The March 1993 issue of the PNWFT newsletter again asked for articles of how you got into Foxtrotters. This provided us an opportunity to tell you about the N Hanging P Foxtrotters of Sheridan, Montana. The N Hanging P consists of not only Penny and Myself, but our Son and Daughter-in-law, David and Donna Peterson, Monroe, WA and our Daughter and Son-in-law, Periann and Marc Washenfelder, Riverton, WY.
Penny was born and raised at Choteau, Montana, a small agriculture town northwest of Great Falls. Penny's family were pioneer homesteaders, Forest Service packers, and oil field construction contractors. Penny always had horses and spent all of her free time horseback, riding the country around Choteau.
I was Farm/Ranch raised in central South Dakota. Work teams and saddle horses were as much of our operation as tractors. I was the "cowboy" on our place and started riding when I was about 4 years old. I was about 6 or 7 when I was allowed to drive a team of horses.
When I graduated from High School, the folks thought I had to go to college in lieu of staying on the farm. I graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in Wildlife and Range Management.
I, during my college years, spent 19 months seasonally working for the Forest Service at Choteau, Montana. This District was strictly a Bob Marshall Wilderness District, where horses and mules were used every day. I started on the trail crew and wound up being the trail crew foreman and assistant packer. I also have worked as a packer and a horse wrangler for outfitters.
Penny and I met after I was working full time for the Forest Service, out of Great Falls in 1958. In fact we met after a friend and I had finished a 4 day pack trip into the Bob Marshall. This friend, Leonard Blixrud, had to get to Choteau to make sure he had a date that evening, so we hadn't even stopped to clean up before heading into town. I have always expected, it was the smell of horses and woodsmoke, in lieu of my good looks that caught Penny's attention.
In our 30 year career with the Forest Service, we have had the good fortune of being on Ranger Districts where horses and mules played a big part in the administration of the District. After I became a District Ranger, I made sure that there were horses and mules on the District.
My first Ranger position was on the Caulder Ranger District out of St. Maries, Idaho. This was timber/logging country and we were like fish out of water in this caulked boot country. In the Fall of 1967, I was offered the Ranger's position on the Lincoln Ranger District, Lincoln, Montana. It was back to a country were boots and a stetson were normal attire. At this time the District had 80,000 plus acres known as the Lincoln Backcountry, which in 1974 became part of the Scapegoat Wilderness, which is the southern extension of the Bob Marshall Wilderness. This coupled with several cattle and sheep allotments, provided the need for horses and mules.
We were able to rent some pasture next to the Ranger Station so we went horse buying. We first bought an appendix registered Quarter Horse mare. It was our plan to raise a colt, but we were told that we couldn't register the foal with the Quarter Horse Association, so that put a hold on our horse raising plans. This mare also showed up with navicular problems in both front legs. We also had purchased a registered buckskin Quarter Horse gelding. After riding this gelding for about a year, he started going lame on his front legs. The Vet's diagnosis was that the gelding had more body, then he had legs to support himself. In this same timeframe, my personal Forest Service gelding that I had brought with me from Idaho, stepped in a badger hole and broke a front leg and we had to put him down.
It was back to looking for horses. We next bought a grade thoroughbred gelding and later another registered Quarter Horse gelding. The Thoroughbred was a good horse, led a string of mules well and at the time, I thought, he was a good walking (traveling) horse. But our luck was holding true, he got caught in a fence on winter pasture, where we were pasturing the Forest Service horses and mules and no one found him, one more horse lost. Our last Quarter Horse couldn't walk and also was having some other problems, again we were in the horse hunting business.
I don't exactly know how or where I heard about Foxtrotters, or how I became aware this breed of horse were on the Shoshone Forest at Cody, Wyoming. All I know is we were willing to look at another breed besides Quarter Horses. I made a call to the Shoshone Forest and got in touch with Leonard "Foxy" Foxworth. Leonard was the Forest Dispatcher and owned Foxtrotters. Leonard was a long time member of the Bighorn Basin Foxtrotting Association and quite an old time fiddle player. Leonard died in 1992, and we miss seeing him at the Powell Show and Sale.
This was in 1977, and I was scheduled to attend a Range Ecosystem workshop at CSU in Fort Collins, CO in late May. We were still living in Lincoln, so Penny met me in Billings and we went to Cody, WY to look at these Fox Trotting Horses. The first Foxtrotter we rode was one of Foxy's, and set the pattern for looking at more horses. We next met Doc an Mary Graham and looked at their Foxtrotters. We then went to Norm Haye's Standing Star Ranch and looked over his Foxtrotters. I believe we got to Cody on a Saturday and didn't leave until the following Tuesday and spent all of that time looking at Foxtrotters in the Powell and Cody areas.
When we were at Norm Haye's place, we were shown a Brown (Black) horse named KoKo's Little Man, that had been Norm's stud. The horse had been kicked, pasture breeding, and now was a gelding. The horse was still running in his stud pen and I remember Norm saying we want to be careful for he still believes he is a stallion. Norm and I were visiting, we looked around and Penny was missing. When we located her, she was in the stud pen with her arm around this recent, two weeks, status gelding. It was quite obvious we weren't going home without taking this Koko horse with us. But I needed a horse for this black gelding wasn't going to be mine. Norm said he had a four year old green broke gelding, that he would sell. We wound up buying these two geldings.
We still have these two geldings, Koko and Rags. Rags is a big bay gelding, who's sire happens to be Koko. These two old gentlemen are the horses that sold us on the Fox Trotting Breed. Both of these geldings have done just about everything a person would want to do on and with a horse. There are many stories that describe the things that we hove done with these geldings.
A couple stories are: The first time I really rode Rags on the job, I was going into the Wilderness with four or five mules taking groceries into the trail crew. i had to find out how Rag's liked a lead rope under his tail. When I got the rope under his tail, no buck, we just went on down the trail. This first summer with our Foxtrotters, I had to deliver a message to an Outfitter friend and his wife, who were at their camp 12 1/2 miles from the end of the road. I and the District's Fire Management Officer rode the two geldings into the camp, delivered the message, and rode back out in less then 4 1/2 hours. This deal was over a murder that took place in the Lincoln area and is a horse story in itself.
We then transferred to Sheridan with the Forest Service in 1977. Sheridan District is a big Range District. Horses were used for Range administration and "cowboying" is still a way of life in the Ruby Valley. The first Fall I was on the District, I rode on the Fall roundup of the biggest cow allotment on the District. This allotment permitted 2700 plus pairs of cows and calves. This is no over night deal with about 30 riders and cooks at the Three Forks Cow Camp. I was out on a gather and was trailing in several pairs to the cutting corrals, when I ran into a guy who was trying to pull a calf out of a bog. He was riding a Quarter Horse and that horse just couldn't pull the calf out of the bog. i rode up and offered a hand, took down my rope and roped the calf, turned Rags and had the calf out of the bog before the other guy got the slack out of his rope. This was the first time I had really used a rope off of Rags. Rags is a big, stout horse and now I know when you want to catch and hold cattle, Rags is the horse you want your saddle on.
We have used the two geldings for all types of ranch and cattle work. We hunt off them, ride many miles of range and trails, but never have packed them. I now get a huckle when I read or hear people talk about the versatility of their breed of horse. I look back at 16 years of using Foxtrotters, these two old geldings are not only versatile, but they are smooth riding with gentle and loving dispositions.