Most everyone can remember a time when all it took was a single glance and you knew trouble was coming. I remember the time many years ago when I went with a good friend and landowner to help another landowner load a cow and her calf to take to the market. Now, I wasn't raised around cattle and still have a lot to learn about them. But I learned that day those who do can look at a bull or cow and know immediately their current frame of mind. I heard my friend make that infamous comment as soon as he stepped out of his truck and caught his first look at the cow. She would spend the next half hour chasing us around that pasture as we did our best to load her and her calf.
One look and you say to yourself, "Oh crap"
- Thread starter Richard22
- Start date
I wasn’t thinking cattle about this until I read your story.
Over the years and several hundred or thousands of different cows that have ran on pastures around here a decent amount of them were what I call “high headed”. I like cows with enough vigor and attitude to be good moms. I’ve been bumped, butted, snot blown on, everything else while tagging a calf. That doesn’t bother me. But you are exactly right, there’s a bellar, and a look in the eye of a cow to know her intentions. I had 1 cow years ago that sticks out. 58Z, a red baldie. Fantastic cow, you could walk up and pet her anytime other than when she had a calf less than a month old and you were around it. She’d cleaned my clock once before. So i told everyone to leave her calf alone, we’d tag it when we worked them later. But….
Nice spring day this time of year, cows had their babies hid, they were scattered out on the stalks. I find her calf on the edge of a steep ditch, I make a big loop to trick her, I put my father in law in charge of being a lookout. She’s 250 yards away, all is gonna go well. I hop on the calf, it bawls, I have plenty of time. Then I drop the tagger. At that moment I thought I’d better just give up and get outta here. Nope I’m tagging this calf just to make her mad. My FIL lets out a war whoop, I still have 30 seconds, calf is tagged I’m done. I start up the starting to thaw mud in the ditch and I heard THE bellar. Not the I’m gonna come paw the ground and blow snot bellar, the I’m gonna kill you and grind you into burger bellar. You can sidestep a bull, they close their eyes before they hit you, a cow hell bent on hitting you won’t. She got to me at the top of the ditch and tried to trample me all the way to the bottom. If not for a couple small trees I could grab to pull myself up out of her reach I would’ve gotten tore up. So from then on the 100 or so calves roaming around on stalks there was 1 without a tag every year until 58Z went to the big pasture in the sky.
Over the years and several hundred or thousands of different cows that have ran on pastures around here a decent amount of them were what I call “high headed”. I like cows with enough vigor and attitude to be good moms. I’ve been bumped, butted, snot blown on, everything else while tagging a calf. That doesn’t bother me. But you are exactly right, there’s a bellar, and a look in the eye of a cow to know her intentions. I had 1 cow years ago that sticks out. 58Z, a red baldie. Fantastic cow, you could walk up and pet her anytime other than when she had a calf less than a month old and you were around it. She’d cleaned my clock once before. So i told everyone to leave her calf alone, we’d tag it when we worked them later. But….
Nice spring day this time of year, cows had their babies hid, they were scattered out on the stalks. I find her calf on the edge of a steep ditch, I make a big loop to trick her, I put my father in law in charge of being a lookout. She’s 250 yards away, all is gonna go well. I hop on the calf, it bawls, I have plenty of time. Then I drop the tagger. At that moment I thought I’d better just give up and get outta here. Nope I’m tagging this calf just to make her mad. My FIL lets out a war whoop, I still have 30 seconds, calf is tagged I’m done. I start up the starting to thaw mud in the ditch and I heard THE bellar. Not the I’m gonna come paw the ground and blow snot bellar, the I’m gonna kill you and grind you into burger bellar. You can sidestep a bull, they close their eyes before they hit you, a cow hell bent on hitting you won’t. She got to me at the top of the ditch and tried to trample me all the way to the bottom. If not for a couple small trees I could grab to pull myself up out of her reach I would’ve gotten tore up. So from then on the 100 or so calves roaming around on stalks there was 1 without a tag every year until 58Z went to the big pasture in the sky.
