Loose horses on the trail

[Beverley]

Oh, don’t get me started. Yes there is a thread from probably 10 years ago. I encountered a pair of endurance riders with a horse running loose while riding a green horse and packing the veteran- and the dam horse came over to sniff noses with my pack horse, getting behind my green horse. I sternly suggested to the two ladies that one of them come and put a lead on their horse post-haste and they said ‘oh, he’ll be okay.’ Honestly it’s a good thing I didn’t have a firearm on me. I hit the beast with my lead rope, they took off at the trot and he then took off to catch them. This was on Forest land.

I do know of folks hereabouts who do it, but truly, it is NOT acceptable unless you are a) on private land and b) have landowner’s permission and c) have the manners and sense enough to put a loose horse on a lead if you see ‘anyone,’ on horse or bike or foot, within a half mile.

[Quelah]

We can be a bit wild here on the back side of the mountain, and people used to do it here, but not anymore as best I know, thank god. Years ago, there was a guy who would hand graze in the park, one loose, one held. He’d been told it was stupid. One day the loose horse galloped up to a rider, she got dumped, broke her pelvis. Rumor had it the settlement was in the low six figures. I don’t know if that’s true, I hope it was.

[enjoytheride]

There was someone on the AERC FB page that had all sorts of videos of her loose horse on the trail with her. She did say she occasionally came across other people on horses but didn’t seem to care. Her last posts I saw talked about the horse being gone for a considerable period of time and how he would come galloping up out of nowhere occasionally.