Latest / NaturallyScott / E69 Naturally Scott Adventures – Wild Mustangs of Nevada: The Spirit of the American West 🐎🏜️

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E69 Naturally Scott Adventures – Wild Mustangs of Nevada: The Spirit of the American West 🐎🏜️ · NaturallyScott

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to this edition of Naturally Scott.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Scott Harris.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: And as I tell you every week, for those who join regularly, I love having you here.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: I love doing this show.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Being the host of Naturally Scott is really a highlight for me.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I really very much appreciate the people who take the time to check in and listen and uh go along some of these adventures and opportunities and um and join us for it.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: So today we're doing one of our Naturally Scott adventures.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um instead of having a human guest, uh, we've got uh strictly an animal guest, a location two, um, but no human guest, just me.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're going to have some fun and talk about uh a recent visit that I did out to Nevada.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: So let's get right into it.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: What we're going to be talking about today are wild horses.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now, let me clarify, we call them wild horses, they're referred to as wild horses.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Technically, they're feral horses.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: They're descendants of the 16th century Spaniards uh Mustangs that they brought over here and that escaped or left or were traded or whatever.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and for the last uh 500 years, they have battled and continued to survive, and they're pretty cool.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's not very much that's as iconic as a wild Mustang, which is by the way, how I'm gonna refer to them because I'm a romantic and a pharaoh Mustang doesn't have the same ring as a wild Mustang.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna share some videos with you today and some still shots from a recent wife, my wife and a recent trip my wife and I took out to Nevada.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: We also did uh California Condors over the Grand Canyon and some wild burrows out in Oatman, Arizona.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Those will be upcoming episodes, but we wanted to get to the Wild Horses one right away.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: And as we get into it, I got to share something with you.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't talked about this before on the podcast.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a big deal, it's not a secret.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: It just didn't seem appropriate at the time, and now it is.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: I've probably written 40 Western books, maybe 25 or 30 novels and another 10 or 15 uh nonfiction books, all of them based in the 1860s, all of them based out in the Old West, except for some brand new ones that I'm doing that are based in the Florida Everglades because of a recent alligator trip that I did.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that being the case, I realized that one of the reasons that I wrote these westerns is the horses.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: I love the horses.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: I love the idea of the solitary cowboy and the horse and the six-gun and the hat.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm romantic, I'm in, I'm all into that.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I realize a lot of it isn't 100% true.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Some of it's iconic.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but nonetheless, I love it, and so I write about it.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: I continue to do so today.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: And um, it was the wild Mustangs.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, racing across the open lands um that just drove drew me to it.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: As a kid, I wanted to be a cowboy.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: I also wanted to be a fireman and a and a baseball player, but a couple years a little league told me I didn't have the skill to be a baseball player.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And reality said I didn't have the courage to be a fireman, but I hung on to that cowboy dream for a while.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: And um I've given it up now, but uh it was a blast while I had it.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: So as I mentioned before, um, these horses originated with the Spaniards uh in the 16th century, and I'm gonna mispronounce this, but in Spanish it's mesteno or uh mesteno.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, one has a G in it and one doesn't.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but those are the the names that Mustang derive from.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: And um, as I mentioned, they are feral, uh, and there are quite a few of them.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: They they do really, really well.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: These animals are small for horses, they're about 14 or 15 hands.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: They get up to about 800 pounds.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: So they're not a big animal, but they're remarkably durable and remarkably strong.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: They can run 35, 40 miles an hour.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: They have exceptional stamina and extremely hard hooves.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, these hooves are designed or have grown into being able to run for these extended periods uh over the harsh lands that they live in in the deserts.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so they're really built to live out in the old west.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's what these wild horses have done.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: They've grown into that, and that is their niche in the world.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they can be found in 10 states in the West, um scattered across these states, and 50% of those are found in Nevada, and that's where we're gonna go today.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna go to Nevada.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: So my wife and I visited out there.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um we went to see these horses, that's why we went.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the the center location for that is Reno, Nevada.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: So if you love wild horses or you love bowling or you love gambling, Reno is kind of the um, it's somewhere in between uh Laughlin and Las Vegas as far as uh the level of things that it offers to people.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so these Spanish Mustangs that are out Spanish, that's a different podcast, these wild Mustangs that are out there running around, um, they are not without their controversy.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there are a number of people who believe that they should never be touched, um, nothing should ever be done uh to the Mustangs.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then there are a handful of people who believe that there are just too many of them, and that they are tearing up the environment and the habitat.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so there is a constant battle to find the balance between, I'm gonna read this list, horse welfare, uh ranch land health, wildlife habitat, livestock grazing.