12/24/2025
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HACKAMORE 102: Unless you are REALLY interested in riding with the bosal, this is going to be FAR TOO LONG, so we’ll see you again tomorrow!
Here’s Part II, for those of you who've shown interest.
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When we see people starting out with the bosal, the improper shaping, fitting and placement is usually what strikes me first. It’s a thing made better when we are lucky enough to have someone in real life who is able to guide us. Barring that, maybe a post like this one can be the next best thing?
Bosals are made and often, sold in a teardrop shape. Because of this, they are not ready to use.
A bosal must have a shapeable core that will hold the desired outline, aka the cross-section of your horse’s exact head, from about a man’s hand-width above the nostrils. Those bought in western wear stores, or online, will often have steel cable cores which are impossible to fit to the horse.
Frankly, one might even question if these are ethical to use on a living, breathing animal.
If you look at a correctly-shaped bosal, you will see that it is not a teardrop shape, as is so often seen. It’s more an OVAL and this is achieved only by purchasing a maker-made bosal, in the first place, braided by someone who knows horses and working gear… and then, by shaping it further at home, to fit your particular horse.
Once fitted to a horse, it is an easy enough matter to tweak the fit and placement of the bosal and the tying of the mecate, to fit any number of horses who come into your life.
Yes, we can find good makers on their websites and on social media, for most nowadays have an online presence. In real life, they are quietly doing their braiding in their own humble shops: in the bunkhouse, the basement, the back porch. I will share some good, trustworthy names in the comments. Some of you will know reputable braiders in your own communities, if you live in a land of cows and cow horses.
It is no joke that good braiders will often have a dead cow in the yard, ready for skinning out and curing the hide, their deepfreezes filled with all manner of unmentionable things. Having several friends who are rawhide men, their spouses are long-suffering, especially supportive people, I think!
A good braider’s work is not cheap, nor should it be, for it is an artform. They are not churning hackamores and reins out, in order to feed their families. Progress is slow and the knowledge has been a lifetime in the making. If you buy a good maker-made bosal, use it and look after it, you will easily be able to recoup your investment, should ever you change your mind about becoming a ‘hackamore reinsman’.
So, we save up, find a maker and place our order. He may ask for a deposit, which is a safeguard to ensure that we mean our word. We probably want a plain, standard 5/8ths inch bosal, on a rawhide or braided rein core, with bevelled strings. We don’t need a showpiece but rather, a workmanlike piece of real, using gear.
If we look after this thing of honest beauty, it will be handed down and used, with reverence, by generations of horse(wo)men, long after we’ve gone.
The new bosal comes home and we begin to shape it into the oval, either using a suitably-shaped piece of wood, or even an unopened food can. A good bosal shapes easily with these forms.
A few wraps of ordinary baling string or dampened wang leather, one string to pull the top nose button into a narrower bend, wrapped at the grooves where the hanger will be… the other to hold the can or wood shaper down into the ‘V’ at the heel knot, wraps made just about the rounded shape, as snugly as we can manage.
The benefit of using damp leather strings or laces, is that they’ll shrink considerably, as they dry, tightening our shaper down, further. They will not harm the bosal. Now, we leave it to hang on a hook on the wall, to admire whenever we pass by. Thereafter, use alone will have a quality bosal holding its shape. Long periods of disuse will likely have us storing it, without the mecate reins on but tied in its shaper, once again.
We’re spending a lot of time talking about shaping because this is key to your horse being comfortable in the bosal. If this seems like unnecessary work, then please, stick with the snaffle bit to start your horses.
The good bosal requires our notice and attention. It is, after all, a live thing, wrought by hand from the remains of an animal who gave its life for us. Seen in this light, it all becomes very real.
Seen from the side, the shaped bosal is not straight! It will have either a slight ‘C’ curve or even, a slight ‘S’ shape, as it takes on the dimensions of the animal it is meant to fit, along with long use.
Seen from all angles when on the horse, the bosal will have no gaps, at all. It will not be tight, per se—it will have no singular pressure points—yet it will appear almost ‘water tight’, for lack of a better descriptor. Underneath the jaw, the horse will have enough room to open his mouth slightly, to relax his jaw and chew.
If they can accept and eat a cookie, it’s not too snug!
Care is pretty simple. Rawhide was traditionally kept using tallow but we have other, less smelly options available to us now. Ray Holes Vaquero Rawhide Cream is the standard fare but it is even better if it is a tiny bit soft and melty, left in a windowsill in the sun, before it is applied with one’s hands.
