An act of public service...

This guy and another were owned by my neighbor. A pack of wolves chased them through their fence and the 2 steers headed up the mountain where they went totally wild. Then began a sort of comical community effort to round these things up but the pair of them must have been so traumatised they would have none of it. We gathered a whole group of folks who did sweeps from here and yon, trying to push them back and the critters would hide in terrible thick stuff and then burst out this way and that, with everyone hooting and hollering. Horses were useless because we couldn't ride in the dogsback timber and the brush. All attempts to round them up met with frustration. At one point a steel gate corral was set up on the mountain, fodder and water packed up there and a rope set out to close the gate. It took days for the critters to even approach the corral, but finally they did and one of the owners found them there. She snuck thru the woods to check the corral and when she saw them inside, grabbed the rope and swung the gate shut and Voila! had them locked up...

Not so fast...

The white guy {there was a white Charolais cross and a black Angus cross} freaked out, got his head in the gate and destroyed the whole corral, ripping the gate off, dragging several panels up the mountain and then finally shaking it all loose, flattening the corral and heading off for the next county with his buddy in-tow.

You have to understand, this whole ludicrous endeavor went on for months, with descriptions of the critter's capers being reported almost daily. It was hilarious. This is a stock-raising community. All of us have stock of some ilk and stuff happens all the time that is worthy of a chuckle or two telling, but these two bovine jokers took center stage for a long time. We all found their animal antics some of the most bizarre of our lives. I should add, stock gets out all the time, and we have open range nearby but basically, if they can be found, large stock is fairly maleable and will respond fairly well to attempts at round up. Not so with these guys. They went totally native.

What exactly happened to them when the wolves got among them I have no idea, but they were absolutely whigged out. Not dangerous, at least to me, but wild as deer.

Anyway, the owners finally got so frustrated they called me up {the owners don't hunt anymore} and asked if I and my son would give it a whirl and go shoot one or both before one of the meth dealers did, assuming we could find them. I might add that in two previous years a local rancher gave me two range cows that had been injured, one on the road by a motorist, the other by an overambitious ranch hand who chased it down the middle of the highway for a mile on his horse till it jumped into the ditch and broke its leg. The first of these was legitimately dangerous {a tale for another day} and the latter just hurting when I got to it. So my neighbor thought I must be the guy to call when crazy cattle need to be shot. Thus I gave my son my .375 and I took my 9.3x57 with .375 Hornady Spire Points sized down to .366 and hied off up the mountain. The orange vest is so we could see each other, and we had radios too. We cut track on the top of the ridge above my place and then sidehilled the very steep brush-choked south face of the mountain, my son about 150 yards above me. This ground was logged years ago and very dense brush {you can see in the photo} chokes the whole mountainside. There are occaisional narrow elk trails cutting it and it was across one of these that I spotted the white fellow jogging, I getting just a glimpse. It was about 100 yards above me but my son couldn't see it. I angled up a bit and then hit another trail and I got a shot at about 70 yards as the bugger started running. Then the antics began...

The slope is so steep I was shooting almost straight "up" and at impact the critter dropped and commenced rolling down the mountain, all 1000 pounds smashing little trees, brush, mice, rotten stumps, all the while bellowing. I thought for a moment the stupid thing was going to land in my lap! I was yelling for my son to keep an eye out for the other guy and we were laughing and all in all it was high comedy. I told my kid I needed his Catcher's Mit! Anyway, at one point the steer got hung up in some brush and raised his neck and I shot him again from about 30 yards and he was done. The other fellow headed for Montana. We got one glimpse of him later in the day and then nothing.

The bugeyes are because the horses were miles away, we couldn't get an ATV up there to the critter, and my back hurt. It was getting hot out. I forgot the toilet paper. Sonny left the water bottle on the UTV a few ridgelines away and yes a little nip would have been appreciated. Why do critters always get the last laugh?

Bhoyo and me started together. We cached our rifles and other gear and I commenced in with a one of my heavy parang knives, cutting brush and then we pitching in together to roll the critter. One roll, chop, another roll, chop, etc, etc, etc... In between rolls and chops we stopped to make SOS calls on the radio back to the ranch with the order to "Send Help". This took several hours and we finally got the bastard to a ridgeline where another neighbor punched a trail up with his ATV and we got the support we needed several hours and hernias before.

As a sidenote, my son earned his annual required 4-H Ag club "Community Service" award for his part in this ridiculous affair. We got a few steaks, too.

BTW: Those two swaged-down .375/.366 Spire Points were devastating. The first took out the right shoulder and at an angle fully penetrated. The second angled thru the neck, mushing several vertebrae and exited also.