Turkey Vultures. My lease gelding and I were cantering along and had just come to a stop, I was leaning forward to give him a good ear scratch when a turkey vulture flew up from the side of the trail to a tree. He lost his shit. We were spun around and 100 ft down the trail before I knew what happened. I have no idea how I stayed on either considering I was so far bent forward with not much weight in my leg. Now every time we go past that spot he starts blowing and prancing.
When I was a teenager, I was riding my trusty quarter horse on a very quiet country back road that had woods that came almost right up to the road. My steady eddy gelding spooked at something that I thought was a dead dear or dead dog that was close to the road but back in the bushes. It was a large decomposed piece of flesh that had been partially burned that was still smoldering. It was a dead body. I told my barn manager about it and she called the sheriff. It turned out to be a really sensational case where a woman was luring men to her apartment, poisoning them, stealing their money and then disposing of the bodies. Her accomplice got lazy or was frightened off and this body did not burn as completely as her other victims. She is still in jail serving consecutive life sentences. Pretty icky and that was the scariest thing I have ever seen on a trail ride.
Laura: Ewwwww!!! Poor horse!! Was this Shadow as well? (And riders.).
I love these stories. Love that the scariest thing I’ve ever seen was “something” on Francis Scott Key’s grandmother’s grave when I was a teenager. I wish I had more guts and a trusty trail horse!
We find things to spook at in the dressage arena. Went on trail exactly once with my horse. It will take more than a few drinks to get me out there again on him, but I love living vicariously through these stories!
Dead body??? Omg.
Uhhhh,
Came around a bend on a trail at a trot and there stood 2 men w/rifles pointed at me just a few feet away. It was morning and it was deer season and we both were legal. Just scarey!! Then there was the time I ran into some pickups parked together with a bunch of deerhunters who surrounded me and tried to get me off my horse. They were all drunk. Then there was the time I came upon some picnic - ers that were naked and having sex!! Yee haw! I guess if you cover enough miles; you’re gonna have an adventure!!
oh I forgot!
Then there’s the scariest things the HORSE has seen trailriding! How about a 2 horse unicorn hitch/carriage of white ponies coming up on us? A llama that comes galloping up to the fence and honks & spits?!! While riding thru a xmas tree farm right before xmas; people carrying cut trees upright but walking towards us talking and all the horse sees is a walking/talking xmas tree!! Riding thru a field of cattle on a greenie and having the cattle stampede while chasing us.!! An albino deer sleeping next to the trail who decides to jump up when we get there. A school bus coming along the road and letting off the airbrake as the door opens…and horse backs onto the road into the traffic…and then it becomes MY scariest thing!! :eek::eek::winkgrin:
Mountain lion in MT. But I wasn’t scared and horses never knew he was there. Bears in WI riding alone, both times really was no big deal.
[QUOTE=sterling2000;7073902]
When I was a teenager, I was riding my trusty quarter horse on a very quiet country back road that had woods that came almost right up to the road. My steady eddy gelding spooked at something that I thought was a dead dear or dead dog that was close to the road but back in the bushes. It was a large decomposed piece of flesh that had been partially burned that was still smoldering. It was a dead body. I told my barn manager about it and she called the sheriff. It turned out to be a really sensational case where a woman was luring men to her apartment, poisoning them, stealing their money and then disposing of the bodies. Her accomplice got lazy or was frightened off and this body did not burn as completely as her other victims. She is still in jail serving consecutive life sentences. Pretty icky and that was the scariest thing I have ever seen on a trail ride.[/QUOTE]
:eek::eek:
My friends and I have been saying for YEARS that this is something that is going to happen to us! OMG!
Yeah, same horses, same people. :lol:
It honestly is not a difficult thing to train for…it’s just REALLY time consuming and most people simply don’t want to put in that kind of time. They just want to ride. 
I don’t want to hijack this thread, but you are welcome to PM me if you want more details. 
