Our daughter graduated from high school in 1981 and that year in W. Mt. we had a 100-year flood. A creek went down through our place and wreaked havoc all along the creek, even changing the creek channel.
We had found a bull with hoof rot and trailed him to the corrals. He had gone quite aways and he was hurting, but we went slow, kind of at his pace. We got into the corrals and the gate was left open by mistake (my mistake). Anyway, he went through the alley, out and across the creek into a little pasture with a lot of brush. He went into the brush. Our daughter,( unknown to us because we couldn't see her due to the bushes), got off her horse and went in on foot to get him out. He charged her and got her down. She started screaming and my husband got off his horse to go in to get her. He kept falling down, she kept screaming. Finally, her screams got the bull to back off and my husband was able to get ahold of her and drag/carry her out. He was an Angus bull and he had pushed her around so much he actually tore her clothes. She said his head looked as big as a house and he kept falling on her. She was bruised, and sore, and we learned later may have had a broken rib~didn't know it at the time. We figured all that saved her was that the ground was so soft from all the rain. Her hair had ringlets of mud all through it. Gives me chills to think about it now.
Later that day, my husband went back out to try to get the bull in, and the the bull pinned him and his horse up against a tree. Well, we just left him alone, got some good cowboys the next day. Three guys horseback got a rope on him and drug him into the trailer and we took him to town to the sale.
This bull had NEVER shown this tendency before. I am sure that the pain from the foot is what caused the problem. None-the-less, he could have killed someone had the situation been just a little different. It happens so fast. She was very fortunate. One of her comments was "I thought I was going to die young, that is why I got to do so much my sernior year." She was really scared, and rightfully so.
