pony horse. Cluster-F*** ensues. Wind up tossing the lead rope away again. Swear loudly at my inability to figure this out. But no rodeo, so all good.

NEXT

We head back home. The gelding knows we are going home, so he starts stepping out and really cruising. Good! I’m going to use this to my advantage.

We get back to the river in decent time and with plenty of daylight.

The main trail takes you to the wide part of the river. It’s not deep, maybe knee-height. But it’s wide, maybe 50ft across.

I know my gelding is wanting to get back to the trailer, so I’m hoping that motivates him to get across without issue.

Problem: How do you make a horse cross a river when he doesn’t want to?

View of river crossing (after having made the crossing)

So this is where my rookie skills come in to play. I can mostly handle things when things go right. It’s when they don’t go right that I don’t have the skills to know how to fix it.

I’m good enough with my hands and seat that I know I’m not sending mixed signals or ripping on the gelding’s face. I’m thumping on his ribs with my Hanwags. (Probably didn’t help I forgot my spurs at the horse trailer – Note to self.) Lots of pressure, but his front feet are locked. He tries to circle left/right, but I keep him square to the water with small bumps on the reins to keep his head the right direction.

Nope, not happing.

I take off my leather glove, and whack his ass. That gets him forward a bit more, but still freezes up. Reset: do some circles, slap hard with glove, spur (with no spurs lol), pressure, pressure. Nope.

Okay, cowboy trick I was told: Back him up into the water. That works, for about 4ft. I turn him around the right way, he goes “F that” and hops back to the bank.

I look at my mare – She has a rear foot cocked, and her eyes are closed. Could care less about any of this. She’s a big help.

This scene continues for about 15 minutes. I’m watching my gelding’s head though, and he’s starting to toss it more, and his ears are going back.

I dismount. (I can hear the collective groans from the real horsemen reading this.)

I tie my pack mare’s lead rope around her neck in a bowline, and untie the gelding’s lead rope. I start walking into the river. Gelding follows no problem. F***. Mare is plowing behind like a puppy, following the gelding. Probably don't even need a lead rope on her...

We get across without further issue, other than I’m now soaked up to above my knees. Good thing the truck is only about 500m away from here. That water is stupid cold. Glad I'm in hunting synthetics and not wranglers today.

NEXT

We get back to the truck. Get horses untacked, change out of my wet gear, get the rest of the gear loaded up to head home.

Problem: Pony doesn’t want to load.

Mare loads no problem. But today, the gelding decides he doesn’t want to. Normally it’s not a problem.

Again, lack of skills come into play: I’m 180lbs of office-fat and bones. The horse is 1000lbs. Do the math.

I try a bunch of the tricks I’ve seen in the past on youtube, but it just seems to be one of those days. In the end, I get him, but no idea how/why it worked.

A horse friend said get your lariat out and put a rope behind his ass. I’ll save that for later if needed. More importantly, I think it shows I need to do more training at home. I’m pretty sure the issue is that I have a very narrow stock trailer – Horses can’t turn around in it. You have to back them out. The mare knows this, and knows the routine, but the gelding isn’t used to it. It’s pretty obvious he doesn’t like backing up.

Anyway, that was the day. Issues encountered summary:

• This kind of hunting sucks up a ton of prep time.
• Need to figure out how to mount properly when ponying.
• Need to figure out river crossings.

Trip #2 to follow.

 

[yycyak]

Okay so remember I don't know anything about anything, and am super green. But from that perspective:

1x riding horse, 1x pack horse. Because more than that is expensive, and one more thing to go wrong. You need a bigger trailer, bigger truck, more tack, etc.

Your pack horse can carry roughly 120lbs, and that's being conservative. As a backpack hunter, I can only imagine what kind of gucci camp a guy could make with 120lbs.

So how I'm approaching it: My personal gear goes on my riding horse. My "camp" gear is just the same crap I haul on a backpack hunt, only stuffed in the panniers instead. So maybe 40lbs of stuff: kill kit, sleeping bag, freeze dried food, etc. Then you have some food for the horses. (This can get complicated - More on this later.) And stuff for a highline.

Last is a tent: Decide if you want to kick it in your ultralight mountain tent (simplest), or if you're bringing a wall tent + stove. (More complicated, but way comfier)

Or, the Easy Button as @Pony Soldier put me on to: Use your truck/trailer as a base-camp. As a green newb, you can keep all your feed/gear at the truck. Ride big 10-20 mile loops each day, ending back at the truck. Your horse trailer is a glorified box stall: People pay big bucks to board their horses in individual stalls - Your trailer is one of those.