I don’t spend a bunch of time scrubbing my rawhide with toothbrushes, or anything. Part of the seasoning process, the smoothing of the braids, is when they get that greasiness embedded along the inside of the bosal, with regular use. I don’t fret that they get darker with age, for good rawhide is never whitened, to begin with. (I do give parts of my rawhide reins a little scrub and conditioning, before they hit the show ring. Sometimes, you’ve got to be semi-clean out there!)
Keep your rawhide bosals (and romal reins) hanging up, far away from mice and dogs, for they love to chew these things… especially if your dogs have ever been given rawhide chew toys. Those of us who love both dogs and gear do not offer them! Should this happen, it is a very, very sad day.
There is a split in beliefs with what I’m going to say next. Some people pointedly remove the mecate after every single ride, to keep the bosal from twisting and the mecate from kinking up. I do not, if I am using these things daily because I am a practical person who likes to saddle up and get to work… and also, because I have an individual set up for each hackamore horse.
If my bosals are not being used regularly, however, I will remove the mecates and hang the bosals upside-down, by their heel knots, to keep their shape.
As a rule, if one has a bosal made of white (bleached) rawhide, one has chosen a poor tool. It will prove impossible to shape correctly. Nor will it ever smooth and soften over time. There are some good bosals with kangaroo for a softer finish but a good rawhide bosal, cared for and fitted, ridden right, will not sore a horse.
In a maker-made bosal, each string will have been bevelled all along the edges, so that it lies flat and smooth and will not roughen and hurt the horse. This becomes especially apparent after the horse has worn it in all environmental conditions, with some sweating happening, the ordinary condensation in the arena and maybe, the odd rain shower, outside.
A poorly-made bosal will become rougher, as the edges of its strings begin to curl. This is something to be aware of and alas, there is no going back if the strings are shot.
Fit wise, most people are inclined to hang the bosal too low on the horse’s head, down below the nasal bone. Too low on the head, the bosal is now too large. It is now too loose, with too much free play and a sideways twist. When you look at the nose button, it can be sitting just below the halfway point between the horse’s eyes and nostrils.
I’ll start a c**t in the 5/8ths bosal, with it sitting a bit lower on the head, just because he’s a lot feelier there. I’ll move it up as he progresses, ever so slightly, so that by the time he is put in the two-rein with the under-bridle bosalita, it will be high enough—that is, with the nose button halfway between the eyes and nostrils—to not foul the bit. No matter the size of our horse, this works out to about two to three fingers’ width below the cheek bones.
I’m not going to try and explain in words how to wrap and tie a mecate rope here in this post because it would be unwieldy. A few good methods are already available on Youtube videos, by guys who know and use their bosals every day. There are several ways to tie off the wrap above the reins, which are usually the length of an adult rider’s wingspan, depending, of course, on the size of the rider and the length of the horse’s neck.
If it warms up here, we might make a video or two of our own, to share here on the page. Some mecates have a nice way of staying put, while others can be hard to snug down. I’ll dampen the area of the hair rope that is needing to hold, then I can really tighten up my wraps and they’ll stay put.
I’m not trying to keep my gear ‘pretty’ so that it can be displayed upon an office wall. It’s here to use and I’ll do what I think is necessary to make my tools work for my job. I’ll treat my things with respect but I’m also pretty down-to-earth about them, too. They were meant to be used.
This next part is important. When we put the hackamore on the horse and pick up the mecate reins, the bosal should only move an inch, tops. This is important, so remember it.
Too often, we’re seeing horses with the bosal pulled right back in a straight line towards the rider’s hands, often hitting the jaws near cheeks, before it stops. This is going to dull the horse down, if it doesn’t sore him up, first. The first pressure point on a bosal is the pivot point of the nose button, so we want to keep that rocking motion on the nose as slight, as we possibly can.
Remember that in a neutral (loose rein) position, the bosal’s heel knot and mecate wraps will drop and rest at the horse’s chin.
In the two pictures shown, we see on the left a 5/8ths inch bosal that I use to start most of my horses. In this case, we see Chickadee, who went on to the two-rein before finishing out in the bridle, alone. The entire process took several years of daily riding. It often takes longer, for there is no such thing as too ‘finished’ a horse.
This particular bosal, handed down to me by an excellent horseman and new in the 1920s, appears far tighter here than it actually was. The pony was haired-up for the brutal season we call Winter here. Sometimes, we’ll have to lower the bosal slightly, loosening the knot on the hanger, just to give such a horse more room for its heavy coat.
Practically speaking, a hackamore can be a real boon for cold weather riding. If we have to be out in below-freezing temps, it’s nice to slip on the bosal and go, rather than be faced with warming up one’s bit. In this case, our horses will work happily in the bosal over the course of their lifetimes.