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, that's always the biggie.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: It does come down to money, and what part of our um history do they represent?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so this is an ongoing battle.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the horses can be found on BLM Land, Bureau of Land Management, which is huge in the western United States.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: And these herds can explode.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: If it's a great few years of water, the herds can double in four to five years.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that can put a lot of pressure on all of the things that we mentioned, right?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: The land, the grazing, the habitat, the foraging.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there can be too many of them.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's like in the areas where there's white-tailed deer and there's nothing to hunt them.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, eventually you have too many and they start to damage uh the environment, and then of course they starve in the winter when there's not enough food.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody likes to see that.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and at the same time, uh, these herds can shrink rapidly.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: They call them bands of uh of wild mustangs, bands of wild mustangs, but they can also shrink.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Drought has the biggest uh effect on that.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: So when there's no water, they literally die of thirst or of starvation because there's not enough for them to forage.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: So it can be a brutal life for them to uh to live.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what we do have is the BLM will gather up a lot of these horses and try to get people to adopt them, which is tough.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: We considered doing that years ago.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we had a uh you wouldn't call it a ranch, but we had a horse property out in California.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: We considered um adopting one of these.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I struggled with the fact that these are herd animals or banned animals, and they're used to living in the wild and throwing them in a pen.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I understand that it's maybe better than starving to death, uh, but I just I couldn't get over it.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: I just knew I'd look every day at that horse and know that it desperately needed to get out and to run free.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a big struggle for me.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And when you look at the breakdown of the bands, the mares, as often happens, from human species on down, the women run the show.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they manage where the band is moving, where they're going to get their water, where they're going to get their food.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: The stallion's job is to defend his group from other stallions, uh, which is brutal.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: The fights are horrific.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you can see the scars in them.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: They remind me of the scars on uh elephant seals from the battles that they have as they try to keep their harems intact.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: But stallions also have to defend against predators.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: And there are a lot of predators in the West.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: There are coyotes, there are wolves, there are black bear.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Those animals will rarely attack an adult.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: They have to be desperate to attack an adult uh mustang, because adult mustangs can be quite strong and their kicks can be deadly.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but the old, the sick, the weak, the injured, those animals will go after it.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: But the worst one for the horses is the mountain lion, uh, otherwise known as a cougar, a puma, a panther, or a catamount, all the same animal.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: In the West Coast, it's known as a mountain lion.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and mountain lions are the only animal out there that will attack a healthy adult wild Mustang.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, mountain lions are pretty badass.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so you do see that sometimes.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now, part of what happens with these bands is when the young males uh reach the age of about two to three years old, the stallion kicks them out.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't want them around, doesn't want the challenge.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: He's got enough to deal with coyotes and mountain lions and stallions that are roaming free.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: So he kicks these guys out and they form these bachelor herds.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And um, we're gonna show a video here of one of these bachelor herds running, a small one.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is just a group of four that broke out um and was out running, and and you'll see how beautiful they are.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um very, very, very few things in nature to me arrival the glory um of the spectacle, if you will, of watching a wild Mustang race across, uh race across the land, jumping gullies and and doing the things that they do.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's truly amazing.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: These wild mustangs come in a variety of colors: grulas, pintos, buckskins, roans, duns.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: My favorite is the paints, the one where there's a lot of white.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: I just love those.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so now that we've introduced you a little bit to the wild Mustangs, let's take you to Washoe Lake State Park, uh, which, as I mentioned, right outside of Reno.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: We stayed, I don't know, East Reno, I guess, and it was maybe a half-hour drive to get over there.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now there is another area right there, if you're going to be staying in Reno, where you can see a lot of wild Mustangs.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'll throw some shots up here.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: And this is USA Parkway South.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's an 18-mile stretch of highway that starts or ends, I guess depending on where you go, uh, in the town of Clark, Nevada, which is really close to Reno.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that 18-mile stretch, you've got hillsides coming along and just an absolute ton of um wilds that can be seen out there in the desert.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll throw some photos up and some videos of those, but they're really fun to see.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: And actually come into the town of Clark.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: You can see them.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of warning signs, um, not good for the horse or for the car if you hit them.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then my wife and I went, I think, three days in a row into the town and then did the 18-mile drive and poked around up in the hills, did some four-wheeling, and it was fantastic.