Here’s my story. New Years eve about 10 yrs ago. I have time for a quick trail ride before heading home for the evening festivities - we have a group of friends coming over and I have just enough time for a quick ride… Left the barn and took a trail heading up hill that we had ridden a number of times. As we head up the hill (which was steep) the ground starts to give way beneath my horses feet. It had been raining periodically over the past few weeks and the ground, which looked dry on top, was actually soaked below. At this point, I don’t dare turn around. Stepping through the footing while going up hill is one thing. Sliding out of control down hill is not something I want to do. We continue up to the top and survey our options. Im in a residential area in LA with trails. However I only have two options to get out. One is to ride back down that hill which I really really really don’t want to do. The other is to go over and take the road down. By now, I should have been back at the barn and finishing up to go home for the new years celebration. But Im stuck. I went back over to the steep downhill a couple of times to see if leading my horse might work. Both times, after trying, I decide that taking the road down made more sense. Although my horse on the road would not be a good situation. And did I mention its 4 lanes of busy 60 mph traffic downhill on a twisty road with no pedestrian area. So neither option is good. I decide to take the road, As we approach it, I can hear the traffic flying by. Lots of traffic tonight - everyone else is getting home for new years too. The road is slippery asphalt and my horse has shoes. Im hoping he does not slip. I decide to get back on and ride it down. Trying to lead him (and he doesn’t lead well in these situations) going downhill in the midst of traffic is not going to be easy. I figure I will be less inclined to get hit if Im on him instead of walking him. So we start. At first, he seems ok. So I relax a little. The side of the road only has a small (maybe 2 foot) metal barrier to keep the cars on the road - beyond that is a drop off and its a long way down. So I don’t look there. My horse continues down the hill and is actually being ok. Then a utility truck comes rumbling up behind us. It has a group of workers in it and they slow down. It appears they started partying some time earlier and as they slow, they make some “inappropriate” remarks about me, and one of them reaches out and smacks my horse on the butt obviously trying to get him to jump around a bit. I swear I had a moment where the world just stood still. Then saner minds prevailed and I took my crop and managed to smack the guy in his truck as they drove off. Lucky for me, there wasn’t a place for them to stop, turn around and come back. My horse never slipped for which I was very grateful. And almost two hours later, we got back to the barn. My trainer was waiting at the gate. She said she was just about to call the police as she was sure something dreadful had happened. We made it down the hill to ride again another day…just not up there anyway! My guests are already at the house when I walk in the door. My husband was angry at first, and then he realized my situation could have ended much differently. I’ll never forget that ride!
People in vehicles can be such idiotic jerks. :mad:
But I love reading some of these stories…makes me feel like we are not actually cursed, lol. Stuff like this really DOES happen to other people. Although it just seems to happen to us quite regularly, lol!
An extremely hairy man jogging in a Speedo.
(Ok, maybe it wasn’t scary per se. But it was disturbing.
Ummm Wow, this is not the right thread to be reading hours before taking my green rider bf out on our first trail ride together :eek:
Thankfully I have an amazing horse for him to ride, and my guy is the steady Edy type who calms the whole group down
and its only a 30min trail…don’t want him too sore one of his first times out.
I haven’t run into anything “scary” compared to y’all but I have been dumped once or twice from spooks at deers/turkeys
Scariest thing? One for each horse.
- My Arab English Pleasure/Park mare riding the sand roads near training barn near Wichita KS when we come up on … PIGS!! … who run snorting and oinking and splashing through the mud up the fence right at her. I thought she was going to simply faint out from under me.
- My gelding by her, a Trakhener sire, in one hour encountered 1) a rabbit running under him, 2) a deer running in front of him, 3) someone tossing boxes from a pickup bed into a roaring trash fire, 4) a calf feeder spinning in the wind and when we went into the arena to calm down, a giant inflated dolphin water toy. (My riding buddy noted, “His spook bank has run out.”
- My daughter’s BN packer, who dumped her when she rode him up to what she thought was a kitty cat under a bush - no, it was a bobcat guarding a fresh kill that arched up, hissed and ran at them.
- Some unknown horse at a show who spotted my daughter on her leopard POA, both of them wearing black and white spotted clown outfits. Horse not only left arena for that class, refused to go into it for rest of dressage show.
