11 minute read
SUMMER THUNDER
Experience heavy horses and Western heritage at the 25th annual Big Sky Draft Horse Expo
Words by Jessianne Castle
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Photography by Michelle Martin Randolph
As daylight begins its gentle descent across the open sky over Deer Lodge Valley, the barns at the local fairgrounds are already alit and abuzz. Inside, nimble fingers weave wiry horse hair into braids, strong backs swing 150 pounds of harness leather, and meticulous eyes examine the workings and appearance of the wagons. The horses have already been fed, clipped and bathed. It’s 6 a.m. in late June and heavy horse crews are busy preparing for the day to come. On this day, in this rural town, draft animals and their drivers will compete for best in show during the Big Sky Draft Horse Expo.
On June 25-27, 2021, Deer Lodge will celebrate its 25th year hosting the event—the only annual draft horse show in the state—where national and international competitors travel to participate in the North American SixHorse Hitch Classic Series and open-class events. Spectators are invited to attend and cheer on the horses, as well as peruse a daily tradeshow and enjoy two nights of bluegrass music after the day’s driving events. After the Expo was postponed last year due to COVID-19, show organizers and competitors are eager this year to let the games begin.
The Deer Lodge community—a still-rural pocket of the state with a grand total of 3,111 residents in 2010—is proud to support the show as a part of its larger vision to preserve Montana’s heritage and open spaces. “That’s what we ’re all about.
clockwise from above - Wade Thornley of Eagle Rock Belgians competes with their six-up hitch in Deer Lodge in 2019 , Amy Thornley drives Belgian gelding Eddie in the Ladies Cart class, Ben Thornley, now 16, competes in a youth driving event in 2019
WORKING TOGETHER
In one corner of the barn, the Thornley family has just turned up the tunes. Rock music wafts through the air while one-ton giants bask in the preparation attention. “They like rock the best,” says family patriarch Wade Thornley. He and his family own the Eagle Rock Belgians of Lewisville, Idaho, and have sojourned to Deer Lodge nearly every year of the event’s history. They stand on step stools and straddle the horses’ bare backs—whatever they can do to reach the mane as they weave lime green ribbons into their hair.00
“When the music plays, the horses know it’s getting close to game time. They know they get to come out and play,” Thornley says.
Thornley and his wife, Amy, together with their three boys, own and manage 11 Belgian draft horses that they train, exercise, put to work, and show. Their horses, rich sorrels with classic cream-colored manes, weigh between 1,900 and 2,400 pounds on a frame that measures higher than a 6-foot-tall man.
HIGH STEPPING
“They’re just like a fine-tuned athlete, other than the fact that they can’t talk to you,” he says, describing how important it is for the handler to know the horses well. They look them over and watch behavior and movement constantly, trying to catch injuries early, help with sore muscles after a workout, and ensure they’re performing at their best on the day of the show.
Both Wade and Amy hail from families that used draft horses, so it wasn’t a foreign idea to raise their kids around the so-called gentle giants. The couple started Eagle Rock Belgians in 1998 and the boys, 16, 19 and 21 years old, have learned well the ins and outs of the program. “The kids know the horses and the horses know the kids,” Thornley says.
Some of the Belgians came to the Thornleys young, their training started on Amish farms. The Thornley family then works with the individual horses to complete training and find which of their herd works well together to form a two-horse team. Pairs made, they can form four-, six- or eight-horse hitches by arranging the teams based on their strengths. The stouter drafts are often best placed closest to the wagon as the “wheel” team; the bolder, more agile tend to work well at the front as the “lead” team; while the middle pairs are known as the “swing” and “body” teams.
“They all have different personalities and attitudes so they need to know each other and they need to understand what working together means,” Thornley says. “You can have six individual horses out there, or you can have three teams.” Horses prepped and drivers ready, it’s time to connect the teams to their wagons. Hooves the size of dinner plates stir the earth as they step one foot at a time over and around the wagon tongue. Drive and check lines are secured and the driver swings aboard. Pairs of heavy leather lines connect from the driver’ s hands to the bits in each horse’s mouth and firm vocal cues—often “ gee” for right and “haw” for left—support the drive-line commands.
Each competitor comes to Deer Lodge with their carriage and cart in tow, safely secured in one of several lengthy semitrailers that also haul all of the harness, horse feed and horses. The competitors travel across the nation and into Canada this way. Some 200 hitches compete each year at North American SixHorse Hitch events in order to accumulate points for qualification for the final championship where hitches in each of the three draft horse breed classifications compete for $100,000 in premiums. This year, after a respite during the pandemic, the 2020-2021 Six-Horse Hitch Classic Series World Finals will be held in Shipshewana, Indiana, on Sept. 16-18.
The Double S Belgians, another set of clean-cut Belgian drafts from Idaho, is planning their appearance once again in the Deer Lodge ring this year. The winners of the 2018 and 2019 World Champion Six-Horse Hitch, these heavy horses are owned by Glenwood Snacks and managed by Kyle Forsyth. He and his wife, Marcia, work with and manage their 10 draft geldings and both compete at the shows.