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: But um, you can see where these horses do get hit, and that's just a dangerous thing for everybody involved.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: So a ton of warning signs.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Heed them if you go.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you go to Washaw Lake State Park, it's a big lake, go down to the south side to the wetland viewing area.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the wetland viewing area is stunning.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's stunning whether they had wild Mustangs or not.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a beautiful park.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you look out over Washaw Lake and it's just great.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but if you're a wild Mustang, it has everything you'd ever want.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's got fresh water, it's got sweet grass, no predators, um, plenty of fresh water, and um it attracts those Mustangs.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: They'll come down in the morning.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they go across the street and up into the hills during the day, but they come down in the morning, they feed and they play and they run and they eat and they drink and they make little mustangs, and it is a thing to behold to get out there.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: They built some trails out there, or maybe it's a trail, but I know they have a mile and a half easy walk trail, perfectly flat the whole time.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: I went three mornings in a row at Dawn.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Regular listeners know that I love Dawn, prefer it over any other time.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um I never once had another person out on the trails with me.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: There would be people that would stop in in the parking lot, and they they struck me as the kind of people that weren't there to see the wild mustangs, but were out for something else and saw them and pulled over and took a look.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh and that would happen.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: You can see the parking lot from when you're out in the fields.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: And um it's really an interesting mix because you come in and you park and you look out over the lake, or you look out over the field to the lake, to your right, and to the left, there's a highway.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you're watching these cars just go sailing by at 60, 70 miles an hour.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and at the same time, you've got these wild mustangs out there trying to make a living.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: So they come in in the morning and they stay for a while, and then they go across the street and hang out in the hills.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Much, much more difficult to see.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's pure chance to see them out there.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and then oftentimes they come back in the evening.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's a couple other places around the lake, if you drive around the lake where you can see these, and again, you're really close to Clark.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the lake, the Washaw Lake State Park, that is the answer.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that is where you want to go.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so they are used to people being around.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: They're used to cars and they're used to people.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now they have their buffer zone.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a petting zoo.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: They don't let you get close, and nor should you, by the way.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's not healthy for the animals, it's not healthy for you if one of them kicks.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but on the other hand, uh, if you've got a decent camera, you can get some excellent pictures.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you can get relatively close to the horses.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I recommend staying on the trail.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's what they request and it's the right thing to do.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: Again, it's safer for you and the horses.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: But the trail takes you right through where the horses are.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I found that you could get, if you just walk slow and easy, um, don't make any quick movements, uh, you can get 100 feet away from these animals.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can hear them snorting.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and they'll they're just relaxed.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: They just hang out.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: They roll in the dirt, um, you know, get take that dirt bath that they like to take.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they'll nap.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: I found a number of them napping.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: So obviously they're relaxed, and my presence didn't seem to impact them at all.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: The young ones were off running and racing, which as I mentioned is my favorite.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: But almost as fun for me is there's a there were a couple of spots out there where there were lone stallions that were off.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: They apparently weren't part of this herd or this band.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know enough um about horse ecology and horse biology to to know that for certain.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: But there were two or three stallions spread out over the park, but not really near these horses.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: But there is something, there is a nobility to um a wild Mustang stallion standing on its own.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh, the one that I focused my most attention on was pure black.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And um it just looked amazing.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: And you just thought, what a great thing to be, you know, to be able to run 40 miles an hour, to be able to kick a black bear to the point where he doesn't want to attack you, to go to battle for a herd or your own harem, um, and to live your life at that level.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: It it's a it's a truly, truly amazing thing to see.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's impossible for me to not look at that stallion.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know what the equivalent is.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: I know anthropomorphizing is when you take human traits and try to put them on an animal, um, but the opposite of that I don't know, where you take a human like myself and try to insert myself into a horse and try to imagine what they're thinking.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I just, I don't know what it is, but it draws me every time into these animals.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: And um just trying to imagine what they're thinking.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Do they, do they feel a sense of pride?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Do they understand that?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, do they have to work up their courage like a teenage boy at a high school dance, you know, getting ready to ask a girl to dance before they go and do battle with the head stallion?
