Feral horses — a personal account

Forest and Bird, Volume 22, Issue 4, 1 November 1991, Page 38

Feral horses — a personal account

Kevin Smith

ORSE-CATCHERS would have removed the Kaimanawa feral horses by now if the horses hadn't been protected. First by the army blocking access, and then by the Order in Council. One of those eager to catch the Kaimanawa horses was my late father, Colin Smith, or Bluey, as he was known. In the 1960s and early 1970s, he joined forces with Ross Konui and then with Boy Kuru of the Tuwharetoa in numerous horse chases in Tongariro National Park. Together they caught 169 horses from the park, not really for profit or for any special qualities of the horses, but mainly for the love of the chase. As a child, I was allowed to join in some of the latter chases. It was the end of an era. The frontier of the King Country was rapidly disappearing as development penetrated the forests, manuka and tussock of the National Park-Lake Rotoaira area. Wild rivers full of trout and blue duck

were decapitated, their headwaters disappearing into tunnels of the Tongariro Power Scheme. Native forest logging in the adjacent Tongariro State Forest, where my father worked as a bushman, was coming to an end as the forests ran out of timber. Subsidised farm development swept aside the natural vegetation and exotic forestry spread from the eastern shores of Lake Taupo into the Rotoaira basin. If sentiment dictated, the horses would be given a special value as part of the heritage of the volcanic plateau. Yet, the horses do not belong with the blue duck, kaka, totara or tussock, but with the heather, contorta pine, broom, deer and the Caterpillar tractor — alien elements modifying and degrading the natural ecosystems. The exploits of the horse catchers generated colourful yarns, with the facts becoming distorted over the years and turning into legends. The October issue of North and South magazine recently featured a piece of crusading journalism on behalf of the horses in which legends have become

myths. My father is credited in the article with having transformed two of the brumbies, turning one into a Tokyo Olympic showjumper and the other into a Horse of the Year title winner. Two of the horses he broke-in did achieve such fame but they had rather mundane origins, with the Olympian being bought out of the Taumarunui saleyards rather than starting life as a mountain-dwelling brumby. Yet, forgetting the myths, there is no doubt horse catching was an exciting existence. The most celebrated incidents were the chases for a seemingly uncatchable cream stallion. The young horse somehow dodged nooses, tranquilliser darts and blockades until my father bought a powerful staying hack and ran the feral horse to a standstill. A New Zealand western, the 1981 film ‘Wild Horses’, was loosely based on the chases for the young cream horse (I just don’t recall the fights or the women of the movie). True to its domestic origins, the horse was broken-in in a couple of days after its

capture to become a likable, but self-willed pony named Smart Pants. He became my hunting horse and for several years carried deer out from Tongariro forest. Returning with him to the tussock once, I was struck by his skill in gently tugging on the flower stalks of the mountain daisies till they parted from the presumably less palatable basal leaves. Here lies the problem. Horses, wonderful animals that they are, have no place in the last remaining tussock grasslands of the North Island with their suite of vulnerable herbs and native grasses.