ANTLERS, OKLAHOMA — Bryant Rickman’s call echoes through the scrubby oak of early fall, through the rugged terrain of the Kiamichi foothills, all the way to Blackjack Mountain, and back nearly 400 years.
Rickman knows just about every one of the horses here, some still living wild.
“They do real well up here,” he says. “We call this the Fossil River Refuge.”
Every one of them has a name.
But the one name they all share is Colonial Mustang.
These few horses can trace their DNA straight back to the Spanish conquistadors.
“They were the first horses that were here,” says Bryant. “Spanish Mustangs, Spanish Barb, Colonial Spanish horses, Original Indian Horse.”
There are different strains of Colonial Mustang.
The Choctaw Pony roamed wild on more than a million acres until 8 years ago.
For decades, an old cowboy named Gilbert Jones watched over the herd.
“Gilbert said, ‘everybody thinks I’m an old fogey sitting up here on this mountain and that I don’t know what’s going on but I know what goes on up there on the mountain. I know where my horses are and what stallions run with them.”
It was Jones who passed along his string of ponies, and his responsibilities, to Rickman who still feeds and tends them on several plots of land in Pushmataha County.
One of those parcels belongs to Jim Stephens.
“You really get attached,” he says. “Once you come in contact with these horses the next thing you know you’re hooked.”
Rickman insists they are the best trail horses in existence.
These Mustangs boast thick hooves.
He says they are the true marathoners of all horses, and the only breed that can actually thrive wild in this territory.
“An agile, tough horse,” says Rickman.
They almost winked out of existence a few times, but Oklahoma’s Heritage Horse is still hanging on with the help of a few friends.
The line and the breed remain unbroken.
For more information on Colonial Mustangs and Rickman’s efforts to save them go to www.thespiritofblackjackmountain.com