Ever blow up a horse?

[jrabq]

Man, some guys have all the fun!

 

[MTTW]

Yes, those old wooden dynamite boxes were cool, but, like you mentioned, over time the nitroglycerin would leech out of the sticks and either pond, like honey, in the bottom of the container the sticks were in or seep into that container, making that container an explosive.

A few of examples of this:

On the last National Forest that I worked on, several of the Ranger Districts had their own Powder Magazines. Because of the volatility of the nitroglycerin explosives, these magazines were lined with wood so there was nothing inside that could produce a spark. Before I got to that Forest, one of those magazines that had NG dynamite stored in it since the CCC days, was inspected and they discovered that for years, NG had leeched out of the dynamite sticks and went into the wood floor.

The District Ranger contacted one of the dynamite manufacturers to find out what they should do with the NG contaminated magazine. A representive of the manufacturer came out and said that it was too dangerous to try to remove the wood floor, and that the safest thing to do would be to burn the magazine, which they did.


Another time some hikers were exploring an old mining area on the Forest and they found an old chest freezer with old dynamite in it. That District Ranger contacted me and the Ranger District Blaster and I went up there to investagate it. The freezer had 1 1/2 cases of NG dynamite and a bunch of loose blasting caps in it. The date on the dynamite boxes was 1949. The bottom of the freezer was covered with about a 1/4" thick honey like gell...pure nitroglycerin.

I put a 2# Kinepac (a two component ammoniam nitrite explosive) with an extra long fuse on the full box of powder, and blew the whole thing up. The freezer was high on a ridge and when we left, we found parts of that freezer 5 switchbacks down the road.

My last story is some hikers on a trail on the National Forest side of the northern Yellowstone NP boundary found a couple of old badly weather worn cardboard boxes of dynamite just off the trail. Again, the District Ranger called me to take care of it. I found the old boxes that were pretty much disintegrated but were full of the empty wax paper shells that each stick of NG dynamite had been wraped in. All of the nitro had leeched out of the sticks and into the ground under the boxes.

I had figured that I would dispose of that powder by burning it, so had brought a sack of sawdust and a quart of diesal fuel with me. After we cleared a wide fire break around the boxes, I scattered the sawdust over the boxes and made a 3' "fuse" of sawdust leading away from the boxes. I then poured the diesal fuel over the sawdust and lit the "fuse".

That fire burned very hot and with a thick black smoke for 15-20 minutes before it finally went out and cooled.

I have a good idea where that freezer with dynamite in it was. A buddy and I found one years ago in the vicinity of some old mining. It was scary looking stuff, just like you described, so we just closed the lid and left. Next time I was up there it was gone and I always wondered who got that task. lol
It was in Park county.

 

[seeth07]

I didn't realize my post was going to lead to three pages of good stories. For once I think I finally "contributed" to HT. 1 for 50 or so. Not bad lol

 

[rmyoung1]

I have a family friend who worked for the USFS out of the Gardiner MT office for years. He always said that blowing up the horse’s tail was the hardest part. Once he even had a curious lady hiker return one to the Ranger Station in Gardiner. She found it hanging from a spruce limb. The ensuing conversation/explanation was awkward apparently.

 

[Straight Arrow]

I knew a couple of guys out of Choteau that had to do this. It’s a bugger when a mule or horse dies right along the trail and then you have bears coming into the carcass.

The grizzly who filled this print had just used the trail before we came around the corner up Moose Creek in the Bob. The outfitter we met said a horse had died recently, was dragged down below the trail and the boar was feeding on the carcass. There was an unnerving caution sign on the trail to advise of likelihood of bear encounter.

 

[buffybr]

I have a good idea where that freezer with dynamite in it was. A buddy and I found one years ago in the vicinity of some old mining. It was scary looking stuff, just like you described, so we just closed the lid and left. Next time I was up there it was gone and I always wondered who got that task. lol
It was in Park county.

Yep, way up off the West Fork of Mill Creek road.
Small world sometimes

 

[buffybr]

I have a family friend who worked for the USFS out of the Gardiner MT office for years. He always said that blowing up the horse’s tail was the hardest part. Once he even had a curious lady hiker return one to the Ranger Station in Gardiner. She found it hanging from a spruce limb. The ensuing conversation/explanation was awkward apparently.

I did quite a bit of blasting work on the Gardiner District. I didn't worry about the horses' tails but I do remember at least one hanging in a tree after the shot. Was your friend's name Pat or Sonny?

 

[rmyoung1]

I did quite a bit of blasting work on the Gardiner District. I didn't worry about the horses' tails but I do remember at least one hanging in a tree after the shot. Was your friend's name Pat or Sonny?

Pat. You nailed it.

Where were you living at the time?

 

[buffybr]

Pat. You nailed it.

Where were you living at the time?

Same place where I am living now, 5-6 miles out of Bozeman. I've been living here since I bought it in 1978.

 

[roravetz]

Yes, for about 30 years I was the Lead Blaster on the Gallatin NF in Montana. Most of my blasting work was blowing up rocks on roads and trails, and teaching blasting classes, but during that time I also blew up 12 horses and one elk.

The reason the Forest Service wanted the dead horses removed was to minimize potential conflicts between grizzly bears and people in the backcontry.

My preferred method of blowing up a horse was to use 1"x8" sticks of dynamite connected with 50 grain Detonating chord and placed under the dead animal.

One time the FS had to put down a horse at one of their backcountry work stations. It was not feasible to get a backhoe in there to bury it, so the Ranger on that district called me. Word got around the staff of the Forest, and the day after I took care of the dead horse, the Forest Supervisor stopped me in the hall and asked me how it went. He also asked me how much dynamite I used. When I told him 30 sticks he looked a little shocked and asked why so much.

When I told him that was so I wouldn't have to pick up the big pieces and shoot him again, he completely understood.

I might have been able to use a fewer number of sticks, but I never had to gather up the pieces and shoot it again.

The one elk that I blew up was a cow that had died not far from a popular camping area on one of the Districts. By the time the District learned of the dead elk and called me, mostly birds had eaten most of the elk as there were more maggots than meat in the elk. One of the District staff officers came with me and I had him use sticks to prop up the body so I could get my charges under it. After the shot there was just a small hole in the ground and the surrounding area was covered with a reddish-brown slime.

One horse that I blew up was lying on the edge of a meadow and it was in the fall of the year. After I set my charges, I backed off the required 500 feet and I took a picture of the blast. That was back before digital cameras and I dropped off the film at a local camera shop to be developed. A couple of days later one of the ladies in the office announced that she was going to that camera shop and asked if any of us had pictures to be picked up, so I asked her to get mine.

When she got back to the office she was looking at my pictures, saw the reddish-brown plume of the explosion in the air and said "That's a pretty fall picture." When I told her that the plume was actually the vaporized horse going up in the air, she just said "Yuck!"

One of the last horses that I blew up had broken a leg in the fall and had to be put down near a main trail in the Absaroka Wilderness. The next spring a grizzly bear had found the carcass and he had charged people on horseback riding on that trail. So the District Ranger called me to get rid of the horse. A couple of District personnel went up there, and when we got to the site, the grizzly was on it. The bear ran off, I set my charges, and after the shot there was no piece of the horse larger than a Big Mack which the bear, coyotes, and birds would clean up in a day or two.

The blasting activites were one part of my job that I really enjoyed and other than the smell while I set the charges under a dead horse and going in after the shot to check the results, most of those of those horses had died back in the wilderness that then gave me opportunities to get paid to go back in that beautiful country.






l be

Definitely learned something new with this one. Very interesting.