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Horse Packing

Well, hello. Welcome to another episode of Erik picks a random book. All right. Yesterday, we picked from this side of the library. This time, we’re going to go across the hall on to the other side of the library and see what we have over here. (silence).

You know what? We’re going to do something completely random. Wait a minute. I mean, like I said, there’s some great ones. This is just random. Horse Packing. All right.

For whenever we go on a trail and we’re going to be cowboys, we’re going to learn how to pack a horse. All right. There it is. Now, again, let’s go through the chapters. I’m going to have to figure out how to do this a better way. So, yeah. Much better way. This upside down? No. It’s not upside down. It just seems like this is easier.

So, we have the introduction. Organization for military purposes, general rules, marching, records of endurance, standard pack mules, cross sling, one-man cargo sling. Oh, wow. These are a lot of different hitches and things. I’m curious because I’m not in the military anymore, or I never was. Organization for military purposes. All right. Let’s look at that. Page 15. All right. How old is this book? It’s not even old at all. It’s 2007. They must have tooken it from someone from a very long time ago.

Originally published by Long Riders Guild Press. All right. Because the way that… Let me show you. All right. So they got the chapter right in the middle of the book. See standard of organization for military purposes. So, all right. So, this is what we need for the military purposes. “A pack train consists of 50 pack mules, one bell horse, and 14 riding mules, one pack master, one Cargador, one blacksmith, one cook, and 14 packers. With the complete outfit for camp and substance and the requisite number of riding saddles and aparejos.”

I guess we need to take that chapter and figure out what that is. Well, that’s it. All right. So, we know if we wanted to go ahead and pack some horses with the military, we’re going to reiterate, we need 50 pack mules, one bell horse, 14 riding mules, one pack master, one Cargador, one blacksmith, one cook, and 14 packers. All right, whatever that means. All right. Horse packing 101. Oh, this is interesting. Look at this.

On the road or trail in any country a packing mule with a load of 250 can make 25 miles a day without… Wow. Wow. That’s longer than what I can walk. I’m not trying to walk 25 miles a day. So, what it’s saying is… This is actually really interesting, is one pack mule can hold 250 pounds a day for 25 miles a day without difficulty. So, that’s what it says is that’s 250 pounds and 25 miles a day was basically normal for the military and the march. (silence).

All right. Well, this is actually got interesting. I was making fun of it at the beginning, but not anymore. I started reading a little bit, and it’s actually pretty interesting. So, what I’m going to do is… Wait a minute. Are we just keep on going through chapters? What’s going on? Well, now I actually want to read the whole thing. There’s 172 pages. I’m not going to do that, but I will eventually. Then it’ll be a much larger class. I don’t know.