SuzAnne Miller is the owner of Dunrovin Ranch. A fourth-generation Montanan, SuzAnne grew up roaming the mountains and fishing the streams of western Montana. Her love of nature, animals, science, and education prompted her to create the world’s first cyber ranch where live web cameras bring Dunrovin’s wildlife and ranch life to internet users across the globe.
While I no longer go out specifically to search for antlers, my many hours in the saddle on a good horse in the back country have allowed me to discover and bring home a number of beautifully preserved antlers. My way of displaying them is to tuck them into our flower barrels in an effort to add a bit of wildlife to our surroundings. Each set of antlers has a story – and every time I pass by the flower barrels and actually take a moment to focus on them, I am reminded of another wonderful day spent in the mountains with my trusted equine partners.
Some of the stories are fairly comical. Once when I was breaking in a new horse to Dunrovin (the horse happened to be Mickey – our ranch clown and drama king), I invited a friend of mine who is an excellent rider to come along on Mickey while while I rode my soul mate Power up to a ridge along the Montana-Idaho border. This trail is a favorite of mine. It offers both steep challenging terrain as well as gentle inclines along old abandoned logging roads that are perfect for letting the horses run. This is exactly the type of trail that I like to take new horses on to see how they react to such conditions. My friend readily agreed and we headed out for a full day adventure.
Along the very top of the ridge, I had the great fortune of finding a matched set of moose antlers – this is, indeed, a rare treasure. Moose antlers, however, are large and heavy. The trick would be to correctly tie them to my horse in order to get them safely home. Power was, in my estimation, the best trail horse ever to have lived. He and I were practically bonded at the hip and we had traveled literally thousands of miles in Montana’s back country. I knew that he would not object to my rigging up some sort of system to get the moose antlers attached to the back end of my saddle.
The trouble was that I had to tie them so that the points on the antlers did not hit his flanks, which meant that they literally created moose antler wings that stuck out on both sides of Power’s back for a good two feet. Naturally, this all happened before I routinely took along a camera to record such interesting events. I do so wish I had a photo of the two of us.
Our ride back down the ridge was hilarious – the trail was steep and narrow. Power completely understood that he was now four feet wider than he had ever before been. We had to use every maneuver we knew to negotiate our way back down the trail to our parked trailer. I must admit that I was so happy to have been riding Power instead of Mickey on that day. While Mickey did a great job navigating the trail, Mr Drama King would not have accommodated my excess baggage and we might still be trying to get off that ridge to this day.
Needless to day, I love my antler flower barrels - and the memories they invoke in me about my many happy days riding in Montana’s mountains.
See More of Suzanne's writing on her Dunrovin Ranch Blog