The wild horse may be more appropriately referred to as the feral horse or mustang.
Feral because all horses in the wilds of the west descend from domesticated horses. Mustang comes from the Mexican Spanish word mestengo, meaning "stray livestock animal." Under the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the BLM was given the task of managing them. As of 2008, the BLM estimated that there were 33,000 wild horses and more than half of them are in Nevada. I have only seen wild horses on a few occasions. Last year I saw some in Nevada in the vicinity of Boundary Peak. The herd below was seen early in the morning some distance from our campsite.
Later that day, much further down the mountain we saw these horses:
and
About 13 years ago, I saw some in the vicinity of Red Rock Canyon near Blue Diamond.
I was able to get relatively close to these horses as I moved slowly toward them.
The morning you took the photo of those horses set the stage for one of the more memorable days of my life as we hiked Boundary Peak.
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