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

[Pony Soldier]

many things we do and how we think is conditioned by our experiences on the trip. Early on while I was working for the gov, we had a long trip into never never land. The return was a long downhill slope. At one point we had a fairly steep, 4 ft slope, with a creek crossing at the bottom of the slope. My bosses horse decided to get a drink when his feet hit the creek. With his head betwwen his feet and the cinch loosening up over the previous four miles, the saddle slid off taking the bridle with it leaving my boss and saddle in the creek in an instant with an astonished look on his face.

At that point, the need for a crupper or britchen was firmly imprinted on my mind if you are going to ride in the mountains. I will never forget the look on my bosses face as he sat on the saddle with the water up to his belly.

All my saddles - riding and pack - have britchen.

 

[rayporter]

going down hill once when the tackberry buckle came loose. the crupper and back cinch saved me.

every thing gets broke to a crupper now. i might not use it but they wont throw a fit if i do.

 

[ShootOkHuntWorse]

I’ll try to take a picture this week but with the lead rope I put it up through the hole by the horn, make a loop with a few twists and then place it over the horn. To get it undone all you do is flip it over the horn and pull the tail back out under the saddle.

 

[yycyak]

Very anticlimactic update:

Shoes
Had the farrier out Tuesday. Asked that the heels on all the shoes get tucked in, no rear overhang, and no front lip on the shoes showing. If it shortens cycles, I don't care - Main thing is I don't want the horses throwing shoes this time of year.

Mare turned out really good. Gelding was okay (I thought) - I wished his heels were tucked in more, but length seemed good so I left it alone.

Thursday afternoon I got a text from one of the guys at the barn letting me know the gelding had lost his front left already. So my Friday day-trip was cancelled (Although with the weather we've been having, it was questionable if I'd have been able to go anyway.) Still not sure if the gelding is over-reaching with his hinds, or if it's the shoes. The pasture isn't exactly mountain country - Not much for rocks to catch edges on...

Anyway, made some calls and was supposed to have a local feed lot cowboy/farrier come Saturday to fix things, but was ghosted. Le sigh. So I'll need to get this sorted this week.

It'll be interesting to see how the mare's shoes do though, because she looked exactly how I wanted.

Hot Vs Cold?
I didn't realize this was controversial, but is there a consensus on the effectiveness of hot-shoeing vs cold? In one circle of people I know, hot-shoeing is The Devil and the lazy way to do it. In another circle, you can't find a farrier that WON'T hot-shoe a horse.

Weather
The weather here has been just awful here. Dumping rain more days than not, so it's made getting out for rides pretty ugly. Rivers stupid high, trails muddy, paddocks are mud pits at the barn... So that's been fun. Ironic because we've dealt with drought for a while, and yet the problem this year is things are too wet to get the grass off the fields now.

***

Sheep season is about a month out, so looking forward to that. Still hoping to get a couple overnight scout trips in (maybe even pack in and cache some cubes) to shake down gear and get my highline and hobbling skillz up to par.

 

[doverpack12]

How long are the hind toes on the gelding? They can knock those back some potentially.
You can go to clipped fronts on the gelding but if he’s stepping on them would likely still loose one at some point.

Wet and sloppy means feet are softer and will loose shoes easier plus they aren’t setting their foot right where they want if they slide.

Hot v cold. Likely a better/higher contact percentage with hot but I let the farrier pick what they are more comfortable with. Not all are setup to do hot and not all horses are ready for hot shoes.

 

[Tobe_B]

First and foremost, lost shoes are going to happen regardless of what type of farrier you use for your horses. I’d be hesitant to use someone just because they are a “cowboy” shoer and might shoe your horse in a manner that you think is more appropriate. For my outfitter specific horses I tuck my heels a little more than normal to help minimize pull offs. But generally that happens on a hind shoe because the horse behind in the string steps on the horse in front. Rocks pulling shoes is uncommon. For my general trail riding folks, they get a full fit based on their horses confirmation.

Hot vs cold shoeing is irrelevant. I do both at my whim and whimsy, and for what each horse will tolerate. If I don’t feel like beating on cold steel, I’ll heat it, beat it, and burn it on. If it’s 95° out and I’m standing in the sun, I’m probably not going to turn my oven on.

The biggest reason a horse loses a shoe, is poor hoof quality meshed with poor fit. If you don’t have a flat foot with a flat shoe then you have problems, especially in muddy pastures and pens.