Belgian drafts originated in Belgium as large, well-muscled draft stock used for farm work. Like other draft horse breeds, their use as a work animal necessitated strength, willingness and a good temperament. Only a century ago, with many breeds already well established and used in Europe, the young
Kyle Forsyth of Double S Belgians tips his hat to the judge
Marcia Forsyth steers one of the Double S Belgians down the arena in front of the grandstands
Bob Tomaskie’s mules work four-abreast
Dick Renfro’s Fjords lean into their harnesses during a four-abreast class
One of Bob Tomaskie’s mules settles at the end of a class
opposite page -Dick Renfro and one of his
Fjords perform in a pleasure cart class
United States relied heavily on imported drafts, mules and oxen as dependable, renewable power for public works, agriculture and resource industries.
It goes without saying, a lot has changed in 100 years. With a transition from fields and forests to sandy arenas, the type of draft horses we see today are sometimes a bit different from those of yesteryear. “In today’s competition world, all of them have to be extremely athletic to be competitive,” Forsyth says. It’s becoming less about sheer power and more about expression and action—or how a horse carries himself and moves. “You want all six horses working together as one unit with a good headset, expression, carriage, hindquarter engagement, and athletic motion in front and hind. They should also look like they enjoy their job. If you have their talent and athleticism working simultaneously with the other horses, you’ll have lots of success.” For the Double S, Deer Lodge is akin to a home show—it’s one of the closest to their home in Menan, Idaho, and it comes early in the show season when the horses are still getting into the travelling routine.
Having grown up showing drafts with his family in Manitoba, Canada, Forsyth is seasoned in the work that goes on between each show. He says to be competitive, you work with your horses at home in the same way you would at the show that way you can make your four minutes in the ring count. “To have any success, at any job, there has to be a level of enjoyment,” he adds. “The horses have that pride.” During the show classes, which include categories like six-horse, four-horse, team, family and unicorn—where a single spike horse is hitched in front of a two-horse team—a judge watches as the competitors drive their horses at a long trot around the arena. In a single 6-up class, there may be as many as five competitors—or 30 drafts and 120 heavy hooves—high stepping around the ring. As dust flies, harness bells ring and thundering hooves pound rhythmically down the rail.
AN AWAKENING
Months before the show, open class competitors—like their show hitch counterparts—were already getting ready. Both Bob Tomaskie and Dick Renfro were using their stock to harrow fields as early as April.
Tomaskie, of Helena, keeps 13 mules that he drives, packs and rides. After seeing a driving event at a Mule Days competition some 20 years ago, he gave up team roping and picked up a set of harness reins. “You can drive all months of the year,” he says, a twinkle emanating in his voice. “You can go out and do pleasure or go to work. I get a lot of enjoyment out of driving.”
Throughout the three-day event, show organizers create an educational atmosphere for spectators, with fun facts announced over the grand stand speakers and historic horse-drawn vehicles on display from the nearby GrantKohrs Ranch National Historic Site. An announcer engages the audience by describing what’s happening during each show class as well as how it relates to the historic use of heavy horses.
In addition to the show and practical classes, there is also an open-class obstacle course and Canadian maze judged both for accuracy and speed.
“We like the obstacles. I like to go fast,” Renfro laughs, describing the athleticism of his 1300-pound Fjords moving out into a gallop. “We all try to beat each other, but we’re excited for each other too. We have fun for three days.” Renfro lives in Stevensville, where he uses his horses to mow and rake hay on his 5-acre pasture. Renfro is deeply bonded to his horses and experiences a kind of awakening when he’s with them—that kind of hard-to-describe feeling only another horseman understands. “When I get ahold of a horse, it’s just there. It’ s automatic,” he says. “Just going out to feed them is a half hour of heaven.” Over the years many draft horse shows have come and gone in Montana. “We’ re losing all the competitive driving events,” Renfro reminisces. There were once Fjord driving competitions in Arlee, but now the closest events are in Sandpoint, Idaho, and Seattle.
Fewer shows are perhaps an omen of the changing times. Expo show committee member Betty McCoy says it’s getting more costly to travel with horses and there aren ’t as many drivers these days; Montana doesn’t have a single draft horse show hitch. As rural communities are urbanized, there are fewer practical needs for stock animals.
“The lion’s share of people now a days, I’d say, don’t have any experience with draft horses,” McCoy says. “Driving is part of what settled our country. It’ s our history. I hope there can still be some appreciation for what horses and draft horses contributed to our communities.” She wonders if, as a segment of the Montana population returns to small-scale farming, we’ll see a resurgence in the use of draft animals to replace some mechanized equipment. Only the future will tell, but she’s encouraged by the amount of interest in recent years in the youth driving events at the Expo.
“Youth are really important,” she says, “and 25 years is a big milestone for the show.”
Jessianne Castle is a freelance writer and editor who grew up exploring life through the eyes of her horse. Born, raised and still living in Montana, she passionately writes about the experiences of living in the West.
Michelle Martin Randolph is a Texas-based photographer who enjoys making memories with her lens. REMEMBERING HISTORY
Just across the street from Deer Lodge’s Tri-County Fairgrounds where the Big Sky Draft Horse Expo is held, the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site commemorates the role of cattlemen and their horses in American history. The former headquarters of a 10-million-acre cattle operation, Grant-Kohrs includes historic buildings, living history events and an operating cattle ranch that makes use of two working draft horse teams for haying in early July, hauling heavy loads and feeding the cattle in the winter.
On June 25 at 10 a.m., Grant-Kohrs will host a haying demonstration to kick off the Big Sky Draft Horse Expo where horses will be used to operate a buck rake and hay stacker in traditional haying fashion.
“We tell the ranching story,” says Jason Smith, who oversees ranching operations as the site’s chief of resource management, “and those draft horses play an important role.”
