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Day also knew a good business deal when he saw it. "America's gone fat and sloppy, and for someone who's willing to go out there and kick ass, there's a lot of opportunity," he says. In the case of Mustang Meadows, Day and his two partners anticipated earning a $50,000 annual profit from a huge tract they assembled by buying 22,000 acres for $1.4 million and leasing 10,000 adjoining acres from the Sioux Indians. The money would come from IRAM's contract with BLM and the state of South Dakota, which pays the sanctuary an 85 cents-per- day subsidy per horse.
The first mustangs arrived in August 1988. After being cooped up in corrals anywhere from one month to several years, they needed to readjust psychologically to the comparative freedom of the ranch's open pastures. By gradually approaching the wary mustangs in corrals, Day and his wranglers taught them to become comfortable around people. "They have had so much negative training before they get here, they think they are going to suffer if they see a man on horseback," says Day. "We want to show them that we are not the enemy." Out of the corrals, the mustangs are rotated to one of twelve pastures, then moved periodically to allow the grass to regrow. "I'm a grass specialist," Day explains. "Though some people have romantic notions of the operation, I have to look at it as cash flow. It has to make financial sense." This year potential profits evaporated in the worst drought in memory.
Some critics say that being the brother of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor may have helped Day get the BLM contract. But, scoffs Day, "Sandra doesn't even drive 56 m.p.h. She didn't even know about this until it was a done deal." A more serious complaint about Day's techniques has been lodged by environmentalists who believe that wild horses ought to be just that -- wild. "They're nothing but a big herd of domestic horses," says Donna Ewing, president of the Illinois-based Hooved Animal Humane Society and a former colleague of Hyde's. Mustang Meadows, Ewing charges, is "another ploy by BLM to eliminate the wild horse. Hyde and Day are cattlemen, and who has been the biggest enemy of horses?" According to Ewing, "The horses are harassed. There is a lack of rock to keep their hooves trimmed naturally, so they have to round them up and trim their hooves twice a year. The climate is severe, and there is no natural shelter."
Day scoffs at such criticism. Mustang-management techniques like "herd- behavior modification," he claims, are essential. "Nobody in the world," he boasts, "has ever managed wild horses on this scale."
Day has made a believer out of John Boyles, chief of the Wild Horses and Burros division of BLM. "The situation ((at Mustang Meadows)) is about as close to natural as you can get," says Boyles. "As long as Congress says we can't destroy healthy excess animals, the sanctuary gives us the least-cost alternative to keeping the horses we can't place in private homes." BLM has awarded a contract for a second sanctuary in Oklahoma.