Meet Twister

Just bought a 6 yr old Tennessee Walker that's going to haul my old butt around while I watch my trial dogs run. And may try a hunt a time or two off horse back. Getting excited for the fall.

Good looking stout roan horse Chet. He has a lot of reach in stride. Bet he is pretty smooth.

Excerpt from "A Man in Full."



Charlie Croker, astride his favorite Tennessee walking horse, pulled his shoulders back to make sure he was erect in the saddle and took a deep breath ... Ahhhh, that was the ticket ... He loved the way his mighty chest rose and fell beneath his khaki shirt and imagined that everyone in the hunting party noticed how powerfully built he was. Everybody; not just his seven guests but also his six black retainers and his young wife, who was on a horse behind him near the teams of La Mancha mules that pulled the buckboard and the kennel wagon. For good measure, he flexed and fanned out the biggest muscles of his back, the latissimi dorsi, in a Charlie Croker version of a peacock or a turkey preening. His wife, Serena, was only twenty-eight, whereas he had just turned sixty and was bald on top and had only a swath of curly gray hair on the sides and in back. He seldom passed up an opportunity to remind her of what a sturdy cord no, what a veritable cable kept him connected to the rude animal vitality of his youth.

By now they were already a good mile away from the Big House and deep into the plantation's seemingly endless fields of broom sedge. This late in February, this far south in Georgia, the sun was strong enough by 8 a.m. to make the ground mist lift like wisps of smoke and create a heavenly green glow in the pine forests and light up the sedge with a tawny gold. Charlie took another deep breath ... Ahhhhhh ... the husky aroma of the grass ... the resinous air of the pines ... the heavy, fleshy odor of all his animals, the horses, the mules, the dogs ... Somehow nothing reminded him so instantly of how far he had come in his sixty years on this earth as the smell of the animals. Turpmtine Plantation! Twenty-nine thousand acres of prime southwest Georgia forest, fields, and swamp! And all of it, every square inch of it, every beast that moved on it, all fifty-nine horses, all twenty-two mules, all forty dogs, all thirty-six buildings that stood upon it, plus a mile-long asphalt landing strip, complete with jet-fuel pumps and a hangar all of it was his, Cap'm Charlie Croker's, to do with as he chose, which was: to shoot quail.

His spirits thus buoyed, he turned to his shooting partner, a stout brick-faced man named Inman Armholster, who was abreast of him on another of his walking horses, and said:

If you do hunt off of him, (dumb question time)how do you gun break a horse? Beautiful animal by the way.

Not a dumb question and I'm sure not a horseman so have not thought about the process but think it's much like a pup. They can break them to anything, watched a broke trial horse stand while a couple of pups tried to climb on board and never moved a muscle.

You don't shoot from the horse. You train it to ground tie and dismount. Make sure you dismount from the left side. The right side is called the off-side.

I knew you wouldn't shoot from on the horse but that pop could make him run back to the barn. I think Chet is on to it, the same way you do a pup.

Yes Sir!

Good looking horse there Chet. The first trial horse I ever owned was a 3 gaited TWH.
His 3 gaits were stumble, fart, and fall. Be careful! That old ground is harder than it use to be back when we were younger.

Ha-ha, Looked all over for a horse "you could put a child on". I think horse folks are a lot like dog people and can be a little kennel blind. But this horse is as close as I could get and I have a deal with Virgil. He uses the horse, keeps him ridden and up with the vet etc. and I ride when I'm at the trials. So if the old horse has any surprises then old Virgil will find out first.

I can hardly wait till one of my hunters come in as ask if we have seen that horse with two A$$ holes.
I would think you training it to step over electric fences will be a bigger challenge that shooting off of it.
I had a horse that I use to coon hunt and squirrel hunt on.

I hear horses don’t take to the REA very well. They make e-collars to fit them

They all have a hole and Virgil will find it. Heck of a deal to have him take it with him. Free training so to speak in the exact situations he will be in. There are kid-safe ones out there and Virgil will have him ground tying in no time. My old horses would even relax and eat while I was flushing. Some people frowned on that but heck I didn't care. I taught Mark to "get out". You could nearly get on him with no stirrup. Best one I ever owned. Got him from Pee Wee Cole. He was an all day horse. I worked dogs on him 3 times a week. Loved it. I miss it.....

How will you be traveling with horse and dogs and sleeping accommodations

Wont be, Virgil hauls the horse to trials, and runs dogs on the lease with me on occasion so will bring horse..

Win, win.

That's a heck of a deal