- Four of us on a trail ride (2 OTTB, Belgian, paint pony) who were drinking from the river when four kayakers paddled up to us. Horses’ hearts were beating like drums until a nice kayaker said hello and reassured equines that they were people, not crocodiles.
have any of you ever seen men in the trees? my younger sister and i were out hacking our ottbs, who were both very sensible and solid citizens… and my sister was a little more intuitive than i was, and said she thought something weird was going on. we both crawled the woods as small kids and know the forest and its trails like the back of our hand – and for some reason she just happened to look up at the right time, and there it was – a man, decked in full camo, sitting 25ft in the air with face-paint and a crossbow aimed right at us! that, for me, was terrifying. i can do wild animals just fine, but humans on the trail make me uncomfortable.
the scariest thing my horse has ever seen, there’s been a lot, but my gelding was a very sensible horse. we used to trail-ride at night (my work schedule was strange) and would often come in around 1AM after a good hour or two on the trails. this made him become very… reliable - because night seems to be when the freaks and predators emerge.
but one time, we were cresting a small rise that runs alongside high tension wires, and it is not a place you want to be caught - the path is rocky and narrow and there are trees along each side – not a good place for the good old turn and spin. we were tackling at a robust walk when he balked, and he was not the balking type on the trail – and just planted with his head up and body trembling. i looked up and we literally saw this shade emerge in a rolly-polly fashion 20 feet in front of us. it was a rather big black bear, and it just crawled out of the woods and turned on its hind legs to regard us before plodding off down the trail. at the time the worst we had seen on the trail were yotes. i could FEEL his heart hammering!!
needless to say, we both turned around and quit early that night!
Glad to discover this thread! We’ve had a lot of coyotes, deer, turkeys, hawks, rabbits, etc., and my horse has really been pretty good about it all, though he really didn’t like the snapping turtle that swam in front of him one day when the trail was flooded in a monsoon.
My scariest thing was a delivery truck on the road–it was a section of the road where we had to ride facing oncoming traffic because the other side had a blind curve, but it’s a quiet road, so most cars just move over to the other side to give us room. This damn giant truck accelerated and stayed as close to the side of the road as it could. I managed to get us down into the drainage ditch but my heart was stopped for a good thirty seconds. I wish it had had some marking to identify what company it was from so I could give them hell.
My horse’s scariest moment was when we were riding out with another boarder and her one-eyed Haflinger. There was a section where we come out of the woods, ride around a cornfield, ride another loop through the far woods, and then come back the way we came. So everything was fine until we come past the cornfield the second time and the Haflinger, ahead of us, goes to turn left into the woods–and suddenly spins and bolts directly into the cornfield. My horse, having no idea what he spooked at, spins and bolts back down the trail. I get his brain back and slow him down–right up until he hears the giant monster crashing through the cornfield, and the Haflinger, minus a rider, leaps out of the cornfield directly into my horse’s rump. So we bolt again with the Haflinger hot on our heels; I get him slowed down and them both stopped at the next corner where there was room to actually stop and turn around, and get the Haflinger’s reins, and the rider came trudging up… but I will never forget having a crazed pony come leaping out of a cornfield at us.
ETA: cause of the initial spook was a brush hog that had not been there on the first trip through. Sigh.
On a trail rider with a bunch of girlfriends and we were all riding our steady eddie trail horses… the “two beer” trail horses. We were walking down a trail in a large state park and we ran into a flock of emus - like three adults and several baby emus. They were escapees from a local emu farm. Oh holy cow! They burst out of the woods and ran right by us. We were startled. The horses had never seen anything like these birds. It all happened so fast that nobody really had time to act up but it was a shocker and totally unexpected.
I learned to ride as an adult, and as I result, I had some confidence issues. When I first started riding, I was happiest in an arena, where it was less likely that things were going to jump out and try to eat us. I did get talked into a trail ride with a friend.
I live in a town adjacent to a large military post. Trail riding is allowed with a pass, and you have to call in and make sure there is no training going on in the area you want to ride in. We went riding on the post in an area we thought was clear, but we must have wandered in to an area where active training was taking place.
Off in the distance, I start to hear what sounds like a jet engine. The ground starts to rumble and vibrate and the noise gets louder and louder. It becomes clear that we are quickly being overtaken by a large track vehicle. I yell to my friend that I am going to dismount and hold my horse while the tank goes by. She is a very experienced trail rider and said, no, just turn him to face the tank. We’ll be fine. My horse at that time was an OTTB. Loved him to death, but he wasn’t known to be the steadiest eddie. (Once spooked at his grain when I left the powdered supplement on top instead of mixed in…)
So, fearing the worst (and knowing that my fear had to be transmitting to my horse!) I turned him toward the noise and waited for the tank to appear. There is comes, lumbering out of the forest, belching smoke and stinking of diesel. It had several soldiers riding up top with guns up and gear tied all over the outside. So I’m waiting for my horse to spin and bolt. What actually happened was that my gelding cocked a hind leg and took the opportunity to rest a bit before we moved on. The soldiers waved at us and continued on. My riding buddy looked at me and said, “See?”.
