A couple of years ago, Meriam’s brother, Ken, visited the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center in Lovell, WY. He took a couple of trips up Pryor Mountain with the Center’s director where they observed this special herd of wild mustangs. Enthralled by the experience, he encouraged Meriam and me to put this on our “bucket” list.

This herd of horses is very special because of its Colonial Spanish American heritage. This tough little horse, derived from the horses of Portugal and Spain, has been present in this rugged mountain area for nearly 200 years. If lost, the herd cannot be restored.

The history of the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustangs is not well known. There are accounts of wild horses being present in the late 1800s, and many people believe that there were wild horses in the Pryor Mountains in the early to mid-1700s. Many believe the herd is descended from Spanish horses brought to the area by different Native American tribes, especially the Crow. Many others share this belief, though some other plausible explanations have also been proposed. Starting in the mid-1990s, studies were done on the Pryor Mountain Wild Horses to determine the genetic traits of the herd, such as their level of inbreeding and what type of horse the herd was most genetically related to. From these studies, it was determined that the herd has high genetic diversity, meaning they have low levels of inbreeding. It was also determined that the herd has genetic traits consistent with Spanish horses and that the herd lacks genetic traits that would have originated in draft or thoroughbred ancestors. Around this same time, there were also studies on the phenotype of the herd. That is, these studies were concerned with determining if the wild horses looked like Spanish horses. These studies confirmed that the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustangs indeed had colors and conformation consistent with Spanish horses.

The Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Range comprises of more than 40,000 acres of federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land. Located in the southeastern portion of Carbon County, Montana, and northern Big Horn County, Wyoming.

Steve and Nancy Cerroni manage the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center. Steve was our guide for the day. We left the Center at 9:00a (returning about 4:00p) in their new Jeep Rubicon and were glad we did. Virtually any other type of vehicle would not have made the very arduous trip up and back. We ascended from 3,800 ft to almost 9,000 ft in just 2 hours over some of the roughest roads we have ever traveled…BUT worth every inch of the trip. The scenery was magnificent and being able to view these magnificent horses is beyond description!

We want to apologize beforehand for presenting you with way too much information and way too many photographs. If you get bored, just take a siesta and wake up when it’s over :-).

There are currently over 150 wild mustangs in the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang herd. The herd is comprised of bands, each band has a stallion plus his mares (from 1, up to 7-8). These bands co-exist in a tolerant way until a mare comes into heat. This often creates a fight when an “outside” stallion tries to mate with a mare in another band.