they asked me to start off this speech
with a kick he keeps getting the mini
getting chilly you cannot eat this stuff
you’re the best thing to do if you can
get in there just pull it out like a
cone
so for all of you guys who laughed at
that it really wasn’t that funny it was
a pretty serious incident as you can see
he broke his sunglasses and when you’re
on a big journey like that it’s not like
you can just replace your sunglasses
anywhere so it’s pretty pretty
unfortunate deal on but so this was
about two weeks into a five and a half
month long trip we were in southern
Arizona and by this point in time we had
lost our horses once our director had
taken a brutal kick to the femur and was
m.i.a
and this is just this really interesting
time when our horses recovering a cactus
and we’re like how the hell are we gonna
get through this but we managed to pull
it off but before we get to how we were
there and then where we went from after
been get punched in the head um how did
it all get started and unbranded for me
started whenever I was a kid I grew up
in a wonderful family in Amarillo Texas
and Amarillo is a place that is almost
entirely private land and it’s really
flat if you’ve ever been through
Amarillo probably have an appreciation
for mountains that is my beautiful
sister who’s also right there thanks for
coming um
and whenever I was fourteen I took my
first real trip to the mountains we went
to Colorado and
we went into this wilderness area and
just blew my mind that there was that
much land that didn’t have roads and
fences and highways and powerlines and
vehicles and all of these things that I
had just you know associated with life
like we didn’t really have a big
wilderness area or a lot of public lands
where I grew up and I thought man this
is this is incredible we did like it ten
mile hiking trip and just completely
changed my perspective of what a
watershed is a little landscape is so I
ended up going back to the same spot
with my brother and my sister we got
rained on for like four days and they
were like me and we’re not doing that
again and I loved it it was awesome
because you know when it rains the Sun
comes out it’s awesome so I left that
and then I went to to Texas A&M
University nice I was hoping we’d get a
few of those um and my after my freshman
year college I got a job in Colorado
working for a guy in Rocky Mountain
National Park and had just the most
amazing four months I got to take people
on rides we did to our rides and we did
two day trips and we would take people
to see different parts of the park and
learn about different natural history of
the area and that’s really where my love
for horses developed I didn’t really
have a lot of riding experience before
that I’m still I’m learning a lot but
that was where it all got started in one
day we were just hanging out and I has
map of Colorado and we’re looking at it
and there was this this trail that went
all the way through the state the
Continental Divide Trail so I was
sitting there with my buddy Mike and I
was like dude we shouldn’t we should do
true um he’s like yeah well we should
but let’s go ahead and add on Montana
and Wyoming in New Mexico – and I
thought that was a pretty good idea so
we started planning for that I had to go
back to school where I decided to drop
out of the business school and I entered
into the wildlife program instead
because after a summer like this like
honestly who wants to study accounting
and I’ll never forget my my counselor
she was like now Ben do you understand
how prestigious the maize School of
Business is and I was like yeah and she
told me that I was the first person to
ever transfer from the business school
to the wildlife school and one day I
went from playing with calculators in
class to playing with snakes in class
and it was like the best decision
possibly of my life um y’all should all
drop out of business school intro
involve high school it was it was
amazing and during that period of time I
met a guy named Parker Flannery and him
and Mike Pinkney the guy from Colorado
we all put together this this idea of
we’re going to do the Continental Divide
Trail with horses so called my mom was
like mom I’m a drop at school and ride
horses in the mountains which went over
really well and we didn’t have any money
mama was like well I don’t know about
supporting that uh so we started looking
for horses we had enough money to buy a
few few ranch horses but we heard about
this government program that had a bunch
of wild mustangs that needed home
so we went and we adopted some some wild
mustangs used on the trip and Parker
this is Parker he trained him he is like
a raging badass he’s in Australia now
in Brumbies so he trained some of the
mustangs and we did the journey there’s
Mike pina this was in the Wind River
Range but just unbelievable and this is
