FeaturesTownsend Ranch - Darby, Montana
Larry Townsend and his Family Continue a Long Tradition of Horse Training in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana.
The Bitterroot Valley of southwest Montana is a special place. It’s timeless, where tradition is a part of life.
The valley runs about 100 miles, from Missoula in the north down to the Idaho border. Mountain spires—often snowcapped—rise into the clouds, while the blue waters of Lake Como sparkle in the summer sun. Fishing is plentiful in the valley’s namesake river, and there’s a lot of game roaming through the tall pine forests.
The summers are drop-dead gorgeous. The winters can kick your butt.
It takes a special person to live in the Bitterroot. Larry Townsend is special. And he’s part of a remarkable tradition.
In fact, it’s hard to separate the history of the valley and that of the Townsend family. Larry’s great granddad Boney was here in 1876, back when Indian problems were a way of life. Chief Joseph and his band of Nez Perce came through the area in 1877, trying to dodge the U.S. army en route to Canada. They even camped over near the Townsend barn for a time—all was calm, maybe because his grandfather’s wife was a full-blooded Nez Perce.
Boney Townsend was a horseman. And when he settled near the small town now called Darby, he began furnishing animals for the army and just about anybody else, including the loggers that needed teams to move the timber. It was a business—more of a way of life, really—that he passed down to his descendants.
Larry Townsend is the fourth generation at the Townsend Ranch. And like his father, and his father’s father, and Boney before him, he’s a horseman. He’s always been one; he broke his first horse when he was just six years old. “All I ever wanted to be was a cowboy,” he says. And he got his wish.
There were a couple of sidetracks along the way. He joined the Marines at 17, and was involved in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in ’61. The next year, he was among the first group of American troops shipped off to Vietnam. He left the service at age 21 and went back to what he knew best—horses and cowboying, back in the Bitterroot.
Competitive riding was a natural thing to do. Larry became an accomplished bronc and bull rider on the pro rodeo circuit. He also did some reining, team penning, team sorting and working cow horse. He’s such a great rider that in the 2002 Cultural Olympics, Larry rode his stallion Texas Wildthing for more than 22 minutes with no bridle, no neck rope—and no hands. He can also shoot and jump without a bridle (“Anything that anyone can do on a horse with a bridle, I can do without”).
And about 10 years ago, a client introduced him to mounted shooting (he’s a Level 4).
But all of that comes from his main work—raising and training horses. And if you ask Larry about it, he’ll immediately talk about the family tradition. “We’ve been blessed in this business with a lot of hand-me-down knowledge,” he says. “I don’t think that anyone can start in this business and in 10 or 15 or 20 years have enough knowledge to know how to survive, longterm. I think that’s something hard knocks and a lot of beatings give you.”
Larry has had his share of beatings—at least physically—dealing with horses. He has no idea how many bones he’s broken over the years. He’s got all his fingers, but almost all of them are crooked. His hands are those of the working cowboy.
So is his mind. He’s a man strong in his beliefs about horses. Chief among them: “The problem ain’t the horses a lot of the time. The problem is the people. And the way they go about it.” Larry says that people need to listen to the animals instead of trying to force them to do something. Let them have their head—and if something goes wrong, then fix it. So part of what he does is teach people the right way to go about it.
First of all, Larry breeds and trains all around horses, not specialists; that’s the Townsend family tradition. And he knows the importance of breeding. “It’s their mommas, their daddies, it’s their granddad. They come down from a bloodline that damn sure wants to win.” So he’s carefully selected three top bred stallions and 25 hand-picked broodmares for his operation. Wife Janice, with more than three decades of nursing experience, is crucial to the success of the breeding operation. About 100 horses are on the 180-acre spread at any one time, going through the Townsend program.
He won’t start training a horse until it’s about three years old. “The front of a horse’s knees are hollow when he’s young. When that knees fills in he’s pretty strong-boned enough if things go wrong to be rode pretty hard.”
Then he brings them along slowly to avoid pushing them too hard and causing problems. “If you start ‘em too soon like they do for the futurity and things, you lose a lot of horses – shin splints, bad knees, things go wrong,” he says. “So I let my horse grow up a little bit. It isn’t as cost effective to do it that way. The most cost effective way is to break one or two and get ‘em out of there before they’re through. You don’t get the best horses that way.”
And when it comes to training, Larry is adamant about the use of the round pen. “I believe round pen is a ruination of a good horse. Because you lope ‘em and lope ‘em in a round pen. These guys stay in a round pen because they don’t want anything to happen.
Then when you get out of a round pen the horse is either leaning in or both ways. He goes to lope a straight line, he don’t know how.”
Instead Larry (and daughter Tammy Townsend, for that matter) ride the horses throughout the ranch, taking advantage of the rough terrain to condition the animals.
It’s only later that they’ll determine whether a horse is best at mounted shooting or cutting or whatever. Again, Larry says they listen to the horse to decide what to do.
Then comes the match game—putting the horse and its new owner together. It’s not just a simple cash transaction. Larry says, “If you ever meet my wife, she’ll tell ya. This man tells more people no than he tells yes. If I don’t think the person and the horse I am trying to put together will make a good match, I don’t sell ‘em.”
The fact of the matter is that the Townsends have sold a lot of horses. Top rider Diane Purcelli has a couple. So does daughter Tammy Townsend. And if you go to a match you’ll see a number of horses with the distinctive Townsend brand on their flanks. Larry doesn’t count the number of animals he’s got out there, though. “The ultimate thing is how many you still got working in it. Not how many did you put out here. But how many’s runnin’ today? In this sport, that’s the whole answer.”
Many Townsend horses are still running today. But at the age of 64, with some 58 years of experience behind him, Larry Townsend doesn’t get cocky about things. –“You don’t get too proud of your successes and you don’t get too down on your failures. And you just keep diggin’.”
That’s the kind of philosophy that’s kept the Townsends going for more than 130 years in the Bitterroot, this special place that can kick your butt if you let it.
Larry Townsend won’t let it.
The Tradition Goes On
To Larry and Janice Townsend, kids and horses go hand in hand. Er, hand in hoof. They’ve raised eight youngsters on the ranch. Three are their own; the other five are foster children (actually, all are grown at this point).
All were expected to pull their weight in the operation. All were treated equally. And Tammy Townsend says her folks used some of the same training techniques on horses and kids alike. “Sometimes the horses got treated better,” she laughs.
Larry told one interviewer, "I can’t tell you how grateful I am that I had the help of horses to raise my kids," he said. "I know we can’t save the world, but we can save one kid at a time. Horses are the answer in my mind."
The Townsends try to share that with others. They’ve been known to donate old mares to families with kids who want to learn how to ride.
Larry Townsend is not the type to look ahead too much. But he knows this: the future looks bright for the ranch that’s been in his family for four generations. Tammy and her brother Bubba will take over when the time is right. “They’ve earned the right to have it. She wasn’t born to us. But I figure that you’re not born with the right to nothin’. You earn the right. That’s the way my great granddad and my granddad and my dad figured it. And her and her brother have earned the right.” …The tradition lives on.
Larry About Tammy
Larry Townsend is justifiably proud of daughter Tammy, the Lady’s 5 rider with World Championships and World Records on her resume. But most of that pride is in her ranch work. “This kid puts in more hours, more hard work than any six good ranch hands I’ve ever hired in my life. She’s one of the top women trainers in the United States in any discipline. She can train a cow horse, she can train a ranch horse, she can train a shooting horse. She’s just a hard working, very talented young lady and very dedicated to being the best at what she does.”  Related posts:
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