However, I do go through the stages and bring them all through the two-rein, straight up into the bridle, myself. That’s just a thing for me, personally. I’m not interested in riding my horses their whole lives, as though they are c**ts. It’s either important to you to continue your horses’ (and your own) education, or it isn’t.
On the right, we have Berry in the 3/8ths inch bosalita, which is used under her bridle for the two-rein. You can see the ‘S’ shape of the well-formed (but still pretty new) bosalita and the smoothness and quality of the braiding, itself. This one was made by Wayne Bevan, a sought-after rawhide braider from Alberta, his work treasured by mainly by those who earn their livings on the back of a horse.
It, too, may appear snug but the two-rein horse must be able to open its mouth to accept the bit and to comfortably work the roller, which is a must-have when we eventually transition the horse into the bridle. This isn’t a cowboy affectation but rather, releases the jaw, the tongue and the TMJ, hugely improving the overall way of going and soundness of the horse.
This jaw release is old-timey knowledge that with modern science, is now proven fact.
When a horse gets to a more finished stage, no longer needing the support and help of the bosal rein to work confidently and lightly in the bridle bit, we’ll gradually wean her off the one and onto the other.
Because a western bridle horse is never led around by the reins, we’ll usually just tie off the mecate behind the ears and run it down through the bosalita, where it can be used as a lead rope, or ‘get-down rope’ in cowboy parlance. One uses the traditional bowline knot, which should be in the know-how of every western horseman, as it snugs down but will not over-tighten.
I can share a picture of one of my bridle horses in the comments, so you can see how this neck rope looks. When a horse is being ridden without the reins running from the bosalita to the rider’s hands, we know at a glance that this horse is in the advanced stage of working in and understanding the bridle.
When I speak of the ‘bridle’ and the ‘bit’, I am referring to the horse going in a shanked bit with a roller. Not all horses are meant, or able, to end up in the spade. But going in the ‘two-rein’ is the introductory segueway between the bosal and straight up in the bridle, on its own. This means the horse is going in a traditional California-type bit, with romal reins.
As I mentioned earlier, there is a reason for the roller, the balance and feel of the bit, the chains and the reins. It is one of life’s great mysteries, why some bits are reached for again and again, while others just look pretty upon the wall. I have bits here that have graced good horses since the 1920s and ‘30s, with no end in sight.
If the gear is good and we care for it, it all lasts. It does not go in and out of style.
I’ll plan to make a few short videos on how I go about fitting and tying the wraps on the mecate, along with how to tie the bowline for a get-down rope, later this week. Other people may do it differently, and I can only speak for myself.
I’ll include the link to an older impromptu video of how to bridle and fit a horse in the two-rein set up, done with Berry’s help. It’s not a great video on my part and I’ve been slammed in the past by a few purists, for not having a set of rein chains on her bit. If you’re schooling in the arena and training on a flag, you’ll have different needs than if you’re riding out around the cows.
Berry’s told me that she’s better off without them, when we have the need for speed, which is not traditional, either. Training a horse to handle the competition world calls for some adjustments, alas.
People love ‘always and never’ but if we’re observant, we can often see places where we’ll want to tweak things to benefit a particular horse. One of these is the common warning of never riding a hackamore one-handed, which is a shame as in time, the bosal is one of the surest ways to having a horse learn to go well, one-handed and develop a neck rein.
A western horse is not a real western horse if he isn’t reined. That is, able to steer, stop, rate, collect and back up one-handed in an elegant way.
I do hope that this long and rambling tutorial will be of some help to you, or kindle a new interest. Enjoy experimenting with the original ‘bitless’ bridle… said tongue-in-cheek… but first, promise me that you acknowledge that the bosal will come with some adjustments on your part and in your way of thinking… and that it has some hard and fast rules of its own.
Far from traditional etiquette that exists only because ‘this is how it’s always been done’, the rules of fit, shaping and use have their reasons why. All of these rules are based upon the comfort and longevity of the horse. Additionally, ponder these points, if you will:
• Don’t pull with your hands, while actively driving on with your legs.
• Use, as subtly as you can, one rein at a time while your horse is learning. Resist the urge to lower the horse’s head by pulling down, or wider apart, with the reins.
• Ride in release and with momentary vibrational contact, rather than riding in contact, with only occasional release, or reward. This is the biggest problem I am seeing with riders new to the hackamore.
• Learn to seek the feeling of freedom, interspersed with soft yielding. You’re shaping a somewhat higher-headed, more ‘uphill’ horse than what we’ve become used to seeing, in modern competition.
• Be ready, at any time, to acknowledge that your horse might be happier and better off in a bitted or bitless bridle.
And now, get ready to ride your horse in lightness… or, at the very least, with deeper thought.
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If you enjoyed this post, here’s Part One, in case you missed it: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17krfzLkwS/