before I got into photography and it was
just like this little point and shoot
camera but it’s just a amazing journey
got to see just some sights that I’ll
stick with you for the rest of your life
and it this was kind of near the end
this was in Glacier National Park but it
was neat for me too because I was the
map geek in that trip and it was really
cool to buy these maps and pick her out
and you kind of get a vision for what it
might look like and then you watch it
unfold in real life and it gave me a lot
of a lot of appreciation for how much
public lands we have in the American
West I mean it blows my mind that today
and your 2017 there is still a quarter
of public lands that you can go from
Mexico to Canada doing almost entirely
backcountry route that anybody any
average show can go on
that to me it’s just like what an
amazing gift yeah
[Applause]
and it’s something that only a lot of
people understand everybody’s like all
public lands like you have got
Yellowstone bison thumbs up but there’s
it’s so much more to that and I also
felt like the Mustangs that we had
adopted that did so well on this trip
you know they never got her they never
got tired are they finished just fat as
can be didn’t have any any hoof problems
at all um
you know I was just so impressed by the
wild horses and whenever that journey
finished I looked at those guys and I
was like fellas we should do this again
but this time we should take cameras and
we should film it and make a movie y’all
in there like hell no I’m cold and I’m
tired you’re on your own man um so we
are yes I that point in time started
brainstorming and want to do another one
and the big reason for me of wanting to
do it was I started researching a wild
horse and burro issue which is a tricky
one
and fast-forward like five years I ended
up making a film about wild horses and
burros and I took out two minutes to
show you guys a video that kind of
explains what the current conundrum is
in the American West regarding horses
horses reproduce quickly and if they get
overpopulated they can destroy range
land habitat that wildlife depend on so
the BLM rounds up excess horses to
prevent over grazing and offer them up
for adoption but there aren’t enough of
them
and they’ve begun to stockpile there are
nearly 50,000 wild horses and burros and
government holding pens costing
taxpayers about 50 million annually wild
horse numbers have continued to rise and
right now there are over two and a half
times the number of forces that is the
appropriate management level it’s
ignited a range war between wild horse
advocates who think that the appropriate
management level is too low
between ranchers who want more livestock
and Wildlife organizations that want
priorities be put on native species the
horses don’t have a place to go there is
not enough adopters they virtually have
no predators and over grazing is real
over grazing leads to desertification it
allows invasive species and weeds to
take over and in severe cases they could
starve alright so that’s a big issue in
two minutes but to boil it down there’s
tens of thousands of the horses and he’s
holding pens and I had just gotten done
with this journey and I was like man a
lot of these are amazing horses you know
can we do the journey again and can we
try to shed some light on this situation
and to get some of these horses adopted
so I went to Texas A&M which is a good
environment to find people crazy enough
to ride for 3,000 miles always count on
him ah and and I met these two guys this
is Ben Famer he’s from Amarillo Texas a
fellow Amarillo –an and this is Thomas
Glover he’s from Houston and this is
Johnny Fitzsimmons from San Antonio and
we all had bunch of stuff in common at
A&M and we decided to embark on this
3,000 mile journey after graduation
from Mexico to Canada and to document it
and make a film about it and try to have
a conservation message in it and a wild
horse adoption message in it it’s kind
of ambitious maybe looking back on it
especially the whole filming part
because none of this had ever made a
movie before and I was like had any
money because we just graduated and
we’re like well we should do a
Kickstarter ah do I have any Kickstarter
donors in here by chance so I don’t I
don’t have any yell are all terrible
people um so we put together a
four-minute video that said all right we
just graduated our goal is to make a
film to inspire well twist adoptions by
doing this ride will you give us money
and in 45 days that video spread like
madness and we had over a thousand
people donate over two hundred thousand
dollars to make a film on unbranded
which is just amazing to me like there’s
a lot of good human beings on this
planet and you know I’m eternally
grateful for all those people that put
us there so we met a director named Phil
Baraboo and we went and we rode from
Mexico to Canada and we made a movie
