Fellow 'Fire folks;
To no one in particular this morning and perhaps for the edification of just as many, I'll offer a couple bull stories from the mountain grazing leases of interior British Columbia.
We were moving the herd (55 cow/calf pairs & 3 bulls) across the valley one day which meant they all had to be moved down a couple miles, bunched up and loaded onto a cattle liner.
The pairs were penned and we'd begun to run the first load up the chute when two of the bulls began to have a social discussion right where our three horses were tied. They were good steady cow horses and were trying to ignore these lesser creatures as usual, but the bulls were doing their level best to be a nuisance of some significance that morning.
The rancher instructed me to cut a couple 12' willows for us and peel the branches off 'em - to make magic wands to convince the bulls to find another spot to play.
We made up the oversize hot dog sticks in record time and proceeded to apply them to the fighting bulls with enthusiasm and vigor.......they barely paid us any attention whatsoever.
I'd suspect - based upon over a decade of being an Occupational First Aid Attendant at work among other life experience with human trauma - that any two of the licks we were administering to the bulls would have near hospitalized a human.
This other time one of the herd bulls picked up a bit of hoof rot or something that required me to administer two doses of tetracycline.
He "resisted" our initial attempts to stretch him out to a handy tree, so we picked out a nice young cow that he'd follow and ran them both down the mountain a bit to the nearest loading chute.
These chutes are constructed with posts of 8"-10" diameter that are driven in deep and then skookum rails installed onto the king size posts.
So we got this cow to run the chute, the bull naturally followed and we got a stout fence rail in front of his brisket and another behind his tail.
The largest of us there that day was an RCMP Sargent in the real world and weighed at least 50lb more than my 160lb, so we had him make my lasso into a makeshift halter for the ailing bull. My late friend installed the halter, put at least two - maybe it was three - wraps around the closest 10" post, pulled the bulls nose to the post and nodded to me to hop up on the chute and administer the penicillin.
The bull didn't know what was coming for the first needle in his butt, but he sensed my intent somehow for the next one.
Although he didn't buck the entire chute down we were all impressed at how much it moved - with him having his nose firmly snubbed in and all. All the while my rancher buddy is holding the horses, looking up at me straddling the moving chute and saying, "Quit fooling around up there Dwayne and give him the needle before he wrecks the chute!"
I suppose that since I can share these bovine tales with you folks that it might possibly indicate I'd be interested in more and greater adventures with bulls. Those who'd read that into it couldn't be more wrong.
All the best to you all this mid July weekend, may all your encounters with bulls have safe endings.
Regards,
Dwayne
