If you haven’t read the first part of this cowgirl story that I wrote last spring, you might want to, in order to gain a full appreciation of the story I am about to tell you. It involves Blacky Lawless, our black angus bull, who holds no respect for human, horse, or handgun. He is blatantly rebellious, though not exactly mean, and he is hard to corral and handle…this bull is somewhat of a legend around here.
Take last summer, for instance. He did exceptionally well staying in the electric fence that separates his cow herd from miles of cornfields and hayfields. But about half way through the summer, we needed to load the cows in a trailer and move them to another pasture for a couple of months, to rotate the pastures so that they don’t get grazed down and the grass gets a chance to grow back. We used portable fence panels to section off a corner, got all of the cows and calves in, but Blacky decided not to play nice, broke out of our makeshift pen, and ran off into the cornfields that surround their summer pasture.
My brother in laws had tried to get him back by chasing him with the four wheeler, and this only infuriated him further. So he was hiding out in the tree-lined gully where a small creek usually runs, well out of reach of the four wheelers. I helped the guys walk through the trees on foot and push him out, but he darted into a neighboring cornfield and disappeared. The corn stands about twelve feet high in the summer time, so it’s impossible to see any animal once they get into the cornfield. I even climbed a tree that was overlooking the field, so that I could see the tops of the cornstalks swaying as Blacky passed through them.
Well, we got him located, and my brother in law James was driving him down a row of cornstalks to the north, but we needed him to turn east and go back towards the cow herd and the waiting trailer. Well, I heard him coming and started yelling at him to get him to turn, and by crouching down in the row of corn, I could see him headed straight at me. I yelled louder, waving my arms, but he kept coming at a barreling trot. I stepped over into the next row of corn as he went past like a freight train, never slowing or swerving from his track! If I hadn’t moved, he would have flattened me for sure, because he must have closed his eyes to keep from getting his eyes cut and scratched by the corn leaves as he ran through them. I just couldn’t believe he hadn’t heard me yelling and swerved or stopped.
Well, we got him back out of the corn and put back in the summer pasture, but there was no way he was going back in that corral pen to be loaded into the trailer. We couldn’t very well leave him all alone in the pasture for an extended amount of time, because we knew he wouldn’t stay, he would jump out and wander off in search of more cattle. So all we could really do is leave another cow with him as a babysitter, and hope that they both didn’t run off looking for their friends.
Well, we took the rest of the cows to the alternate pasture for several weeks, and we really never had trouble with Blacky and his girlfriend crawling out. Later in the fall we brought the rest of the herd back to the pasture, for one more grazing period before winter hit and we needed to move them to cornstalks. So they got along peacefully for a time. But it was a worry in the back of our minds, thinking of the trouble we were going to have when it came time to load them all up in the trailer and take them to their winter quarters.
The breeding season was over by late summer, so we got to thinking in the fall about trying to separate Blacky out and bring him home to secure corrals. Cowboy Dad and I came up with a plan, but there were some major snags in it, considering what might happen if Blacky decided to go off on his own again. One of our biggest problems is a lack of adequate fencing, much less a good strong corral system for loading and moving our cattle. Another problem is the bull’s headstrong attitude about not wanting anything to do with the trailer. But our plan held a secret ingredient that we thought we could use to our advantage, and it ended up being just the key!
We pulled our 20′ stock trailer down to the pasture one evening, as quietly as possible. We backed the trailer into the cow’s pasture, unloaded a few portable corral panels, and set them up in kind of a C shape around the back of the trailer. We thought we might be able to coax Blacky and a few cows into our wing of fence panels, and get them squeezed into the trailer if we worked quietly and kept everything very low-key. Then we brought out two five-gallon buckets of corn, poured them in a long trail leading up to the back of the trailer. We called the cows, and let them come up and eat, and then we unhooked the trailer and drove away, leaving it there.
We planned to come out every evening and feed them corn, and just see what we could get accomplished. The next night, when we brought out our corn buckets, Blacky was right there, greedily pushing the cows aside and gobbling up as much corn as he could in the quickest amount of time. He really is not a skittish bull, and he doesn’t mind people walking around him, he just is pretty determined about not doing anything he doesn’t really want to do.
So the following night, Cowboy Dad walked out with a couple of buckets of corn. I opened the trailer door and stood quietly behind it. The cattle came running, Cowboy Dad walked inside the trailer and poured out the corn, quickly and quietly letting himself out of the small exit door near the front of the trailer. Blacky ran up to the back of the trailer, ate as much as he could reach, took two steps inside the trailer, and was pushing all of the cows back so that he could eat all of the corn himself. So I simply shut the door, and we had him!
We laughed all the way home with him in the trailer. His greed had gotten the better of him, and it was a good feeling. The hours of chasing him through downpours, mudbaths, cornfields, and tree groves have hopefully come to an end. If I had my way, Blacky’s next trip would be to the auction barn, but this bull is one of my brother-in-law’s most prized possessions, and he is worth quite a bit to us as the sire of our calves. His love of corn is on our side, so we’ll probably play that card again in the future.
So again, I have this feeling that the tales of Blacky Lawless will continue, and I’ll keep being thankful I made it through some of them alive, because this monster has created some pretty dangerous situations. And so, the Legend of Blacky Lawless lives on…..stay tuned for more episodes!