After that, I took my OTTB trail riding a lot more often. I learned to trust him. He became a great trail horse. He didn’t even bat an eye when we were out riding on the post one day (alone!) and someone crashed their remote control airplane right at his feet. On top of that, the guy comes sprinting right at us, waving the controller and yelling at us not to step on his plane. Um, then don’t crash it on my horse’s feet? He’s lucky my horse was so good or his little plane would have been in pieces.
Another time, some friends and I decided to take our horses to the beach. We had 6 horses, two trailers. We got to the beach and unloaded the horses, started tacking up, and some guy launched a huge kite (probably about 15 ft wide with a long tail) right behind our trailer. My horse pulled back off the trailer (same horse, this was the rare time he did have a meltdown) broke his halter, and bolted down the beach.
My friend got on her trusty QH and set out after him, but there was no way her QH was going to catch my ex-racer. 1 hour later, she shows back up wallking her horse and leading mine. Both horses were blowing and heaving, drenched in sweat. My friend said my horse galloped 2 miles down the beach. He finally stopped when he came to a string of rental horses. One of the wranglers lent my friend a halter so she could lead my horse back.
When they got back to the trailer, I finished tacking up and we all went ahead with the planned beach ride. My horse and my friend’s horse with both so tired they lagged behind the others a bit. We rode back down to the rental string and thanked the wrangler and gave him the halter back. By then, my horse was so quiet (read exhausted!) that the wrangler offered to buy him! LOL. That horse was never for sale, he was my best friend. We never did go back to the beach though.
The scariest thing I’ve ever seen was when three loose dogs circled us out on the trails. Thankfully I was able to yell no and send my mare straight towards them, and they booked it out of there, but still…freaked me a bit.
The scariest thing my super rock-steady horse has ever seen is this medium sized boulder along the one trail. She spooks at it every. single. time. She does the whole side step, snort, big hairy eye every time. I trust her, she’s gotten me out of more than one jam, so there must be something about that particular area that gets her going - but I do laugh at her spooking at a rock.
Yes-when wild animals run AT you-During deer rutting season one year, my guy and I were riding through a grove of trees. Now and then you could hear the bucks bugling. Suddenly out of the woods in front of us charged a HUGE buck with HUGE antlers, bugling so loud and mouth open so we could see his tongue wagging and he charged RIGHT at us! I mean I could see the goo on his eyeballs! It all happened so fast my horse didn’t have time to unplant himself and just stood there with a comical WTF look. Afterwards his heart was like a drum, boom, boom, boom. He kinda shook his head, looked back at me and we carried on.
What probably should have been scary but really wasn’t was my horse and I were crossing a very narrow short bridge. Right in the middle a deer jumped out from under the bridge onto the bank of the creek and disappeared into the woods.
My wonderful mare froze then finished crossing the bridge, stopped and reached back for the cookie she felt she deserved. I had taught her to be brave by setting up horror things and rewarding her with a cookie for being a brave girl.
I think she thinks anything scary is my set up.
the time we got caught in a race of some kind. No notices put out, we were out alone innocently trotting along and all of a sudden a HORDE of running people came at us, split around us, and kept going. The horse was so scared he didn’t know what to do, and we couldn’t go anywhere, trapped in this sea of running people. Finally there was a break in the flow and we escaped.
A motion activated zombie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yyyKDVt7Tw
To be fair…it was Halloween but it was still unexpected and scared that crap out of my horse.
The second scariest thing was a flock of turkeys that decided to take flight right over our heads…got unseated on that one.
So far–the day we were riding along a fence we share with some cattle. The calves were creeping closer to get a good look at us, and one that was standing behind a bush got suddenly unnerved by how close we were so he popped out from behind the bush, spun 180 degrees and went running back to mama. My mare, who is usually pretty rational, has been a little ‘concerned’ about the bushes ever since, and I think it’s because she’s concerned they may fire a calf at her. Not sure I can blame her for that one.
