Steve Moseley

The release of these McCullough Peaks stallions on Oct. 7, 2004, following a few days confinement during a BLM gather, created a rush of primal emotion as they raced away to reclaim their freedom.

Photo courtesy Steve Moseley

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Are there wild — or perhaps a better term is ‘feral’ — horses in Nebraska? Actually, yes. Unlikely though that be.

Elm Creek, Nebraska, is the site of expansive BLM wild horse and burro corrals. Capacity is 500 animals on 35 acres, however daily average runs more like 350-450. The population includes geldings, mares, burros and yearlings awaiting either adoption events from the Midwest to the East Coast or transfer to off-public-range pastures.

The place has been there since 1994. I, on the other hand, have never been there. Sad truth is in 75 years, I didn’t even know it existed until the last few.

Thanks entirely to northwest Wyoming, my interest and limited understanding of these untamed creatures has to do with specimens on the hoof. In the wild. As free range as it is possible for a horse to be.

It was my privilege to cover two big horse gathers for the Powell Tribune, both with former colleague and friend Chuck Hassler. We were a dynamic duo; he would write, I would shoot.

This photo doesn’t peer into the eyes of these beasts, but I have others that do. I’m not a horse person — please don’t wish that on me — but even an equine-oblivious product of seed corn cap and overalls country could tell at a glance these were critters as wild as any bison bull.

The first BLM gather Chuck and I covered was a bit higher profile to grossly understate that insane day. This one took place in the Pryor Mountain wild horse range between Lovell and the west slope of the Bighorns. We watched from above, hidden behind a screen of burlap fencing on a ridge above, as a helicopter hazed horses through the serpentine canyons toward the wild horse corrals waiting below.

As the horses approached and I fired off photos unlike any I’d ever taken before, the Judas horse and its handler awaited, hidden behind a big boulder ahead of the thundering hooves. As the wild horses arrived the handler released his hold on the halter, slapped the animal on its rump and sent it racing directly in front of perhaps a dozen head fleeing beneath the chopper. All of them fell in behind the Judas horse which led them straight to confinement.

Thus, the name Judas horse for a specimen from those same Pryor Mountain herds. By now captured and domesticated, it was the perfect decoy to bring in its wild brethren with minimal angst.

Can you imagine what an eye-opening day that was for an outsider like me? Because you grew up with stuff like this, you probably cannot.

Then suddenly silence. No more helicopter. We came to learn it had been grounded by the FAA. What on earth? Next came news our nation’s capital was under suicide aerial attacks at that very moment. The towers were falling. The Pentagon was in ruins. Thousands of our fellow Americans were perishing.

Our day in the Pryors, as by now you have guessed, was Sept. 11, 2001.

It is not possible to adequately describe how mind-bogglingly bizarre it was trying to visualize what was going on while perched on a dusty plank in one of the most remote, hardscrabble, otherworldly places imaginable. It just couldn’t be possible. Could it?

But the increasingly awful reports of massive attack were true. None of us has been the same since.