Supersized saddles find home on the range as Americans fatten

In a sign of America's growing girth, dude ranches and hunting camps in the Northern Rockies are adding heavyweight horses and super-large saddles to seat swelling numbers of outsized clients. With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting that a third of U.S. adults and 17 percent of children are obese, Western wranglers and outfitters say they are doing all they can to accommodate the widening of waistlines and other anatomical areas. "To put it bluntly, we call them the big-butt saddles," said Lee Hart, owner of Broken Hart Ranch in Montana. The business near Yellowstone National Park seasonally provides trail rides and guided hunting by horseback to nearly 2,000 people from across the country. Hart and others said the 18-plus-inch saddles they now stock were all but nonexistent 30 years ago, when just 15 percent of American adults were considered obese. At that time, a 16.5-inch saddle would have been considered ample enough for a stout rider. Guest ranches and outfitting operations also are bulking up on riding stock crossbred with draft horses -- weighing in at roughly 1,500 pounds -- to fit their super-sized customers. "We have to seat 400 fat people every summer," said B.J. Hill, co-owner of Swift Creek Outfitters and Teton Horseback Adventures in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The operation has established a weight limit of 275 pounds for trail rides and pack trips in an effort to prevent injury to both horse and rider...more