My advice to any and all horse owners is to get a W Brand T Square and a wing divider. Learn how to check the balance of your horses feet and measure them. If your balance is off your landing and striding is off. If your toes aren’t set correctly your horse is reaching places it shouldn’t and their timing is going to be off on leaving the ground.


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[Giles19]

Judging by your username you're located around Calgary? There is a really good farrier school near Cochrane called Alberta Foothills Farrier School. It's a week long course and gives you the basics of trimming and shoeing. Even if you don't plan on shoeing your horse every time its always good to know how to tack a shoe back on in the mountains. Hot shoe, cold shoe doesn't matter if the fit isn't right it'll fall off.

 

[yycyak]

Trip Report - 09 Aug 25

With the weather finally cooperating, and a new set of shoes on the paint horse, I figured I'd attempt a day trip and do some scouting. And, maybe shake down a bit of gear. So loaded up early, and headed out with my old dog in tow.

Got to the trailhead in decent time, and once again the suggestion of "load/balance your pack bags and gear the night before" paid off. So there was no yard sale this time, which was helpful and sped things up considerably.

New Panniers
So my latest Good Idea Fairy project was to try out army surplus "flyer bags" as my panniers/pack boxes. I forgot to take pictures of them on the horse, but they look like this:

For $20/ea, I figured why not give it a shot. (I don't have the budget for "real" pack bags right now anyway.) They have similar dimensions to canvas Utah bags, and are made of 500D cordura (At least that's what it feels like.) Everything gets wrapped in a trucker tarp anyway, so the bags have protection from scrapes and weather.

In using these, what really stood out to me was the weight difference vs hard pack boxes. Each bag had 35lbs of gear, plus there was a 10lbs top pack. So in total I was at about 80lbs of gear, which leaves another 40lbs of cargo space if/when a guy needs it. With hard boxes, I'd be at 110lbs - Just 10lbs of reserve....

So yeah, soft bags sure give you a bit more weight capacity. And when you're limited to a single pack horse, this is critical. I like the hard boxes a lot, but I won't be running them for hunting trips any longer.

Diamond Hitch
This was my first time attempting a proper diamond hitch with full pack bags and a top pack out on the trail. It went.... okay. I tried a hybrid of a single-man diamond that I'd seen that Pat Puckett guy use. I'd tied it a bunch at home, but hadn't had a chance to try it in the real world.

Start

7km in

Anyway, yes to all the packers out there, start the judging But, I'm going to take the amateur "W" for the day: The pack saddle didn't roll. My pack horse didn't have any rubs/sores. And I didn't have to stop and re-tie anything. (The saddle blankets did move a bit to her off-side towards the end of the day, so if we had gone much longer, I would have had to stop and re-rig.)

But, what did suck was unpacking: it was really inefficient untying the lash rope at the end of the day back at the trailer. Recently a guy from Banff showed me another way to tie a diamond that I think will work better/faster, so I'm going to give that a shot.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I ran the biothane britchin this time. It worked, and I'll keep running it in the future. I need to make a couple of adjustments to have it fit a little better, but all in all it worked out well.

Trip Itself
Things went really well. Barnard the paint had some decent confidence this time. There were some tree roots from a big old douglas fir that crossed the trail, and he was pretty sure they were going to murder him. And a couple of stump-bears had him concerned. We had a couple of creek crossings that he didn't want to do, but after about 20 seconds of dumb, he got his feet wet and we went through.

We ran into some cattle on the public range. He thought that was pretty nifty, and wasn't phased at all.

Oh, and we ran into a couple of groups of quads/atv's. The paint did not like those, and was definitely on edge. The dudes were classy about it though: I moved off-trail, and they just putt-putted on by.

Pack horse did awesome - not much seems to phase her. She seems to be getting better at not running into trees with the load. Still buddy sour. Not sure if I should consider trading her for a less-drama gelding. She's great as a pack horse, but try anything solo or take her away from other horses and she just calls and calls and carries on and is a right pain in the butt, especially for a rookie like me. But as a pack horse, she's been awesome. So I don't know.

All in all we covered about 14km round trip, with no rodeos, rolled packs, unwanted dismounts, or anything. Even got to munch on some wild raspberries. It was almost relaxing.

Stopped to open a gate. That saddle scabbard holds the Tikka + SWFA combo pretty well, and doesn't bug my knee (at least so far)

Heading back to the truck

Tired dog

***

So yeah, no rodeos, no wrecks, no lost shoes, and no cutting ropes or packs or anything. I'll get another few day trips in this month, and then sheep season starts.