This is how I've eased in to things: It allows me to keep my expenditures low as far as gear and pack string investment, but can still over-night it if/when needed. (A ration of barley or oats is a good thing to always have on your pack horse. Read this from an old US civil war cavalry manual. Those dudes always had a nose bag, oats, and a picket rope+stake with them.)

I have dreams of having a wall tent camp packed way into the woods. But the logistics of that aren't in the cards for me. The "Ride loops from trailer" IS something I can do, and keeps the logistics factor low. You can cover a ton of ground riding 10-20 miles each day.

EDIT: I see Pony Soldier hit this in post #28 already. Nice!

I have a question and remember I haven’t started down this road yet but I will be. For a solo hunter, how many pack mules would be needed for an elk hunt? That’s bringing camp/elk out in one trip? I know a lot depends on your camp and I’m use to doing Super Cub fly-in hunts where you are limited to 50 lbs total for everything (food, tent, sleeping bag, clothes). Thanks in advance for info.

 

[bisblue]

I'm currently switching from pack llamas to a 9 year old mule (Welsh pony cross) trained to pack and ride, and a 5 year old burro trained to pack. Gonna be a big learning curve, but I good friend I trust sold me the animals and is mentoring me. They've both got tons of trail miles and crossed big suspension bridges etc.
One thing he told me is stay away from canvas and and all the old school stuff. Just use my seek outside tent and normal gear. Get Cordura panniers, saddle bags, like mountain ridge gear makes etc.
I can do a comfortable Llama camp with great food, tent, titanium stove, chairs and be in the 80 pound range for 2 people. I'm learning to ride but don't mind walking as a former climbing guide, firefighter, wilderness ranger, etc.
I did sell my llamas to a local buddy with the agreement I can borrow them anytime which is nice.
I can also take my stock to work at the land management agency since I manage our trails program, which is a great benefit for them and me. Packing in a trail crew or scouting trails and projects. Might get to pack in endangered fish this year.
The main reason I wanted to switch was to be able to bring my kids on more backcountry trips as we have amazing backyard access but steep steep country. They're stoked so far. My wife also grew up with horses so that helps.

 

[ShootOkHuntWorse]

Diggin the ski chair too

 

[yycyak]

TRIP – OCT/24

This was another quick trip. I didn’t want it to be, but the mountain gets a say.

Usual disclaimer: I’m not an expert. I don’t claim to be an expert. I mostly don’t know what I’m doing. Carry on.

The plan was to hit the mountains with some friends, who also have horses. They had some stuff come up last minute and couldn't come, so that sucked. It meant a late start to the day, but that’s okay.

Lesson Learned: Have the mentality that you’re good with JUST riding the horses in the mountains.

If you’re dead-set on a solid hunt (as a newb I mean - real horse dudes can do horses AND get a solid hunt in.) then take a backpack. It’s faster, easier, and yeah. I’m learning that the hunting is secondary – Miles-On-Trail (MOT) has to be the focus, especially with garbage horses. (By that I mean untrained/cheap$$.) If you get MOT, you won the day.

Lesson Learned: You have to be comfortable going out solo.

Self-explanatory. Do whatever it is you have to do so that you can be independent. Too many things come up with hunting partners (Myself included.) Don’t let a change in plans (read: don’t have a buddy with you) stop you from hunting that day. I'm getting way more comfortable being out solo with horses, but for a guy with mostly no background with these critters, managing one horse, let alone two, can feel intimidating.

NEXT

Get loaded up. Same fiasco – Takes forever. Catch horses, hook up trailer, etc. But on the road.

This time I hunt closer to home – Only about an hour and a bit away, and I get to drive with the weekend locals.

NEXT

Get to trailhead. This one has a decent setup for a turnaround, so I’m less on edge about parking.

Again, park, unload horses, unload tack and gear. Brush out horses, tack up. Get personal gear organized and in saddle bags. Get rest of gear in panniers. Stage panniers.

Get myself organized, boots, gaiters, hanwags, (forget spurs again. Fml.)

Rifle on horse. Ready to go. Tighten cinches, start walking horses down trail to get the kinks worked out and gear settled.

Go about 500m and stop. *Visible Confusion* “How the heck do I mount while holding a pony rope in my hand?” Still have no clue. Try a new idea.

Lesson Learned: Same issue of how to properly mount holding a pony horse's lead rope.

I get the mare on the Off side of my gelding, towards his rear quarter. She is happy to stand by his butt-end and not move. I take the lead rope and drape it across the top-ish of my cantle bag. Note: My gelding is broke to ropes. They don’t bother him. I let go of the rope, and focus on keeping my gelding standing without moving.

I go to mount, and success – nobody moves. I grab the lead rope with my right hand, with reins in my left. Off I go, and everything works. Almost looks like I know what I'm doing.

