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Tip o' the Day

I've slipped in and out of my saddle a few thousand times, so I know it fits. But like most other horsemen, I don't know how to help anyone else find just the right saddle to fit them.

So to learn more about picking a saddle that fits, I asked a fellow whose advice I've respected enormously for well over forty years. Larry Gleason is a retired Ronan saddlemaker who also guided hunters during most of my years spent leading others to adventure in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

"Find a saddle that fits, huh? Larry said. "Maybe that depends on how much a person plans to use it and what for."

I asked Larry to explain.

"There are three kinds of seats: cantle, center seat, and level seat. In a cantle seat, the front is high and it's deep back by the cantle. Center seats slope to the middle from both pommel and cantle. They're probably best for most people, expecially trail riders. Level seats are mostly for cutting horses, used with forward stirrups."

"How about the old style?" I asked. "High horn and cantle?"

"Again, that might depend on what you're doing with it. A person can get hurt with a tall horn or high cantle if their horse begins plunging around. Tall horns are usually double-dally horns that are for roping and team roping. Not much good for anything else. All a rider needs is a horn that's tall enough to get a good grip on."

"How about a high versus low cantle?"

"Should be high enough to come up on the buns, but not so high you can't swing in and out easy. Again, a shovel cantle can be a dangerous thing if you're straddling a rank horse. I'd say not over a 4-inch cantle."

"What about seat size?" I asked.

"Trees are measured from the base of the horn to the top of the cantle. But how comfortable you sit will also depend on location of swells. If swells are low, it'll spread your legs enough to be uncomfortable. Higher swells might allow you to slip easily into a smaller tree size.

I asked about stirrups?

"Most people say proper riding posture should be to sit erect and comfortable. You should be able to look down past your knees and see the tips of your toes, with the heel lower than the toe. By riding in this manner, most folks will have better leg contact with their horse."

Larry's advice is to buy only good quality saddles with a rawhide or fiberglass tree.

Knowing what the answer would be, I still asked about padded seats. The old saddlemaker stared steadily at me for several moments, then said, "Next quesion."

Thanks, Jane. I'm really enjoying Roland's stories -- this one about three travelers in the Bob with a wheelchair was amazing! / email from Fran Brinkley

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Love your books. They are so much better than Louis L'Amour's / email from Josh Richmond

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I found it. I liked it. And I sent a copy to Major Mitchell / email from Pat Nipper

 

HOO'S THERE?

There were no "Trick or Treaters" at any of our Bob Marshall Wilderness hunting camps during the two decades I guided others to adventure amid Montana's northern Rocky Mountains. Halloween came and went with hardly a raised eyebrow, though our flimsy tents were pitched beneath a Hansel and Gretel forest of gloomy spruce trees, each of which cast three-foot shadows during a witch's moon.

It was just short of 50 yards to our primitive outhouse through that shadowy forest, and I'll confess to sometimes shining the beam of a flashlight all about and glancing over my shoulder during a midnight stroll for comfort and relaxation. Most of the time, I told myself, it was because we'd spotted big cat tracks in yesterday's skiff of snow, not more than a quarter mile from the camp. But about then a great horned owl hooted from deeper into the forest and a dead sapling sawed against the limb of a nearby giant spruce and shivers played tag up and down my backbone. That's also the same time I'd glance up at a full moon half expecting to see a black robed, black hatted hag drift across its face riding on a broomstick.

That gloomy hunting camp sprawled 22 miles from the nearest outpost of civilization, a Forest Service Ranger complex that was itself 52 miles from a paved road and 54 miles from the nearest neon lights. By October's end, there were none of the children who played around the Forest Service complex during the dog days of August, and even those of their parents who might be left busied themselves with packing boxes and file cabinets for their annual move back to the valley's bright lights and bowling alleys.

Without the possibility of being interrupted by stunted little ghosts or goblins threatening to soap our non-existing windows or tip over an outhouse nailed to a 130-foot, three feet-in-diameter Englemann spruce, we usually felt safe enough to retire at the conclusin of supper. Our thoughts, void of Celtic and Druid superstitions, were largely focused on an imagined band of November elk crossing a snowladen hillside meadow in dawn's early light. And had it not been for those pesky midnight cramps, we might all sleep soundly the whole night through, without once considering eerie moonbeams in shadowy forests, hooting owls, creaking limbs, or the squawl of catamounts.

I, of course, being the big, tough, Montana outfitter, had an image to maintain, not to mention a standard to initiate. That's why when I took an outhouse stroll it was with hands in pockets and a whistle on my lips. If, in reality, I was stricken with terror, the masculine Montana code permitted no deviation: I must exude quiet, compelling confidence. Let somebody else pack a .357 magnum on the way from sleeping bag to outhouse; I depicted indifference.

My portrayal of manliness was so positive that when Jane discovered the .357 magnum left at the potty by one of our more timorous guests during the middle of Halloween night, she and I had an all-in-the-family chuckle while our hunters still struggled from their sleeping bags on that first November morn. Discreetly, I sheltered the little woman from my delirium tremors of the night before, when I would've paid more than the .357 was worth just to have it in my hot little hand when the owl hooted and the dark object floated in front of the moon.

These days we're usually home on Halloween, and we must remember to stock up on treats for the little urchins. I'm not sure if the alternative is as severe as I was led to believe it could be when Jane and I were young, with our own fledgling family and an entire neighborhood filled with laughing, shouting, rambunctious children. In those days, the run on candies and cookies and sweetmeats stretched our budgets and threatened to make a "bah-humbugger!" out of me.

Still, I recollected how outhouses were turned over and windows soaped when I was a boy, even how a Model A roadster ended mysteriously atop a garage roof on Halloween night.

Please understand that I'm not advocating a return to those less than innocent halcyon Halloween days of juvenile delinquence. But neither am I advocating returning to those scary nights spent hesitantly shuffling through Hansel and Gretel's wilderness forests on the way to the outhouse.

 

 

Roland Cheek wrote a syndicated outdoors column (Wild Trails and Tall Tales) for 21 years. The column was carried in 17 daily and weekly newspapers in two states. In addition, he scripted and broadcast a daily radio show (Trails to Outdoor Adventure) that aired on 75 stations from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. He's also written upwards of 200 magazine articles and 12 fiction and nonfiction books. For more on Roland, visit:

www.rolandcheek.com

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