Was reading the thread on goats scaring horses and thinking about that time five of us were leaving headquarters to bring some cattle out of the canyons.
Two of us were on colts, the other three were on older ranch horses.
As we walked down the narrow draw below the pens, we noticed some dozen wild turkeys higher up on the side pecking away in the weeds.
Something must have scared the turkeys and they flew over the top of us to the other side.
Now, if you know big fat wild turkeys, they don’t fly like a decent bird does, swooping gracefully thru the air, but like a crippled B-2 bomber trying to maintain altitude, flapping noisily and not doing too well at it.
Those turkeys really almost hit us.
I ducked and was ready for a wreck, horses taking off bucking and running scared up and down the draw and back to the barn.
What do you know, not one horse even changed gaits or raised it’s head.
Horses, even the two colts, kept walking along on loose reins, heads swinging nicely, like those turkey raids right overhead was one more day in the life of a horse.
Every rider had been scared by the turkeys, but somehow that didn’t affect the horses.
Now, those are horses that if someone leaves the lid up on the trash can in the corner of the barn, they just know something terrible is hiding there and have to be talked into walking by it.
We spoke about that turkey raid for years.
It was so strange, normally it is the horses that overreact, not the riders.
Now, pigs, I have yet to see a horse that, on first encounter, some for their whole lives, is not scared when first meeting pigs.
