wild mustang, Onaqui herd of wild horses

Wild Horse Photography – March 2020

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.

photograph Onaqui of wild horses

Onaqui Herd 12 July

Finally got around to processing my photographs from July 12. It was very hot that day and it took a fair amount of hiking to keep up with the herd.

According to a recent instagram post https://www.instagram.com/p/B1MrhhTH_y8/?igshid=1xgr6x4xfyzw

the BLM has moved up the scheduled October Onaqui roundup to September 10-16. According to the post the BLM will gather these 200 horses from outside the HMA and then from “the mountains within the HMA where sage grouse have been re-introduced.” Again according to the post, horses within the valley will NOT be gathered…

It seems unlikely that the BLM can find 200 horses to round up without rounding up the herd that we photograph. The South herd is frequently “outside of the HMA.”  I’m glad I will be photographing in Iceland during this time. Not sure I could endure the pain and suffering.

Photographing these magnificent wild horses never gets old. I could do it every day. I only hope that they will still be there when I get back from Iceland…