before I dive into it I’m going to show
you all the trailer so you know what I’m
talking about the judgment comes from
experience and experience comes from bad
judgment and sometimes that bad judgment
can be pretty horrific
[Music]
I’m not ready to buy a house and get
married and have kids yet you know I
want to have fun and do some crazy
adventure like this while I can trip of
self-discovery we recently adopted less
than three thousand what do we do with
the excess wild horses that we have to
remove do these horses have a right to
be here yeah absolutely they do to prove
the worth of these Mustangs we’re going
to a dot train and ride them 3,000 miles
from Mexico to Canada through the
wildest terrain in the American West
[Music]
things are going to go wrong
[Music]
planning on bringing about whatever I
want
so the goal of reaching the Canadian I
didn’t is powerful impact it going
through this land is made up
well you can do a lot of things that you
can’t do this and this is for crazy
oh really yeah I was fine you guys
should all ride from Mexico to Canada by
the way um so I guess I hit the button
but where it all started
was in prison we went to a inmate
training facility where they have about
800 horses in Hutchinson Kansas and I
have a program where inmates can train
these horses and then they take these
saddle ready horses and pass them out so
if you need to go to jail you know
channel horses would be good way to
spend your time at least in my opinion
so we went there and then that all these
horses and we started sorting through
them we looked for confirmation was a
big one you know we wanted horses that
were big enough to do the journey we
wanted horses that you know were large
enough a lot of the mustangs pretty
small we look for bigger horses we
looked for a variety of physical traits
and we also looked for disposition you
know we didn’t want the horses that were
the most dominant animals and we also
didn’t want the ones that were at the
bottom of the pecking order we kind of
one of those in the middle hoping to
have the assumption that they would be
um chill because we had a bunch a flock
horse trained to adopt these horses with
the help of two professional trainers
Jerry Jones and Lanny leach who are
professionals and they knew exactly what
to look for and definitely want to give
them some credit and we took them to
Hutchinson Kansas I’m sorry too near
Weatherford Texas
where
we began the training process and if you
guys have never trained the horse y’all
are really missing out because it’s one
of the most satisfying and like
accomplished she kind of feeling things
that I’ve ever done in my life to watch
an animal that there’s a praise species
and is scared of you and watch it over
time develop trust and you know become a
team and to learn new things and to do
different things and and you know i
think a good horseman is just a
beautiful piece of art to watch and as
we were training these horses there was
this one horse particular named sea star
I felt like I was really developing a
bond with sea star and one day he was
out there in the pen and I um I walked
up to him we’ve had him for like two or
three days I walked up to him and I kind
of put my arm out I gently walked up and
kind of put my eyes down you know very
not dominant not a predator type of
feeling and he reached out and he
sniffed my hand I was like I’m
connecting with this horse right now and
you just rears up and just clocked me
right sends me sprawling now so huh
maybe next week and but we did we
successfully got to versus trained there
was three of them that we did not get to
the point where we felt comfortable
taking them on the trip um and they’re
living on pasture now living a good life
but we started the journey um uh this is
gray horse he kicks everybody which is
really inconsiderate you know kicks like
a horse
uh but we got them all trained and and
we gave it we gave it a lot of time and
we spent probably four or five months
preparing the horses to become
physically fit for us to become
physically fit because we were asking
a lot out of them and we wanted to make
sure that we could take good care of
them as we possibly could while we were
doing the training we chose our route
through Arizona we mainly did the
Arizona Trail through Utah we mainly did
the Great Western trail we just went
through Idaho and then we went into
Wyoming and kind of got on they caught
on the bike trail and took a lot of that
through Montana and to give you a
perspective of the different kinds of
agencies or jurisdictions that we went
through you know the different colors
are different land management agencies
so we went through a variety of national
forests national parks wilderness areas
private land and you can see that a lot
of it is out in the west where the
majority of our public lands and lower
48 is located
[Music]
