The photos in both these slideshows were taken at Leonard Crutcher's place on the Paiute Shoshone reservation near McDermitt, Nevada. The Crutcher family (and there is more than one band of Crutcher's so all the Crutcher's are not necessarily closely related) are deeply involved in raising rodeo stock and cattle and have 100's of horses that they run in the mountains behind the reservation. Oh my gosh, I was thrilled to have an opportunity to photograph them the Sunday after the Saturday rodeo as Leonard Crutcher's crew worked a couple hundred horses to pull out a few studs that were old enough to be gelded. At the end they opened the gate and let them out to return untended across the vast Nevada desert to the mountains. The crew were Melford Crutcher, Brian Crutcher, Larson McKee, Kpo(sp?) Smart, Tony Menteberry , Danny Snapp "Mousse", and Leonard's son in-law Fredrick Dick "Fred" originally from Owyhee, Nevada. MORE PHOTOS HERE: Click to hear Ian Tyson sing about Claude Dallas who knew this part of Nevada well.

These horses may be "owned" but they are as wild as wild can be. And handling them is dangerous work even with the lifetime experience these men have. Sitting here in the safety of my home it has taken my breath away several times to see what the camera recorded and what the men AND the horses survived to get the necessary work of gelding studs done. Whew...you are about to take a ride....

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