Or does it? I hate the idea of letting go of a lead rope. I have no control over the mare then, and if she wants to take off, she sure can. She’s kinda herd-bound though, so I gambled that she wouldn’t leave. But there still has to be a better way. This “worked”, but seems sketch.

NEXT

Start riding trail. This is awesome. I’m in the mountains, doing all the cool stuff that I’ve seen in that Rokslide “Pictures of Loaded Pack Animals” thread https://rokslide.com/forums/threads/pictures-of-loaded-pack-animals.31377/ Definitely feeling pretty cool.

We get to some blowdown. Okay, it’s a single tree across the trail. It’s just about chest-height for the horses.

Hmm, would be nice to have a saw or axe. Oh right, I have one, but I left it in the truck. Because this was just a simple day trip, on a well-maintained trail. (There’s a lesson here later.)

I tie up the horses, and walk the timber beside the trail. Find a decent route that is wide enough to fit a horse+panniers through. Continue on.

NEXT

We go around a corner. Old dried up river bank. Boulders and rocks. Gelding goes “WTF” and starts to back up. Just like Dewey Cox: He don’t want none of that s***.

Same issue as my last trip with the river, only today's issue is a boulder field. I thump on him with my hiking boots (Again, no spurs, because I forgot them). I slap with the glove. It gets some forward movement, but still can't get him to start doing one foot in front of the other.

I dismount. (Commence face-slapping from experienced horse people.) I simultaneously register that having my horse stop/balk/refuse, and me dismount, is probably really, really, bad. Horses aren’t dumb. If they know they can get away with something, they will do it every single time.

Lesson learned: I need to know “What” to do when a horse refuses on a trail, without causing a rodeo.

I know some stuff from teaching the horses to go across tarps and stuff in the round pen. But mounted, in the bush, on a rock field where if I come off I’m having a hard landing, isn’t exactly where I want to be learning things the hard way.

Anyway, dismounted, I start walking. Gelding follows hesitantly, but good to go. Mare doesn’t care, and dozily follows along.

We get to the other side of the boulder field. Usual problem: How do I mount with the pony rope. No idea. Hilarity ensues, only this time the cantle trick fails, rope goes the wrong way, I toss it and get out of the danger zone. Mare does her own thing while I turn the gelding around and reach down to grab the dragging lead rope.

“I wish I knew what I was doing.”

We are off again, hopefully covering the remaining 5km without issue, and looking forward to doing some glassing.

NEXT

We start ascending a bit of a hill. Slow going, because it’s rocky and the horses are picking their trail. The gelding also has to haul my fat-a** uphill. He has the short end of that deal.

We make it to the top, and start to veer right. We are into some heavy timber, so can’t see much.

We make the corner, and then are confronted with this crap.

Hmm, so much for well-maintained trail…

Lesson Learned: Just assume there is no such thing as a maintained trail, and always bring your saw.

This ended my hunt. I’m not going to fight the mountain, trying to find a goat trail through blowdown to bypass this stuff. Not with newb horses, and a guy who can’t even manage a pony rope.

I just repeat my mantra: Miles-On-Trail. The ponies got out into the mountains, we did Cool Sh**, and no rodeos so far.

I snap some pictures of the horses doing the Cool Sh**, and we head back.

Gelding doing cool Sh**

Mare doing cool sh**

NEXT

Gelding knows we are heading home. He starts stepping out like crazy. Normally this makes me happy, but my mare can’t go that fast (Or won’t.) So my right arm is taking a beating holding on to this rope with a mare dragging butt at the end of it.

I take a wrap (not really a full wrap, just kind of a U-shape) around the saddle horn. This helps, but I look back and my mare has her head in the air, the bottom of the rope jammed against her bottom lip.

I don’t know if this is normal or not, but I try to get the gelding to slow a bit. It helps, but I keep having to bump the bit. “Easy, Easy”. He slows, then 5 steps later starts giving ‘er again.

No idea what to do about this. Will have to read some stuff, and find out if this is a big deal or not.

NEXT

We get to the dreaded boulder field again. Gelding pauses, but I give him some leg pressure. He steps out with confidence, but can’t go too fast because he has to pick his steps through the boulder field.

I give him his head, lots of rein, and just try to stay balanced for him.

He makes it through no problem. Mare does fine as well, but then proceeds to have her face ripped off again as the gelding starts to cruise home.

NEXT

We make it back to the truck and trailer safely. Ponies get a bit of oats and their water buckets.

Tack comes off, gear packed away. We go to load, and same issue as the other day: Mare loads no problem, gelding doesn’t.