RealMuddyboots
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Farmer friend asked "can you rope?". Got a friend? Sure! Me thinking great practice team roping. Pull into his yard and I see 3 new bison bulls the size of a 1 ton pickup truck out in field. So "are you ******* crazy! You can't rope bison!! Why not? Cause they will kill you and horse depending which one first! He let them out and now they said no to go back into steel pipe paddock. He tried moving them with his pickup. Worked perfect! Passenger door smashed in! He was told they are docile and wanted to cross with his beefers. They are until you tell them to do something they don't want to do. Which is 99% of time.
So we saddled up and tried to nice easy pressure to push them toward paddock gate. We made about 50yds and they all turned around to face us. Close encounter of third kind music in ears. 2 charged and my quarterhorse hit warp 5 without asking! Buddies Appaloosa which was crazy charged them! Which confused them for second then buddy hit the go button. So this went on for maybe 1/2 hour and though they were getting tired, they were really getting ornery! So sitting there talking what next we hear this banchee noise coming from barn! Farmer had old dirt bike that screamed like crazy! He circled behind the bulls and they took off running tails straight up right into paddock to get away from that monster thing that screamed holy hades.!!! Seemed he called seller and said they were deathly afraid of dirt bikes!
Go figure!
So we saddled up and tried to nice easy pressure to push them toward paddock gate. We made about 50yds and they all turned around to face us. Close encounter of third kind music in ears. 2 charged and my quarterhorse hit warp 5 without asking! Buddies Appaloosa which was crazy charged them! Which confused them for second then buddy hit the go button. So this went on for maybe 1/2 hour and though they were getting tired, they were really getting ornery! So sitting there talking what next we hear this banchee noise coming from barn! Farmer had old dirt bike that screamed like crazy! He circled behind the bulls and they took off running tails straight up right into paddock to get away from that monster thing that screamed holy hades.!!! Seemed he called seller and said they were deathly afraid of dirt bikes!
Go figure!
texwest44
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Every time I come face to face with a damn bear, or mountain goat. Anyone who wants to go on a super easy bear or mountain goat hunt hit me up, because I come across them all the time in places you wouldn't really expect, usually while hunting grouse, sometimes fishing. No glassing or 20 mile back country hikes required.
6mm Remington
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When I was in school my father had some friends who kept a couple horses in our pasture to help keep the grass down a bit. A bonus if you want to call it that is that I rode each of them regularly. Now the one was a mare Morgan. She was a really nice horse but if she had not been ridden in a couple three weeks I would get on her and she would go and all of a sudden I could tell it was coming and she would start bucking on me. Seems like this never failed to happen. I just had to be patient with her for about the first half hour of riding. Yes I guess she was i charge. She almost killed me as well one day.
I left the house on a clear summer day and was going to ride out Highway 93 south of Hamilton towards Darby. There was a girl (Of course there was.) out there about 5-6 miles from our house. When I got to the two lane bridge that crosses the Bitterroot River I thought going across I should probably walk her as I did not know how she would react to the sound of walking on the bridge. We went across just fine. Visited with the girl when I got to her house for a while. For reference there is two lanes and only two lanes with barely a bit extra to spare on the sides of each lane.
On the way back I thought she should be fine with me riding her across as she did fine the first time. I tried to pick a spot when traffic looked light because as you are going north bound there is a curve to the right as you are approaching the bridge. I start across and all is well. I do not have a saddle on and just a riding pad. I get about half way across and traffic coming from Hamilton to the North can see that my horse is starting to get froggy with me. She is starting to hop and is not liking it one bit with the hollow sound of her hooves on the roadway. I'm trying to stay on her and I'm not having a ton of success as she bucks up and I fall off of her and hit hard on my back flat on the highway. We are in the proper right lane and I am laying with the lane and I somehow hung onto her reins. My horse is standing over the top of me and I am completely underneath her. She is facing across the bridge not with it. As this is all happening, at the same time I hear the Jake Brake on a semi truck that is coming into the corner on the bridge from the south. He cannot see what is happening on the bridge until he is almost on the bridge. There is not chance he can stop. He swerves over to the south bound lane and brakes best that he can. Somehow he is able to get past me and the horse without hitting either one of us. I hopped up to my feet and led the horse across and off the highway on the other side to continue on my way home. I had a hard time as I hit the pavement pretty darn hard and I was limping along leading the horse off the road. It was only by the grace of God that we made it out of this one. I have another horse story I'll tell about when a buddy and I used to pack out two bulls we shot together. Supposedly these were both experienced game hauling critters. Dang horses!
