Chester’s a huge roan packhorse from Utah that might have thought he really showed his owner up by slipping out of his halter and going on a four-day, five-night solo adventure in the wild Wyoming backcountry.
But his owner Eric Major wasn’t having any of that.
Chester was found alive and well early Wednesday, trotting around on a county road near Bondurant in western Wyoming.
And Major, who by then had returned home to Utah, told the people who caught Chester that they were more than welcome to keep him for a while and put him right to work.
“I told them that as long as he wasn’t lame, he was going to help them haul their stuff up the mountains, go do some more work,” Major told Cowboy State Daily. “There was no reward for him for trying to get away.”
‘Teenager Stage’
Major and his family own many horses, including Chester’s mother. They’ve raised Chester since birth, love him and think he has all the making of a great packhorse, and maybe even a riding horse.
At age 2, Chester is young for a horse. Major calls him a “colt.”
Though Chester still has some growing up to do, Major hopes that the half-draft red roan learned a lesson from his Wyoming misadventure. Even if now he seems as headstrong and know-it-all as an adolescent.
“He’s going to be a good horse. His mom, the mare, is from Wyoming,” Major said. “I think he’s just going through a ‘teenager stage’ right now.”
Off On An Elk Hunt
Major lives in northeast Utah but has strong Wyoming ties. His brother lives in Lyman, and his parents live in the Star Valley area.
Major and his family and friends like to hunt in remote mountains in both states.
The best way to do that is with horses. Riding horses to get the hunters in and out, and packhorses to lug all the gear in. And if the hunters are successful, lug the big game meat back out.
On the trip Chester took off on his own, Major, his cousin and some friends headed several miles back into the mountains near Bondurant to hunt elk.
Their usual tactic is to ride horses to the edge of the country they plan to hunt in, and then take off on foot.
“I ended up killing a bull elk that Monday (Sept. 16), a pretty nice six-by-seven. I was pretty excited about that,” he said.
The elk was in an area that was steep and full of fallen timber, not a good place to take horses. So, the hunters decide to quarter out the carcass, put the meat into bags and hang the bags from tree branches so it could stay cool until they could get back to it.
They planned to go back up after the meat the next day.
“But then I got dumped into a creek by the horse I was riding (not Chester) and hit my head pretty hard,” Major said.
He wanted to keep going, but his companions thought it best to stay closer to camp, keep an eye on Major and make sure that he hadn’t suffered a concussion.
By Thursday of that week, they hadn’t killed any more elk, but Major was fine. They decided to go up after the meat from his bull.
Chester Escapes
The plan to recover the meat was straightforward.
They’d leave Chester and the other less-experienced horses at a lower altitude. They’d take a couple of more experienced horses as close as they could safely get them, without getting the horses tangled up in the fallen timber.
Then they’d go in the rest of the way on foot and use backpacks to get the meat to the first set of horses.
Though a small black bear had apparently eaten a little bit of the elk meat that they left hanging, everything went as planned.
Until they got back down to the second set of horses sometime around 8 or 9 p.m.
Chester was gone.
His halter was on the ground, still buckled and tied to the lead rope that they’d secured to a tree, leaving enough slack for the horse to graze.
“He completely pulled off the halter and it was still buckled,” Major said. “I don’t know if he started rubbing it on something and rubbed it until it went over his ears. I think that’s probably how he got out.”
Chester the packhorse is much-beloved by the Major family of northeast Utah. He was born on their place, to mare that is from Wyoming. (Courtesy Eric Major) 
Chester the packhorse is much-beloved by the Major family of northeast Utah. He was born on their place, to mare that is from Wyoming. (Courtesy Eric Major) 
Chester the packhorse is much-beloved by the Major family of northeast Utah. He was born on their place, to mare that is from Wyoming. (Courtesy Eric Major) 
Chester is a big red roan half-draft packhorse from Utah. He pulled out of his halter during an elk hunt in the Wyoming mountains last week and was missing for four days and five nights. (Courtesy Eric Major)
No Chester
No big deal, they thought. They figured Chester had probably just wandered into a nearby meadow to continue grazing, and they’d find him on the way back to camp.
They rode through several meadows, but no Chester.
Then they got back to camp, and still no Chester.
The next morning, Major rode all the way back out to where the group had parked the truck and horse trailer, figuring that maybe Chester had decided to hike out on his own.
“Sure enough, when I got there, no horse, and no tracks either,” he said.
It wouldn’t have been difficult to spot Chester’s tracks. After all, he’s a big horse, with big hooves that have big horseshoes on them. So, he leaves tracks noticeably larger than other horses’ tracks.
The Search For Chester
Major rode all the way back up to his companions and informed them that Chester was still nowhere to be seen. He told them to pack up camp and head out.
He’d ride out on another trial, thinking that perhaps Chester had taken that route.
Along the way, he looked for Chester’s tracks and asked other hunters he met along the way if they’d seen a big red roan running loose.
He didn’t find any tracks, and nobody had seen Chester.
The next day, Major and one of the other hunters embarked on a full-blown search for Chester.
While hunting, they’d been using elk calls to attempt luring bulls in. They figured why not try the same tactic with Chester?
It so happened that one of their other horses is a mare “with really bad separation anxiety,” Major said.
As soon as she becomes separated from other horses, she starts to whinny.
“We have this mare that drives me crazy, because she’s always whinnying whenever she can’t see the other horses,” Major said.
Major rode that mare, and he and his friend would purposefully separate, predictably setting the mare off.
“That mare would whinny and whinny and whinny,” he said. “We were joking that we’d just been up there calling elk, and now we were up there trying to call a horse.”
It didn’t work. There was no return whinny from Chester, or any other sign of the wayward horse.
“We never even once cut across his tracks,” Major said.
That baffled him. He just couldn’t figure where Chester had gone, or what route he had taken to not even leave a set of his distinctive tracks.
Naughty Horse On A County Road
Major figured they had done all they could and headed back home. If nothing else, Chester might survive on his own long enough for winter to set in.
When the snow piled up enough to cover the grass in the mountains, the horse could make his way down out of the high country and show up in a settled area.
His brother put out an alert on social media with a photo of Chester, a description of the horse and his last known whereabouts.
Major and his family wondered if they’d ever see Chester again.
That was rough, because he’d been born on their place, and they’d helped his Wyoming mare mother raise Chester from birth.
Major has three sons, and the youngest “had formed a really tight bond with Chester,” he said.
Then last Tuesday, Major got a call.
Somebody had spotted Chester on a county road and took photos of him.
“What was left of his pack saddle was still hanging off of him,” Major said.
While he got photos, the caller wasn’t able to catch Chester.
Major’s mother connected with somebody in Star Valley who went to where Chester was last spotted, found him and caught him early Wednesday.
As for that additional work assignment Major set him up for?
Well, it appears Chester got out of that as well. By early Thursday he was headed back home to Utah.
Where Was He All That Time?
Major said he’s spent quite a lot of time in the country where Chester went missing, and he still can’t figure exactly where the horse went after he slipped out of his halter.
There’s no telling what sort of adventures or close calls Chester had.
There are grizzlies and wolves in the general area, but “farther back in” from where they were. So, perhaps Chester was lucky enough to not be chased by hungry predators, Major said.
“His pack saddle was really torn up,” he said. “So that might be the reason he was out so long. He might have been somewhere with the saddle snagged somewhere and it just took him that long to tear free.”
With an insurmountable language barrier between horses and humans, Chester’s solo adventure in the Wyoming mountains will forever remain a mystery to Major and his family.
“I wish Chester could tell me,” he said. “It would be interesting to hear his story.”
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
