Here is the final batch of photo’s from my April trip to photograph the Onaqui Herd of Wild Horses. Several spectacular new foals. I think I have a new favorite foal! Hope you enjoy! I can’t wait to see what the foals that belong to the South herd look like!
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I’m still one photo shoot behind in posting. This trip was early May. Found both the North and South herds. Lots of foals this year which will only give the BLM an excuse to round up. More to come.
Had a short trip to the herd a few weeks ago. Found the North herd near the trough watering hole. What a sight! Horses everywhere. Lots of new foals (too many), but it was great to see them having such a great time. Went to find the South herd. Only a few horses on the flat, went up to the upper watering hole, nothing there. Then I noticed some movement a couple of miles south and East. There they were. Unfortunately not time to get there before sunset so I will have to plan on seeing them in a few weeks. This is only a small portion of my photographs. These wild horses are such a pleasure to photograph. More coming soon.
Got back to the Onaqui herd a few weeks ago. We drove several miles on back-roads before we found this group of horses. They were North of the trough watering hole. We photographed them for a couple of hours in harsh light. I spotted the bulk of the herd South of the trough watering hole up in the cedars. We drove to them, but they seemed unusually spooked and with few roads in the area we returned to the first group and prepared for sunset light. Great timing on our part. Still waiting for the grass to green up, but we could not find ANY HORSES that were distressed in any way. We also found and photographed the Old Man! He too wasn’t as friendly as in the past be he looked great! It looks like he will be with us for a while.
I was asked if I had any photographs of the Swasey Herd of Wild Horses near Delta, UT. Just the excuse I needed to make the two hour drive from Salt Lake. Rumor has it that the BLM will be rounding most of them up soon. Glad we were able to find them! They certainly are a different herd the Onaqui. Very spooky. They would not let us get anywhere near them, very different than the Onaqui. They also did not come together in a large herd. Only bands of 3-8 horses. Glad we had longer lenses!
Timing was also perfect to photograph the Snow Geese migration. Every spring between 10 and 20 thousand snow geese make a stop in Delta, UT on their annual migration to Canada. I have photographed them nearly every year for 5 or 6 years. This year did not disappoint.
As usual, the Onaqui herd never disappoints. We located several family bands just below Davis Mountain. The antelope (pronghorns) must be migrating back from their winter range because we saw a couple of herds that had nearly 50 antelope in them. Then we set out to find the rest of the “North” herd. We found them herd several miles North of Davis Mountain at the top of the foothills. We have seen the herd in this area once before. We named the valley “Dead Eagle Valley” for a dead eagle that we found there last spring. As some of the bands came into the valley we were able to position ourselves above them, and Simpson Buttes and the valley East of there is in the background. What a view! Several photographs in this post are panorama’s where I shoot 12-15 separate overlapping photographs in portrait mode and then stitch them together to form a panorama in Lightroom. Then we were able to hike to the opposite side of the valley and had the snow-covered Onaqui Mountains in the background! Wish we had lawn chairs with us, we could have spent the entire day there! We photographed them for several hours in that valley and then proceeded South and West to find the former Cremello band. We found them again near the main watering hole South and West of Simpson Springs. It looks like the black mustang has taken over the band once Ghost and the Cremello were captured, neutered and sold at auction by the BLM. No sign of the colt with one blue and one brown eye, but his mother and her two younger foals were there. I fear he was rounded up with Ghost and the Cremello. A sad thought to have as we left the herd and headed home…
Wow, what an interesting day photographing the Onaqui herd. Started the day with light snow, clouds and frozen roads. Ended the day with mud and blue then pink skies! You have to love Utah’s West desert and this magnificent herd of wild horses. We found what appeared to be most of the North and South herds near Davis mountain. One or two miles of driving on the frozen 4 wheel drive roads and the photo shoot of this magnificent herd was on! Ended the day South if Simpson Springs and found what was the Cremello’s and Ghost’s band. The 3 year old colt with one blue and one brown eye was nowhere to be seen. I hope and pray he was not rounded up with his father the Cremello and Ghost.
Just too many photo’s. It was really hard to cull these down to a reasonable number of “keepers”.
Finally found the time to get back out and photograph the Onaqui wild horse herd in winter. Finding them in winter is much more difficult than in summer. During the heat of summer, the herd needs to use the watering holes at least daily. In winter they get their water from eating snow, or drinking from small puddles. They frequently use the valley North of Davis mountain. We headed down that muddy and slick 4 wheel drive road. We finally located them on the West of Davis mountain. It was really nice to photograph them up in the steeper, rocky areas, not on the flats.
After photographing this “North” or Davis herd, we drove South to attempt to locate the South herd. I was anxious to see if I could locate the Blue-eyed family band, the band that the BLM has rounded up the Cremello stallion and The Ghost from. We did locate that small family band just at sunset. They were too far away and it was too dark to photograph them but I was grateful to see the pinto mare and her and at least see two of her three offspring.
Well, I’ve finally brought myself to write about the most depressing day I have ever had photographing. It occurred on December 5, 2019.