with a kick he keeps getting the mini
getting chilly you cannot eat this stuff
you’re the best thing to do if you can
get in there just pull it out like a
cone
so for all of you guys who laughed at
that it really wasn’t that funny it was
a pretty serious incident as you can see
he broke his sunglasses and when you’re
on a big journey like that it’s not like
you can just replace your sunglasses
anywhere so it’s pretty pretty
unfortunate deal on but so this was
about two weeks into a five and a half
month long trip we were in southern
Arizona and by this point in time we had
lost our horses once our director had
taken a brutal kick to the femur and was
m.i.a
and this is just this really interesting
time when our horses recovering a cactus
and we’re like how the hell are we gonna
get through this but we managed to pull
it off but before we get to how we were
there and then where we went from after
been get punched in the head um how did
it all get started and unbranded for me
started whenever I was a kid I grew up
in a wonderful family in Amarillo Texas
and Amarillo is a place that is almost
entirely private land and it’s really
flat if you’ve ever been through
Amarillo probably have an appreciation
for mountains that is my beautiful
sister who’s also right there thanks for
coming um
and whenever I was fourteen I took my
first real trip to the mountains we went
to Colorado and
we went into this wilderness area and
just blew my mind that there was that
much land that didn’t have roads and
fences and highways and powerlines and
vehicles and all of these things that I
had just you know associated with life
like we didn’t really have a big
wilderness area or a lot of public lands
where I grew up and I thought man this
is this is incredible we did like it ten
mile hiking trip and just completely
changed my perspective of what a
watershed is a little landscape is so I
ended up going back to the same spot
with my brother and my sister we got
rained on for like four days and they
were like me and we’re not doing that
again and I loved it it was awesome
because you know when it rains the Sun
comes out it’s awesome so I left that
and then I went to to Texas A&M
University nice I was hoping we’d get a
few of those um and my after my freshman
year college I got a job in Colorado
working for a guy in Rocky Mountain
National Park and had just the most
amazing four months I got to take people
on rides we did to our rides and we did
two day trips and we would take people
to see different parts of the park and
learn about different natural history of
the area and that’s really where my love
for horses developed I didn’t really
have a lot of riding experience before
that I’m still I’m learning a lot but
that was where it all got started in one
day we were just hanging out and I has
map of Colorado and we’re looking at it
and there was this this trail that went
all the way through the state the
Continental Divide Trail so I was
sitting there with my buddy Mike and I
was like dude we shouldn’t we should do
true um he’s like yeah well we should
but let’s go ahead and add on Montana
and Wyoming in New Mexico – and I
thought that was a pretty good idea so
we started planning for that I had to go
back to school where I decided to drop
out of the business school and I entered
into the wildlife program instead
because after a summer like this like
honestly who wants to study accounting
and I’ll never forget my my counselor
she was like now Ben do you understand
how prestigious the maize School of
Business is and I was like yeah and she
told me that I was the first person to
ever transfer from the business school
to the wildlife school and one day I
went from playing with calculators in
class to playing with snakes in class
and it was like the best decision
possibly of my life um y’all should all
drop out of business school intro
involve high school it was it was
amazing and during that period of time I
met a guy named Parker Flannery and him
and Mike Pinkney the guy from Colorado
we all put together this this idea of
we’re going to do the Continental Divide
Trail with horses so called my mom was
like mom I’m a drop at school and ride
horses in the mountains which went over
really well and we didn’t have any money
mama was like well I don’t know about
supporting that uh so we started looking
for horses we had enough money to buy a
few few ranch horses but we heard about
this government program that had a bunch
of wild mustangs that needed home
so we went and we adopted some some wild
mustangs used on the trip and Parker
this is Parker he trained him he is like
a raging badass he’s in Australia now
in Brumbies so he trained some of the
mustangs and we did the journey there’s
Mike pina this was in the Wind River
Range but just unbelievable and this is
before I got into photography and it was
just like this little point and shoot
