By Reg Collingwood
Wintering the Horses
A young guy named Shawn Boot came out in January with Ron Bruns, and we used to play rummy to pass the time. Then Shawn left and I was there alone. January 11th, 12th, and 13th went to 68 below, then 72 below. The warmest time of the day was 35 below. I’d be out snowshoeing to get the horses in the meadow across the river with my eyelashes stuck shut. The horse I kept with me was Steel. The rest would go up the mountainside and paw into the slopes for grass.
Due to the low snowpack, we had lots of wildlife around, which meant lots of wolves. I had a little dog named Bobby and he would just shake when the wolves were around. A pack of wolves that came out of the Ross River was bugging Strawberry and Slim on the 15th of January. I could hear the horses’ bells and knew from the sound they were in trouble. The wolves bit Slim a couple times on the back leg, and ripped his tail out. He wasn’t a robust horse, hence the name Slim.
The next morning, I shot one of the black wolves off the hillside with a 7mm. Wolves were always a concern for the horses and they knew how to test which horse was the weakest. One year we lost five horses to wolf predation.
In 1978, I wintered horses at Hyland Post. Hyland Post sits in a unique microclimate that sees shallow snowpack. It’s a crucial winter refuge for wildlife like caribou and moose who would otherwise struggle to forage in deep snow. With the low snowpack, it’s a good location to winter the horses without having to drive them all the way back to Smithers until spring.
I would pull a toboggan with salt feed out to the meadows and gather the horses up. We found 12 additional horses from the neighbour outfitter camp. The outfitter had used the horses and turned them loose at Stikine River, which was bad practice. The horses likely would have died from starvation or wolf predation.
We stayed in a little cabin with a potbelly stove because it was easier to heat. We made smokies and pancakes with frozen blueberries. Charlie Abou had been at Hyland Post trapping, and had gone back to Iskut with the moose meat, but left me a quarter. It was frozen, so I chipped away at it with an axe. This was my meat staple for the winter.
We had a little snowmobile, but it wasn’t very powerful.