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Or does instinct just tell them this is the time, this is where we go, this is what we do?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I don't know, and I tried to imagine, and I wish I could get inside their head, but maybe it's better that we can't, and you just imagine it and uh and watch these beautiful animals.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's a spot right at the entrance to the park um where there's a a leak um in their water pipe, and it has formed a tiny, it's not even a pond, just a collection of water.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's maybe 20 feet by 20 feet.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: The picture's up here now, you're looking at it.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and this is the entrance or the exit to the park.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: This is where the horses come in in the morning, and this is where they leave when they leave.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: But this water's here, and that's the place um where people get amazingly close to these horses because that road is 15 feet from the water, and the horses don't move.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: I pulled over for a couple hours and watched them middle of one morning.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, the cars, there's a campsite out there, and so the cars are going by and coming in and making a left or a right, it teased right at the water there.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: And the horses never even looked up.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't even care.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I didn't walk over, I didn't want to get any closer, but I was parked right on that street taking these pictures you're looking at and watching these horses.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: There was a beautiful little colt there, by the way.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I've learned in doing a little research on this that a foal is a baby horse that can be a boy or a girl, but a colt can only be a boy.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a boy, one day to be a stallion that you're looking at, but this is a colt.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: And um, it went and did some bucking and kicked its legs and was running around and then would come back and nuzzle its mom, make sure everything was good.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you saw a couple of fights um that occurred, not big ones.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: They weren't battles to the death or anything, but uh maybe just practice battles, if you will, as so many animals do out in the wild.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then again, set back um from this main group of animals was the couple of stallions, I guess patiently waiting their turn, um, waiting until the main group either headed off into the fields or back up into the hills.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: And um, but when you get there, you can watch them eating and playing and running and drinking and fighting and rolling and sleeping.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: There, there's just there's something about it, um, and watching the young ones race across what appears to be perfectly flat land until as you're watching the horses disappear in a gully or the bolder ones leap this gully, maybe 12 feet.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's a big jump for a small horse.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they just make that leap like it's nothing, and they chase each other and nip each other, and then they just reverse, and the one that was being chased is now chasing, and um you just have this great opportunity.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: You can watch them as long as you want.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, again, you can go out on the USA Parkway and you can watch them and see them, and they'll come relatively close.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: I saw one herd out there that was close to a hundred animals, which was a lot.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the groupings that I saw were in the five or six grouping, um, and the horses were beautiful, they all looked healthy, they're roaming free.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yet inside the areas where they're roaming, there are ranches and whatnot, and they're coming right up to the fences.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: And um, again, you can tell that they're comfortable.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing about these, since they're in 10 states, there are a number of other places where you can go um and get a good view of these, a different view.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: I like this spot because it's almost guaranteed.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I try to send you guys or tell you about places uh where you can have a chance to replicate what I've done.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, not because I've done it, but just because it's the place to go to see the wild Mustangs or whatever it is we're talking about.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think the next, the next one of these in two weeks is gonna be on California Condors.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I believe you'll enjoy that too.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now, but some of these other spots throughout the West, I just wanted to mention them in case you happen to be in this area.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: But on the Montana-Wyoming border, there's a place called the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: I have not been.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: I am going in November.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um my wife and I are gonna head out to the Grand Tetons for a bit and uh and then leave Wyoming to go up to Montana.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna stop at Pryor Mountain uh Wild Horse Range and see what we might be able to see.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um there are Salt River horses in Arizona's Tonto National Forest, which is within an hour of Phoenix.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: So if the world takes you to Phoenix and you want to see some of these, the Salt River horses in Tonto National Forest are a place.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then a third option, I'm trying to get you into as many states as where you might visit, but Colorado Sandwash Basin has a great reputation for these horses.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now I've seen them out there.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And um that is a really cool place.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: The wash I'll like to work.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um doesn't mean it's the one that would be your favorite, uh but it is photogenic and uh you've got a really good chance of seeing them.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, in the future I want to go try some of these other places where they're more difficult to see, but you get some some great photos and I want to see the differences in the horses.