camera but it’s just a amazing journey
got to see just some sights that I’ll
stick with you for the rest of your life
and it this was kind of near the end
this was in Glacier National Park but it
was neat for me too because I was the
map geek in that trip and it was really
cool to buy these maps and pick her out
and you kind of get a vision for what it
might look like and then you watch it
unfold in real life and it gave me a lot
of a lot of appreciation for how much
public lands we have in the American
West I mean it blows my mind that today
and your 2017 there is still a quarter
of public lands that you can go from
Mexico to Canada doing almost entirely
backcountry route that anybody any
average show can go on
that to me it’s just like what an
amazing gift yeah
[Applause]
and it’s something that only a lot of
people understand everybody’s like all
public lands like you have got
Yellowstone bison thumbs up but there’s
it’s so much more to that and I also
felt like the Mustangs that we had
adopted that did so well on this trip
you know they never got her they never
got tired are they finished just fat as
can be didn’t have any any hoof problems
at all um
you know I was just so impressed by the
wild horses and whenever that journey
finished I looked at those guys and I
was like fellas we should do this again
but this time we should take cameras and
we should film it and make a movie y’all
in there like hell no I’m cold and I’m
tired you’re on your own man um so we
are yes I that point in time started
brainstorming and want to do another one
and the big reason for me of wanting to
do it was I started researching a wild
horse and burro issue which is a tricky
one
and fast-forward like five years I ended
up making a film about wild horses and
burros and I took out two minutes to
show you guys a video that kind of
explains what the current conundrum is
in the American West regarding horses
horses reproduce quickly and if they get
overpopulated they can destroy range
land habitat that wildlife depend on so
the BLM rounds up excess horses to
prevent over grazing and offer them up
for adoption but there aren’t enough of
them
and they’ve begun to stockpile there are
nearly 50,000 wild horses and burros and
government holding pens costing
taxpayers about 50 million annually wild
horse numbers have continued to rise and
right now there are over two and a half
times the number of forces that is the
appropriate management level it’s
ignited a range war between wild horse
advocates who think that the appropriate
management level is too low
between ranchers who want more livestock
and Wildlife organizations that want
priorities be put on native species the
horses don’t have a place to go there is
not enough adopters they virtually have
no predators and over grazing is real
over grazing leads to desertification it
allows invasive species and weeds to
take over and in severe cases they could
starve alright so that’s a big issue in
two minutes but to boil it down there’s
tens of thousands of the horses and he’s
holding pens and I had just gotten done
with this journey and I was like man a
lot of these are amazing horses you know
can we do the journey again and can we
try to shed some light on this situation
and to get some of these horses adopted
so I went to Texas A&M which is a good
environment to find people crazy enough
to ride for 3,000 miles always count on
him ah and and I met these two guys this
is Ben Famer he’s from Amarillo Texas a
fellow Amarillo –an and this is Thomas
Glover he’s from Houston and this is
Johnny Fitzsimmons from San Antonio and
we all had bunch of stuff in common at
A&M and we decided to embark on this
3,000 mile journey after graduation
from Mexico to Canada and to document it
and make a film about it and try to have
a conservation message in it and a wild
horse adoption message in it it’s kind
of ambitious maybe looking back on it
especially the whole filming part
because none of this had ever made a
movie before and I was like had any
money because we just graduated and
we’re like well we should do a
Kickstarter ah do I have any Kickstarter
donors in here by chance so I don’t I
don’t have any yell are all terrible
people um so we put together a
four-minute video that said all right we
just graduated our goal is to make a
film to inspire well twist adoptions by
doing this ride will you give us money
and in 45 days that video spread like
madness and we had over a thousand
people donate over two hundred thousand
dollars to make a film on unbranded
which is just amazing to me like there’s
a lot of good human beings on this
planet and you know I’m eternally
grateful for all those people that put
us there so we met a director named Phil
Baraboo and we went and we rode from
Mexico to Canada and we made a movie
before I dive into it I’m going to show
