Horsewright
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2011
- Messages
- 13,484
The backside of our ranch is very rugged, wild country. Its steep, mountainous terrain with a lot of brush and the good thing, lots of grass. Its basically a north facing slope so the grass stays green here longer. Geographically the ranch encompasses the southern most tip of the Sierra Nevada mountians before they give way to the flats and valley of Tehachapi. There are no roads on our northern and eastern boundary fence. The country is so rough that those that have tried it on quads end up with the quad upside down. Horseback is the only way of getting there unless you are a sadistic pedestrian.
Checking the cattle we'd seen six of the neighbor's yearlings mixed in with ours. The Triangle T borders us on the east and north east and not having seen any cattle on our east border we were pretty sure the hole in the fence was on the north east part. Of course this is the wildest of the wild and the roughest of the rough. One of the problems of fixing fence horseback is you are limited to the amount of materials and supplies you can carry with you. Despite all the movies, cowboys don't generally carry saddlebags. The only time I do is when I'm fixing fence. In the bags are two pair of fencing pliars, a pair of gloves, small roll of baling wire, a handful of staples and a handful of T post clips. Saddlebags sit on the wrong place of the horse for him to carry much weight and if overloaded can sore up a good horse. Mine are small, maybe 9" by 8" and thats about all they will carry and all I would put on my horse there. So how do you carry extra barb wire and or smooth wire to fix your hole in the fence. Normally you coil up a few feet and hold onto it or hang it from your saddle horn. But this limits you practically to rather small amounts of wire. It also tends to stab you, the horse and all that custom leather put together we call a saddle.
A friend of mine came off his horse once back here in the back country, broke his femur and hauling him down to the ambulance was an adventure that I'm sure he WOULD not like to repeat. He was carrying the wire and I've always wondered if getting poked by the wire caused his horse to spin faster than he was sitting. He came up with the idea of making a bag to hang from the saddle horn (right place for a horse to carry weight), that would protect you, protect the horse and protect the saddle from getting poked by the wire.
Friday afternoon I had about an hour before my son and I were heading out to check for the hole. This bag here shown is what I came up with. Just scrap but it worked well. Really, really well.
Just some mulehide (the light grey part) its not really mule its cowhide and I don't know why its called mulehide. Its used for shoeing chaps, hay stacking aprons or horn wraps. Its extremely strong, durable and roughout on both sides. The gusset is an oiltan chap leather.
Just a strap with a buckle for adjustability to hang from the horn and one over to the top to close er up a bit. Well we found the hole. It wasn't just a hole it was "freeway", a huge hole with all kinds of tracks coming this way. A tree used as a corner post years ago had blown over and taken a big section of fence with it. Another cool thing with this bag is you just toss it on the ground when you ride up and everything you need is right there with you. If you need another staple its not back in your saddlebags. This bag allowed us to carry comfortably over a 100 ft of wire. That was way cool and we used a big bunch of it. It was needed. So then a guy has just got to ride off into the sunset.
Down this canyon, out on the flat is the truck and trailer and a cold Corona in the ice chest. Got home well past dark. But took care of the hole.
Checking the cattle we'd seen six of the neighbor's yearlings mixed in with ours. The Triangle T borders us on the east and north east and not having seen any cattle on our east border we were pretty sure the hole in the fence was on the north east part. Of course this is the wildest of the wild and the roughest of the rough. One of the problems of fixing fence horseback is you are limited to the amount of materials and supplies you can carry with you. Despite all the movies, cowboys don't generally carry saddlebags. The only time I do is when I'm fixing fence. In the bags are two pair of fencing pliars, a pair of gloves, small roll of baling wire, a handful of staples and a handful of T post clips. Saddlebags sit on the wrong place of the horse for him to carry much weight and if overloaded can sore up a good horse. Mine are small, maybe 9" by 8" and thats about all they will carry and all I would put on my horse there. So how do you carry extra barb wire and or smooth wire to fix your hole in the fence. Normally you coil up a few feet and hold onto it or hang it from your saddle horn. But this limits you practically to rather small amounts of wire. It also tends to stab you, the horse and all that custom leather put together we call a saddle.
A friend of mine came off his horse once back here in the back country, broke his femur and hauling him down to the ambulance was an adventure that I'm sure he WOULD not like to repeat. He was carrying the wire and I've always wondered if getting poked by the wire caused his horse to spin faster than he was sitting. He came up with the idea of making a bag to hang from the saddle horn (right place for a horse to carry weight), that would protect you, protect the horse and protect the saddle from getting poked by the wire.
Friday afternoon I had about an hour before my son and I were heading out to check for the hole. This bag here shown is what I came up with. Just scrap but it worked well. Really, really well.
Just some mulehide (the light grey part) its not really mule its cowhide and I don't know why its called mulehide. Its used for shoeing chaps, hay stacking aprons or horn wraps. Its extremely strong, durable and roughout on both sides. The gusset is an oiltan chap leather.
Just a strap with a buckle for adjustability to hang from the horn and one over to the top to close er up a bit. Well we found the hole. It wasn't just a hole it was "freeway", a huge hole with all kinds of tracks coming this way. A tree used as a corner post years ago had blown over and taken a big section of fence with it. Another cool thing with this bag is you just toss it on the ground when you ride up and everything you need is right there with you. If you need another staple its not back in your saddlebags. This bag allowed us to carry comfortably over a 100 ft of wire. That was way cool and we used a big bunch of it. It was needed. So then a guy has just got to ride off into the sunset.
Down this canyon, out on the flat is the truck and trailer and a cold Corona in the ice chest. Got home well past dark. But took care of the hole.
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