No Bull

I had to tell you all about what happened Sunday/Monday as it was amazing. John went down to check on the cows, calves and one bull in a pasture about 3 miles from our house early Sunday morning. To his surprise they were all out and standing in a harvested field of soybeans nearby. They were all spooky and milling around.

He called his cow buddies (they help each other move their cattle) and waited until one guy showed up before he left to come home to get his horse. He was not trusting the animals to take off and with the river only about a mile south he sure didn't want them getting down there and disappearing among the many trees along it.

The crew finally assembled and decided the route to drive them home with only one standing corn field to pass. You might ask why this is important? Well to answer the question, corn plants are about 7" tall and rows close enough that if the cows would get into the field they would be hard to find and would knock down the corn and destroy it. It is almost impossible to chase cattle out of a standing field since they can get away from you and hide since the fields are large. Can you guess what happened next?

They finally got the group headed up the road and the cows and calves trotted right past the cornfield but that pesky old bull decided to make a sharp left and into the cornfield he went. They ended up driving the rest of the group a mile farther along a put them in a neighbors pasture and went back to see if they could find the bull. They tracked him on foot but his tracks disappeared so they had to give up. They did go back and rounded up the rest and loaded them into trailers and hauled them the rest of the way home. They were still spooky and the guys on their horses just couldn't get them to behave so this was the best choice.

John went down several times Sunday afternoon hoping to see the bull but never saw a trace of him. He did find out where the cattle did get out though. They had broken off several posts and escaped from the pasture next the the river but had then turned north and ended up in that field that John found them in, probably escaping during the night. He said from looking at all the signs in the pasture something really scared them as he could see the cattle tracks had been running around down there for a while and were bunched up before they broke out.

We don't know what scared them but it could have been a deer (unlikely as they see them all the time) or maybe a bobcat or mountain lion. Mountain lions have been seen in the area but of course they are not official sightings according to the Game and Parks division. Have heard of another sighting recently fairly close by though.

John went down early the next morning and found some bull tracks in the newly fallen snow and followed them for a mile and a half then lost them. He was relieved the bull was heading away from the river and getting closer to home. John came home and started looking around and low and behold the bull had found his way home and had walked into the south lot and was laying down in the shed. John said they only thing he didn't do was close the gate behind him.

We are still amazed as he started out in the cornfield about 2 miles south of home. We wonder if the cows were bawling and he followed their sound. Guess we will never know but we sure are glad he is here. Didn't know we had a Homing Bull. (Think Homing Pigeons)

Lynn