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that is my plan.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you've got questions for me on any of these things that we talk about, I would love to answer them.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: I I one of my favorite parts about doing this whole thing is the contact with the people who take the time to to write me or text me or email me or however it is.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: So my email's up on the screen.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's Scott at naturaliscott.com.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: I promise you, I respond to every comment um that comes onto our YouTube site, and I respond to every text and email that I get from anybody who takes the time to do it.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I would certainly do the very same with you.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: So um if you get a chance, if you're watching on YouTube and you can hit that subscribe button, we'd really appreciate it.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: When I say we, it's myself and my couple of producers.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh one is my best friend of 50 plus years, Frank Sierra, the other is my son of 40-something years, Justin.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but if you hit subscribe, YouTube sends this out to more people.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the more people that see the message, I think the better it is uh for everything and everyone involved.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: And if you get a chance to drop a comment or hit like, I would appreciate that as well.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now, again, this trip, the one that we talked about, this was what I call a three-animal trip.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we started with the wild horses, as I mentioned, in Reno, in the northern part of Nevada.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: That was just miraculous, and then from there worked our way down to uh the Grand Canyon, to Marble Canyon specifically, which is the best place in the world to see California condors, and we saw them multiple days in a row.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know that there's a day where they're not seen there, but you can see them playing, you can see them sleeping, you can watch them fly away, you can see them kettle, which is where they gather up in a group, and I'm gonna be doing uh an episode on that soon.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I am looking forward to that.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: I love California condors.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then the third one uh that we did on that trip was wild burrows.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um these were focused mostly in Oatman, Arizona.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a it's a different thing.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's the desert out there, and you have these burrows out there living in the desert of Arizona and a little bit into California on the other side of the Colorado.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um but Oatman, California, which is a neat little town.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um we used to go to it all the time when we lived in California.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that's where the wild burrows have made themselves a part of the town, and so we're going to cover that.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: So it's going to be a mixture of these wild burrows that live in the town during the day and then go out in the desert and sleep at night and come back every day.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: They're not domestic, um, but they're very used to people.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: They take food out of your hand, you know, one of those places you can buy food for a buck, a bag of food, and and feed the burrows, and so we're gonna cover that.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so that was a nice three animal trip, and um, I'm looking forward to sharing uh the next two animals with you guys.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, thanks so much for watching this one on the wild horses.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: I know that's two now we've done on horses, the colonial Spanish Mustangs in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and now these, but they are different.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: They descended.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they both descended from the Spaniards, uh, but they took different paths in the way that they went.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: The colonial Spanish Mustangs stayed pure.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, these wild mustangs, these feral Mustangs, um took a different approach and spread out and built their own lives that way.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so I thought that it justified two separate shows.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you do get outside, and I recommend you do, and again, outside could be anything.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: It could be your back porch, your front yard, a local park, a state park, national parks, my favorites, um, or even international.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you make your way up to uh, you know, um up to the Arctic or over to Africa.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: My wife and I are blessed.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to the Galapagos this summer.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: Never been, can't wait.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna do some time in um uh mainland Ecuador and then go out to the Galapagos, which is part of Ecuador.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: I will definitely be doing a couple of shows on that trip, I can tell you.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but if you do get outside, and I hope that you can, uh I re I I'm begging you, stay safe and stay curious.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: If you do those two things, you're going to have a blast.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for listening to me.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Scott Harris.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is Naturally Scott.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: This is our now twice-monthly special edition Adventures, and um I'm looking forward already to doing the next one.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Have a terrific day, and again, thank you.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to Naturally Scott with Scott Harris.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Naturally Scott is hosted by Scott Harris, produced by Justin Harris, directed and edited by Frank Sierra.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Follow us on our YouTube channel at Naturally Scott and Instagram at naturally Scott Harris.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: If this conversation resonated with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Naturally Scott thanks you for viewing and listening to this podcast.