When horse and rider faceoff with the Yukon wild
Throughout my life, I have had many wildlife interactions, while doing daily farm chores or while out doing what I love to do best on the land, especially on horseback.
On many rides, I’ve crossed paths with moose and bears and have even almost gotten slapped in the face with a porcupine tail, which is a story for another time. This particular event still astonishes me to this day, as the chances of this happening are as likely as me wearing pink.
It was around 2015 … My chestnut mare, Maddie, and I had been putting in a good few years of confidence-building on the trail. It was a crisp mid-November day with a light snow pack on the ground. Maddie and I headed off the property in Mount Sima, hot out of the chute, as per usual, with her nostrils blowing steam like a freight train.
We headed off the trail we commonly used, towards Wolf Creek, which was full of bridge crossings, steep-hill descents and elevation gains. This particular trail has terrain changes every five minutes and feels like a challenging video game that goes from one hurdle to the next.
Maddie and I had just ducked off the main trail, from the road. It was peaceful and quiet as we made our way through the glistening-white, sparkly forest, with snow crunching under horse feet as background music.
We had just settled into a nice strong walking pace when, out of the corner of my left eye, I caught movement in the trees close to the edge of the treeline. I was absolutely delighted to observe a beautiful young adult lynx, following us, creeping alongside in the bushes. Not often do you see these beautiful creatures, as they are elusive and have great camouflage as well as being very cautious. So I was quite happy to be graced with a beautiful “kitty” on today’s ride.
My lovely experience was interrupted by a slight disturbance to my right. Both Maddie and I spun our heads to observe two more young-adult lynx stalking us through the trees. It was evident they were young, as they didn’t quite have the full-tipped ears and beards, and they obviously had no idea what they were dealing with. Most wildlife, in general, are not stupid enough to take on a full-size healthy horse, as the risk assessment is far too high.
This group of kitties was curious and started circling behind us and getting into position for an attack. Maddie was not a happy girl, and my “Oh shit!’’ alarm started ringing off the hook, quickly followed by “You have to be kidding me.”
Maddie instantly went into defence mode, got two feet taller and started roaring her nostrils. I knew the biggest priority, right then, was to stay calm, keep my horse under control and try to gently get out of this situation. I was not worried about the carnage from these ambitious cats but was more concerned about a panic blowout from my big, powerful Morgan monster. These horses have been around for millions of years and history tells their brains that being encircled by predators is the means for action—and now. Their fight-or-flight response is unmatched and it’s one of the reasons they have survived evolution to this day. The only thing that could save me was the fact that I had put a lot of work into trust-building with Maddie.
The cats, by this time, were still sneaking around within eight feet away, slowly changing position while crouching down and looking up at us with those beautiful fluffy-red hindquarters they might be able to hang off of.
Maddie was desperately trying to turn her head in the direction we had come from, and I knew that if I let her do that, she would panic and run and I would end up having a nasty accident.
I relaxed and sat deep in my saddle, then let out a huge breath and calmly talked to her while putting a controlled backup on her. Every time she tried to turn her head, I would keep her straight. As her feet were strongly moving towards the cats, they got nervous and backed off (they were lucky for choosing that option). I must have backed my “dragon” up about 50 feet and watched as the cats disappeared into the forest while keeping their eyes on us.
I checked in with Maddie; her muscles had started relaxing while still backing out of danger. Once I was able to get her to calmly stand, we did a controlled turn and steadily walked away from danger.
We chose a different trail that day and all I could think of was No one is going to believe this.
One of the magical things about the Yukon is that we have so much untouched natural habitat up here that your opportunity to see something amazing in nature is quite high. There was one point in time where I could not go on a horse ride without running into a bear. Again, a story for another time.I am very pleased with the outcome of this particular ride in that my horsemanship got us out of trouble that day and didn’t result with me being in the ground, with a headstone that read: “Here lies Rita, taken out by a pussy attack.”