For those of you who know me and my passion for the Onaqui herd of wild horses, you know that I loved photographing “The Ghost”. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the ghost, I first photographed him April 2015. I had hiked about ¼ mile with only my longest telephoto lens (big mistake) and found the herd was grazing in the rocky foothills directly South of Dugway.
At first, I did not notice that I had never seen him before (with over 400 horses in the herd it is hard to identify/remember specific individuals). But it was soon apparent that this was a new to me, and a very special horse. He was super aggressive towards every stallion in the herd that dared give him a glance. He was full of testosterone, neck amazingly arched, prancing, snorting and provoking every stallion he could. He was entirely stunning in looks and in his actions. I was mesmerized with him. He was absolutely incredible as he taunted the rest of the stallions.
(first photograph I took of “The Ghost”)
I photographed him all afternoon. I must have thousands of photographs of him from that afternoon. Late in the day, he just lost interest, and disappeared over the edge of the hill we were on. I hiked up to the ridge only to see him running due South, at full speed. He just kept running until he was out of site.
Days later I asked another photographer that is much more familiar with the herd (Kent Keller) about this horse. I described him, his markings and behavior. Kent informed me that the horse I had photographed was named “The Ghost”. He is named that because he appears out of nowhere, taunts the stallions in the Onaqui herd, and then disappears for years at a time. Then he re-appears, repeats the taunting (and likely succeeds with some of the mares), and disappears once again! This was my first encounter with “The Ghost” and this was 2015.
I did not see him again until Dec 11, 2018. I had a hard time locating the herd. I had driven further South than usual in an attempt to find some horses. I was probably 4 miles North of the Dugway geode beds when I spotted a small family band nearly a mile from the road. I proceeded to walk to them and as I got closer I recognized the band to be my all-time favorite family band. The lead stallion is a magnificent cremello (crème colored with blue eyes & pink skin), the mare is a beautiful pinto and with her were her two latest offspring. The older colt is a pinto with one blue and one brown eye. The younger colt is a beautiful pinto filly with two blue eyes. I have been watching this little family band for several years, and now ghost is shadowing them! At that time, I was hoping that he would stick with this band and eventually make a move on fighting the cremello for that pinto mare.
(Blue-Eyed mare in background with her two offspring in Dec, 2018)
Well, I was right. Ghost shadowed that band for the entire year. He had become a “1st lieutenant, meaning; he will hang around with the band and help fight off the stallions that investigate the band. These first lieutenants then wait for the right time to mate with the mare, or fight the lead stallion for the mare.
Ghost was shadowing the band constantly wherever they roamed. I last photographed him with the cremello’s band on August 29, 2019.
(this year’s foal has Ghost’s markings)
On that trip I photographed this year’s foal from the beautiful pinto mare that ghost had his eye on. I believe that he was successful in mating with her. As you can see the offspring has all of ghost’s coloring, not that of the cremello. I was looking forward to see if there was going to be a fight between ghost and the cremello for the band, or if ghost would disappear again.
Unfortunately, as in life, things sometime do not go as planned. As you can see by the photographs I took at the BLM holding pen in Delta, Utah on December 5, 2019. The ghost and the cremello were rounded up in late September by the BLM (the BLM broke their promise NOT TO ROUND UP ANY OF THE ONAQUI HERD IN THE VALLEY). During that “gather” they rounded up over 200 of the Onaqui wild horse herd. They claimed they were only rounding up horses on Dugway Proving Ground land and those few horses that were living high in the mountains. With ghost and the cremello as part of those unfortunate horses rounded up, they obviously did not live up to their promises. Despite being notified that they HAD gathered up at least two very famous horses from “the valley”, the BLM refused to return ghost and the cremello to the wild. Many wild horse groups volunteered to return them at no cost to the BLM. They refused to have them returned under any circumstances.
(Ghost and Cremello stallion in BLM holding pens, Delta, UT)
On the day we visited the holding pens we learned that both of them had been castrated and branded and would be put up for auction as soon as they are out of quarantine. A sad day for the Onaqui herd. Genes from both ghost and the cremello are forever removed from the Onaqui gene pool. Thank you, BLM. Sadly, this is just the beginning. The BLM is taking the position of “gathering” (and putting them in pens for the rest of their lives along with the 50,000 wild horses already in pens) the Onaqui herd and other wild horse herds throughout the West rather than getting aggressive with fertility control.
Although technically ghost is not dead; he is dead to the remaining Onaqui herd and based on what I witnessed in the Delta holding pens, the ghost’s spirit is, in fact, dead…
We were a little worried about how muddy the roads might be when we left Salt Lake. It had rained a lot the previous few days, but luckily the roads (even the side roads) were fairly dry. We found the North (Davis Mountain) herd just East of Davis Mountain. After photographing them for a couple of yours we left to find the South herd. This might have been one of the very few trips when the South herd was not in the flats. In fact, we never did find them. Sunset was quickly approaching so we drove as fast as we dared to get back the the North herd before sunset. With only a few minutes to spare we were able to get some stunning photographs of these magnificent wild horses just at sunset. Another fantastic trip to photograph these stunning wild horses.
