10 / Sport and Trail Magazine
Bryant and Darlene have been married forty-eight years, raised three children of their own and have been the second mom and dad to many others. They have dedicated forty-three of those years to keeping both the Choctaw Horse and the Gilbert Jones strains of Colonial Spanish Horses (also know as Spanish Mustangs) alive.
Their passion for these horses began when they were youngsters, both having ridden Choctaw Horses as kids. Bryant fondly recalls his father’s Choctaw mare “Old Bird” and her offspring, a mare named “Cris”, that Bryant’s father had given him when Bryant was twelve. “Bird was just the best family horse and naturally gaited. Bird and Cris were smaller than the quarter horses that my friends were riding, and because of that I sometimes felt inferior, but they could do anything asked of them and there wasn’t any quarter horse faster than them for anything longer than the length of a rodeo arena.” Bryant sold Cris and two other mares to his uncle in order to pay for college. He later tried to buy her back, but his uncle had fallen in love with Cris and wouldn’t part with her.
Bryant went on to complete a graduate degree at Oklahoma State University and then to teach Agricultural Education at Hugo Public High School for 31 years. Sweethearts since 1965, Bryant and Darlene were married in 1971. They purchased their farm and it wasn’t long before they had their own herd of horses. The herd was not composed of the little Choctaw Horses that they had ridden as youngsters, but the very best pedigreed Quarter Horses. When the Rickman’s oldest son, Odie, was five Bryant set out to teach him to ride, but he soon realized that his Quarter Horses were not the kind of horses that he could trust with his child. He tried a Welsh pony, but a runaway accident convinced him that he needed a little Choctaw Horse if he wanted to give his children the positive experiences that he had enjoyed with Bird and Cris.
Bryant Rickman coaxes an appaloosa marked mare to visit. In many of areas where Bryant's herds graze, one might never know they were there. Bryant gently calls to them, "Come On, Come On, Come On" and ever so cautiously they would appear from between the trees and brush.
Horse if he wanted to give his children the positive experiences that he had enjoyed with Bird and Cris.
GILBERT JONES
THE SPANISH MUSTANG MAN
Bryant’s brother, Milton, told him that he should visit the Spanish Mustang man, Gilbert Jones at Medicine Springs. At that time Bryant equated the word “mustang” with “wild” and wondered why on earth that his brother would tell him to look there. Bryant arrived at Gilbert Jones’s Medicine Springs Ranch and there he found a herd of high quality pure Colonial Spanish Horses, “Spanish Mustangs”, many with a high percentage of Choctaw breeding. Bryant combed the pedigrees of Gilbert’s horses and was found only two mares and one stallion of pure Oklahoma Choctaw blood. He was dismayed to discover that the little Choctaw Horses, the lineage of his beloved Cris, were quite literally on the brink of extinction. He was sad for all the times that he had felt that his little horse with the big heart was somehow inferior to the Quarter Horses, all the times that he had made up stories about her pedigree rather than saying that she was a Choctaw Horse. Bryant felt that he had betrayed the horse that had given him so much and he was determined to make it up to her by doing everything within his power to conserve the last of the Choctaw Horses.
The many bands of horses scattered among 90 miles of pastures, meadows and deep forests, are speckled with foals of every imaginable color