i have no idea how both me and the horse came out of this without being killed or seriously injured.
I left the house on a clear summer day and was going to ride out Highway 93 south of Hamilton towards Darby. There was a girl (Of course there was.) out there about 5-6 miles from our house. When I got to the two lane bridge that crosses the Bitterroot River I thought going across I should probably walk her as I did not know how she would react to the sound of walking on the bridge. We went across just fine. Visited with the girl when I got to her house for a while. For reference there is two lanes and only two lanes with barely a bit extra to spare on the sides of each lane.
On the way back I thought she should be fine with me riding her across as she did fine the first time. I tried to pick a spot when traffic looked light because as you are going north bound there is a curve to the right as you are approaching the bridge. I start across and all is well. I do not have a saddle on and just a riding pad. I get about half way across and traffic coming from Hamilton to the North can see that my horse is starting to get froggy with me. She is starting to hop and is not liking it one bit with the hollow sound of her hooves on the roadway. I'm trying to stay on her and I'm not having a ton of success as she bucks up and I fall off of her and hit hard on my back flat on the highway. We are in the proper right lane and I am laying with the lane and I somehow hung onto her reins. My horse is standing over the top of me and I am completely underneath her. She is facing across the bridge not with it. As this is all happening, at the same time I hear the Jake Brake on a semi truck that is coming into the corner on the bridge from the south. He cannot see what is happening on the bridge until he is almost on the bridge. There is not chance he can stop. He swerves over to the south bound lane and brakes best that he can. Somehow he is able to get past me and the horse without hitting either one of us. I hopped up to my feet and led the horse across and off the highway on the other side to continue on my way home. I had a hard time as I hit the pavement pretty darn hard and I was limping along leading the horse off the road. It was only by the grace of God that we made it out of this one. I have another horse story I'll tell about when a buddy and I used to pack out two bulls we shot together. Supposedly these were both experienced game hauling critters. Dang horses!
i have no idea how both me and the horse came out of this without being killed or seriously injured.
RealMuddyboots
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Horses are the one animal you love everything about them until.....
I'm sure you could have sold tickets to that. Thanks for sharing.
I have endless stories about cattle. One really sticks out though.
I was back on winter break during my college years and of course that meant I was now a full time cattleman for 3 weeks.
I was helping my dad sort cattle like I had done hundreds of times. There was a black limousine cow that worked to the edge of the herd. I made a big exaggerated move to reach and put my left arm across my body to turn her towards the gate. As I did so, this basically made me broadside to the cow and put me in a vulnerable position. I had a split second of realization that this cow wasn’t going to turn like 99.9% cows would. She was already moving fast and plowed directly into my ribs. She continued driving me into the ground every couple of seconds until i was able to crawl into a hay feeder. Scary day.
I was back on winter break during my college years and of course that meant I was now a full time cattleman for 3 weeks.
I was helping my dad sort cattle like I had done hundreds of times. There was a black limousine cow that worked to the edge of the herd. I made a big exaggerated move to reach and put my left arm across my body to turn her towards the gate. As I did so, this basically made me broadside to the cow and put me in a vulnerable position. I had a split second of realization that this cow wasn’t going to turn like 99.9% cows would. She was already moving fast and plowed directly into my ribs. She continued driving me into the ground every couple of seconds until i was able to crawl into a hay feeder. Scary day.
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