He’s better today, and I get him on with less coaxing and stupidity and pulling, but I still don’t like him refusing. He outweighs me by 900lbs. I’m not going to win a physical battle with this guy. And the old cavalry manuals and stuff don’t talk about trailer loading, because they didn’t exist back then. Definitely need to get something figured here.

WHAT WORKED / WHAT DIDN’T

What Worked:

• The packsaddle rigging. No idea if this way of rigging has a formal name or not. I’ve seen a lot of Northern Canada outfitters run rigs this way, and that same Pat Puckett guy rigs his packsaddle this way. (I’ll do a better post on this later.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Long lead ropes. Again, easy way to trail 1-2-3 when going through narrow spots.
• Tapaderos. I get nervous riding in big hiking boots. The taps definitely stop my boots from getting deep in the stirrups. (They do look ridiculous though - Mexican taps in the Canadian bush... But that’s how it goes buying used gear. You take what you can get.)

What Didn’t Work

• Ponying. I’m garbage with the rope handling. Gotta get this sorted
• Too Much To Remember. There’s so many little things to do/prep/remember. I think making a checklist or two so you can just go through the to-do’s on autopilot would be smart.
• Stubborn Horse. Gotta figure out how to deal with a stubborn horse that doesn’t involve dismounting. Don’t want the horse to get smart to this.

 

[rayporter]

Ponying. I’m garbage with the rope handling. Gotta get this sorted

look at your last pic and think about mounting.
put your reins in your left hand on your riders neck and drape the lead rope of your packer over the saddle horn and grasp the horn and lead rope with your right hand as you mount.

 

[pacoalcracker]

yyc, you and your gelding could use some formal training...you can only get by so far with reading and watching the tube. sure, you can learn on your own but it's going to be a long, hard fought battle and if you are lucky you won't get severely injured...or worse. Lots of people and horses get severely injured and killed every year because they or the horses were not properly trained for the situation, or they just should not have gotten in the situation in the first place.

 

[yycyak]

Well here's the infamous yycyak MS Paint drawing.

@rayporter , am I close here?

look at your last pic and think about mounting.
put your reins in your left hand on your riders neck and drape the lead rope of your packer over the saddle horn and grasp the horn and lead rope with your right hand as you mount.

 

[Preston]

Slapping a horse in the face doesn't do him any good except making him head sly. I would seriously go hunting on foot and do some horse training at home, such as trailer loading, crossing obstacles, ground driving, etc. You have way more balls than I do or way over confident. Seems like just taking the mare on trips and ponying the gelding without any tack would work better. I'm a new with horses (9 years) and have been training two mares for 2 years now, so don't take what I'm saying the wrong way. Best of luck.

 

[ShootOkHuntWorse]

Slapping a horse in the face doesn't do him any good except making him head sly. I would seriously go hunting on foot and do some horse training at home, such as trailer loading, crossing obstacles, ground driving, etc. You have way more balls than I do or way over confident. Seems like just taking the mare on trips and ponying the gelding without any tack would work better. I'm a new with horses (9 years) and have been training two mares for 2 years now, so don't take what I'm saying the wrong way. Best of luck.

That’s not at all what he meant.

 

[Pony Soldier]

Miles is what makes the horses. Might consider riding one in and the other out. I braid my own lead ropes and make them with a 6" loop in the off end. I had a mare that was very good at untying knots. Initially my lead ropes were wet and slimey when I tied them up but they were still there when I got back to them. ( Don't put the loop over your saddle horn under any excuses)

I found getting on works best with the horses facing each other hence the pack horse lead is on the off side.

Beware long leads can lead to it going under the riding horse's tail. (Can be exciting at the least). I prefer to lead on my left side and close enough to see the pack horses head. A long line can also get exciting when the riding horse chooses one side of a tree and the pack horse the other.

The wood panniers look nice but for what you are doing I would lean towards canvas panniers. Wood box panniers can have enough clatter at times to trigger a rodeo. If you choose to stay with them I would learn to use a double diamond and a lash cinch. It takes the flop out of panniers when jumping logs and creeks. I even used a double diamond on a green filly with canvas panniers last weekend when my son packed a lunch cooler with a chainsaw on one side. I got a big jump out of her on a small stream crossing and it kept things civil.

There are lots of things to learn and nearly endless options - one horse at a time.

 

[blick]

Keep at it. When mounting always have reins in your hand and check any forward movement immediately. Make the horse stand for a minute before taking off, every single time you mount, no matter when or where, he will get better. Maybe don't give em oats at the trailer when you get back (barn sour worse). If you have time do some ground work when getting back or tie up for a bit and ride off the other direction. You could make a pigging string to run on your saddle horn for leading single file. Pack and weigh panniers at home, hang and go at trailhead.