Greys River, Wyoming. October 2016.

As the old saying goes, “Never stand behind a horse or in front of a fool.”

For 50-year hunter Don K. of Michigan, neither was an option, and stepping aside meant a 30-foot fall.

Butter was a seven-year-old mare and a seasoned pack horse: stout, sure-footed and in her prime, with plenty of miles on this mountain. The kicker for Don was that she had never done it by herself.

Camp was set on Saturday. The hunt began on Sunday. Don was leading her by a rope across a steep side-hill a couple miles out of camp. The destination was a basin seven miles out, and Don planned to walk her the whole way. Don and Butter both knew the route; they’d each done it before. It was standard procedure, until her pannier caught a tree. When the dust settled after a violent 15 seconds, both of Don’s arms were broken.

GO DEEP, WORK HARD

Born and raised in Michigan, Don had been hunting elk since the mid-’90s. He killed his first bull in Idaho but sought greener pastures after seeing what wolves can do. He took the advice of a Wyoming biologist and game warden: go deep, work hard, and the elk will be there. By 2016 he’d hunted this same string of basins enough to call them familiar.

There were six of them on this trip, and they had six days to fill three tags. It was a tall order, but Don knew the area well enough to know it was doable, especially with the help of horses. One of the six was Chris, a trauma nurse Don got to know during a hospital stay, after a freak accident involving a woodstove and an aerosol can sent a piece of metal into his throat. At some point during that stay, Don asked Chris to come elk hunting, and Chris was game.

They borrowed two horses from a local packer. Day one went to sorting gear and setting up camp. Another hunter in their party was bringing the second horse up on day three, so on day two Don took Butter. Two of the guys were allergic to horses. How allergic? In Don’s words, “EpiPen allergic.” The worse-off of the two stayed upwind. Don walked in the middle, and Chris was out ahead.

The trail side-hilled through some very steep country, and Don was on the uphill side when the pannier hung up on a tree. Without warning, Butter began to jump and thrash. Three seconds later, she had slammed into him, tripped, and landed on top of him, pinning both of his arms against a jagged rock. Ask him why he didn’t clear out of the way, and he’ll tell you the 30-foot fall still would’ve been worse.

She got up and ran past him, away from the trail. Chris had time to get clear as she went by. About 50 yards later she turned around, deciding the trail, and Don, was where she wanted to be. Chris started yelling: “She’s coming back!”

Don got his now-broken arms up, and she hit him a second time. As he puts it, she “spun me like a top.” Then she kept going down the trail, bucking gear off all over the mountain.

Chris sat him down and started looking him over. He warned Don that his body was in shock and he might get sick to his stomach. “Every part of me hurts,” Don said. Chris gave him a handful of ibuprofen, then checked the arms for breaks by slowly twisting at the wrist and elbow.

“This will hurt,” he told him. “You’re gonna want to hit me with your other hand.”

One arm was a clean break. The other was full of spider fractures. Chris splinted the worse one with branches and duct tape.

Since base camp was only two or three miles away, they walked back, got in the truck, and drove straight to the hospital in Afton. The hospital put both arms in rigid splints from wrist to armpit, sent him out with some good pain pills, and told him surgery could wait until he got home. So, he went back to camp.

Taking advantage of how no one at the hospital had explicitly told him not to, when everyone asked if they should call it quits, Don answered plainly, “We came all this way to hunt.”

Butter was there the next morning, eating alfalfa like nothing had happened. They recovered about 90 percent of the gear. Other hunters on the trail found some of it, mostly sleeping bags and pads, and brought it back to them.

When the second horse came in, the hunter who brought it took Chris and Justin, another member of the party, out to the far basin for the last four days. Don stayed at base camp and hunted close with the two guys who had planned to stay low anyway. Chris cut a big section out of one of Don’s splints so he could get a bugle tube to his mouth. They came close a couple of times, but no one filled a tag.

Twelve days after the wreck, Don had surgery in Michigan and came out with a set of plates and screws. An infection put him back in the operating room about a week later. The cause was rare and, as it was described to him, had something to do with stomach fluids. The day after the second surgery, he headed back to the same Wyoming unit with a rifle tag. His doctor gave him the go-ahead. Mrs. B. did not.

On that trip he was guiding two buddies on their first elk hunt. They got a shot at one and missed, and on day two a big snowstorm came in and ran them off the mountain early.

WHY BUTTER RAN

Butter wasn’t a green horse. Don calls her a veteran on that mountain, and she had never spooked before. What she had never done was pack alone. Every trip she’d made before was with a string of other horses.

There’s no telling what goes through a horse’s head at any time, let alone in those frenzied 15 seconds. But we do know horses are herd animals, and much of what makes a good pack horse good is the security of other horses around it. With the second horse two days away, Butter was in a situation she’d never been in: alone. When something scared her, Don was the closest thing to security she could find.

This isn’t a cautionary tale about carelessness or oversight. Every decision that morning made sense. This is a story about the unpredictable nature of animals.

IF YOU’RE HUNTING WITH HORSES THIS FALL

• Ask if the horse has ever packed alone. Butter was experienced, but that question never came up.
• If the string gets split up for any reason, treat each horse like a hair trigger.
• On side-hills, most packers will tell you to stay on the uphill side. Don was there, and it still didn’t leave him anywhere to go. At all times, know which way you’ll go if the horse spooks.
• NEVER wrap a lead rope around your hand.
• Carry a few feet of duct tape wrapped around a trekking pole or water bottle. SAM splints are small and weigh only a few ounces. Bring pain relief medication and know the route to the nearest hospital.

Don has packed with horses plenty of times since, but now they’re never alone. When we asked if there was anything else he wanted readers to know, Don didn’t mention horses, broken bones, or surgery.

“The West is a special place,” he said. “God spent a little more time on it.”