The Bells

By: Gabby Yates (Diamond 4 wrangler - 2019, 2020, 2021)

It is 2:00am, and a wrangler awakes with a start inside her tent where she’s been soundly sleeping. It was not a sound, but the absence of it that woke her. She sits up and peeks outside into the mountain meadow where the moon and stars are casting midnight shadows. In doing so, the horses that were dozing for a moment turn their heads to look up and the night air is filled with the most reassuring sound a wrangler can hear. Bells.  

If you have been a guest at the ranch, or have gone on a guided trip with us, you have heard the sounding of the bells that our horses wear around their necks. These iconic bells serve several purposes. During the summer months, our herd of about 80 horses is let loose each night into Dickinson Park in the Shoshone National Forest to graze. A team of two wranglers on horseback will help guide the thundering herd (and with most of them wearing bells, it is thundering) out of the corrals just before supper. Backdropped against the setting sun, this is a favorite and beautiful daily tradition on the ranch. After a night of grazing in the mountain meadows, the horses make their way back to the corrals in a practice that was established with the herd years ago, continued now as the older horses teach the youngsters to return each morning for hay. It is the sound of the bells that serves as the alarm clock for wranglers to wake and begin their day with feeding the herd breakfast before taking their own. In the instance a horse doesn’t come in for breakfast, it is listening for the bells that helps wranglers to track them down. 

When camping with horses, the wranglers rely on the bells to ensure the horses do not wander too far from camp. For a wrangler, there is no sweeter lullaby than to fall asleep to the happy tickling sound as horses graze around them in the night.