OK, so I actually just went through some Horse Fun tonight, and I actually think this is a really fun system that I (and I imagine a lot of other folks) are going to completely miss. Luckily for me, I've been spending so much of Chapter III wandering the wilderness attempting to complete Trapper sets, track down legendaries and find the unique side missions that I suppose I was bound to stumble into this eventually.
Like you (though...unlike you, due to time invested) I spent tens of hours wondering why the hell that grey horse head remained on my map. The only reason I'd even climbed atop a horse other than the thoroughbred I came across early on was I'd been trying to complete the Sharpshooter challenge to kill five birds while riding a moving train and my horse apparently got caught on some bridge geometry or something and got held up in the upper east corner of the map between the Grizzlies and Annesburg...while I was deboarding outside of Strawberry. So I came across a lone guy camping that had a little too much attitude and relieved him of his demeanor and his horse, riding it all the way across the map to my man George (Dickel) Rye.
It was a poor, poor horse, and so by the time I'd arrived we'd been through some brushing rituals, I'd fed it a lot of stimulants and foods to keep it sprinting back to my main man. George himself hadn't been brushed in some time and this was our first time being separated; not knowing how quickly his health core would decrease without me, I was in a mad dash. Being as the new girl and I had had a bit of a run together, she'd already hit level 2 bondage with me...but George was bigger, stronger, maximum bondage, held all my guns and had a coat I preferred, so I left her on the side of the road and away we went.
So, again, like you, I have this random horse icon just sitting up there outside Annesburg, and I'm clueless. Obviously it blinks whenever I whistle for George, but I can't figure why and start training myself to ignore it. At least, until I find myself back in the region with a task to skin three Black or Grizzly Bears and two Legendary animals marked on the map in close proximity. I whistle George over at one point and, two real life days and many, many in-game days later, here comes the old girl that reunited us in the first place. Not only is she back by my side, she stays there. I whistle, she follows. George follows. I'm in a very, very hunty mode and so here I am, suddenly flanked by my massive man and dainty dame. I'm throwing pelts on whichever can come up alongside me quickest when I realize it's not just the pelts - it's everything but the pelts - it's the carcasses. Before I know it, I'm carrying a cougar carcass on my side chick and a black bear pelt on my main.
And then the O'Driscolls show up, and they die, and old girl gets scared, and I'm desperate not to lose my perfect cougar pelt because, man, have I been struggling to kill a cougar without unloading half a Repeater clip into one, so I chase after her with a passion I could have never anticipated, only we never knew each other all that well so the horse I approach initially isn't her, it's one of the O'Driscoll's. Also a female, so it takes a moment to register as I talk her down and approach with a warm hand and comforting brush that this horse is bigger, stronger, and wears a saddle. I pat and I brush and I pat and I brush and we bond. The horse head icon on my map shifts from over there to right here, from the old girl to the new girl.
Just as we reach that special level of trust I look along the hillside and see old girl wandering about, in my mind feeling jilted but in the code likely just having traveled the decided amount of distance a horse with Level 2 bonding would travel from its master. I go give her some pats and brushings as well, say what I think are my goodbyes because I've clearly lost her due to the way the icons behaved...
I whistle to George to come on then, and new girl follows along in stead, and I think to myself how selfishly happy I am that I have a faster, stronger, more fashionable side girl now. But something's odd. I only have my main and my side marked on the mini-map, but old girl is tagging along. She's still level 2 bonded, new girl is only level 1, and new girl is getting startled by everything. So now I'm constantly petting and brushing all three of them, with oatcake feedings for days, and we're massacring this forest. Pelts galore, and eventually another perfect cougar on old girl's back, another perfect black bear's pelt on new girl's, and a legendary fish on my main. I see an elk across the river, my first three star elk of the hunt, and where just two hours prior I was still under the assumption I had the one horse, the one large cargo spot. Now I have three horses under my command, I have two large bits of cargo loaded, and I'd just found the trapper nearby. I am about to score.
...And then I whip around, and only George and new girl are grazing a few yards behind me. I'd been very adamant about whistling every so often, enamored with this novelty of the killing machine cowboy and his three four-legged wards carrying hundreds of pounds of bounty. Startled by another elk who apparently rushed my crew but backed off before it trampled us - this is my best guess - old girl had realized how replaceable she was - or how all of the past two hours had caught the three of us by complete surprise - and fled the scene. I whipped around with my Lancaster, my rolling Block, my binoculars. I whistled and whistled, but she wouldn't respond. After a few minutes, I resigned myself to the loss of a cougar carcass and whatever pelts she'd been carrying, trudged my way to the trapper and turned in what bounty I could.
I felt a sadness, and yet - to this day, I whistle like a mad man, and I march through the expanses of the prairies, the sludges of the marsh and the density of the forests with three horses by my side, George and now-christened Elaine and whatever random horse I come across first on my way to the hunt. I'm not sure why old girl left me, especially considering she waited so, so long for me to return, but she taught me a valuable lesson. Never hunt with a single horse when three will do, and never turn your back on the wild beasts who love you for who you are for too long.
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