you all the trailer so you know what I’m
talking about the judgment comes from
experience and experience comes from bad
judgment and sometimes that bad judgment
can be pretty horrific
[Music]
I’m not ready to buy a house and get
married and have kids yet you know I
want to have fun and do some crazy
adventure like this while I can trip of
self-discovery we recently adopted less
than three thousand what do we do with
the excess wild horses that we have to
remove do these horses have a right to
be here yeah absolutely they do to prove
the worth of these Mustangs we’re going
to a dot train and ride them 3,000 miles
from Mexico to Canada through the
wildest terrain in the American West
[Music]
things are going to go wrong
[Music]
planning on bringing about whatever I
want
so the goal of reaching the Canadian I
didn’t is powerful impact it going
through this land is made up
well you can do a lot of things that you
can’t do this and this is for crazy
oh really yeah I was fine you guys
should all ride from Mexico to Canada by
the way um so I guess I hit the button
but where it all started
was in prison we went to a inmate
training facility where they have about
800 horses in Hutchinson Kansas and I
have a program where inmates can train
these horses and then they take these
saddle ready horses and pass them out so
if you need to go to jail you know
channel horses would be good way to
spend your time at least in my opinion
so we went there and then that all these
horses and we started sorting through
them we looked for confirmation was a
big one you know we wanted horses that
were big enough to do the journey we
wanted horses that you know were large
enough a lot of the mustangs pretty
small we look for bigger horses we
looked for a variety of physical traits
and we also looked for disposition you
know we didn’t want the horses that were
the most dominant animals and we also
didn’t want the ones that were at the
bottom of the pecking order we kind of
one of those in the middle hoping to
have the assumption that they would be
um chill because we had a bunch a flock
horse trained to adopt these horses with
the help of two professional trainers
Jerry Jones and Lanny leach who are
professionals and they knew exactly what
to look for and definitely want to give
them some credit and we took them to
Hutchinson Kansas I’m sorry too near
Weatherford Texas
where
we began the training process and if you
guys have never trained the horse y’all
are really missing out because it’s one
of the most satisfying and like
accomplished she kind of feeling things
that I’ve ever done in my life to watch
an animal that there’s a praise species
and is scared of you and watch it over
time develop trust and you know become a
team and to learn new things and to do
different things and and you know i
think a good horseman is just a
beautiful piece of art to watch and as
we were training these horses there was
this one horse particular named sea star
I felt like I was really developing a
bond with sea star and one day he was
out there in the pen and I um I walked
up to him we’ve had him for like two or
three days I walked up to him and I kind
of put my arm out I gently walked up and
kind of put my eyes down you know very
not dominant not a predator type of
feeling and he reached out and he
sniffed my hand I was like I’m
connecting with this horse right now and
you just rears up and just clocked me
right sends me sprawling now so huh
maybe next week and but we did we
successfully got to versus trained there
was three of them that we did not get to
the point where we felt comfortable
taking them on the trip um and they’re
living on pasture now living a good life
but we started the journey um uh this is
gray horse he kicks everybody which is
really inconsiderate you know kicks like
a horse
uh but we got them all trained and and
we gave it we gave it a lot of time and
we spent probably four or five months
preparing the horses to become
physically fit for us to become
physically fit because we were asking
a lot out of them and we wanted to make
sure that we could take good care of
them as we possibly could while we were
doing the training we chose our route
through Arizona we mainly did the
Arizona Trail through Utah we mainly did
the Great Western trail we just went
through Idaho and then we went into
Wyoming and kind of got on they caught
on the bike trail and took a lot of that
through Montana and to give you a
perspective of the different kinds of
agencies or jurisdictions that we went
through you know the different colors
are different land management agencies
so we went through a variety of national
forests national parks wilderness areas
private land and you can see that a lot
of it is out in the west where the
majority of our public lands and lower
48 is located
[Music]
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