The Little Bull Who Could

  When all was said and done, I think that the trade worked quite well for both sides, human and bovine.

When I was married, my father-in-law had a small hobby herd of dairy cows in his fields.  Every 5 years or so, he would get rid of a herd bull and buy another from the local cattle auction.  It kept the herd fresh and limited the amount of inbreeding that could occur.  The people of Woodruff, where he lived, should have taken a lesson from that, but then again, that’s an entirely different story!

The year I worked on the ranch for Dad as his “Maintenance Supervisor”, or well man, my father-in-law, Phil, needed a new bull.   We proposed a trade and Dad was agreeable.  The cowboys had recently caught a few maverick three-year-old bulls that would be perfect.  Phil’s bull was a bit smallish and was a Polled Hereford (meaning that he had no horns genetically).  But it was a fair trade.  A 6-year-old herd bull for a wild 3-year-old bull no one would ever want, even the crazy Navajo ranchers at the local cattle auction was definitely a good trade.

We took the little bull out to the Hinkson Ranch and made the trade.  Phil picked the wildest bull out of the lot and it took an hour to chase him into our trailer.  He nearly tore apart the trailer on the hour and a half drive home.  The little bull calmly settled into his small quarters in the corral with a good bale of hay and a tub of water all to himself.  He would be released in a few days once he figured that this was home from now on.

We released the wild bull into an environment that he was not used to.  Green pastures of waist high grass and a dozen willing, calm cows.  He literally flew out of the trailer and ran for the end of the field, knowing that the puny wire fence would never hold a beast of his stature.  He was almost ready to burst through the fence into freedom when he suddenly realized what he’d be missing if he escaped.  That small, inquisitive pause lasted for another five years.  As time went by, he became one of Phil’s tamest bulls, and one of the most productive.

But on to Baldy, the little bull who could.  As Paul Harvey once said, “and now, for the rest of the story.”

Baldy was eventually transported to the Garcia Headquarters, some 10 miles south of the Hinkson.  He was released there among the other 40 or so registered herd bulls, each with his own pedigree and ancestral line traced back over generations.  They were also much bigger than Baldy, and worse, they had big, thick pointed horns for doing battle.  They were proud of it, too.  Baldy was a very small fish in a very large pond, filled with sharks.  He was picked on mercilessly. 

One day, we were repairing the loading chute at the Garcia when we heard the all too familiar bellowing and grunts of fighting bulls.  The battle was intense and the dust rolled across the prairie.  When the dust dissipated, circling around each other were Baldy and a big, mean, red bull with horns thicker than my thigh.  It was clearly an uneven match, like pairing Mike Tyson with a 5th grader.  The battle continued for at least 30 minutes before Baldy, clearly beaten, began to sulk off.

We turned back to our work, commiserating about the poor little bull’s defeat, when we heard an enraged scream of a bellow ring across the field.  We looked quickly enough to see Little Baldy rushing down a small rise, gaining momentum, before lowering his hornless head and planting it squarely into the rib cage of that monster bull. The crack reverberated across the valley and that big, red bull took two steps forward and fell to the ground in a great, big heap. TKO by the fifth grader!

  Little Baldy walked off, the proud champion, respected by all, including a couple of cowboys half a mile away. A few hours later, we finished our work and looked across the valley to see the defeated bull still lying in the chemise brush. Further investigation and a little butchering led to an amazing discovery.Through pure luck, or perhaps innate skill, and just plain sneakiness, Baldy had crept around a small hill, acting defeated only to climb it, out of sight, and charge. The crack we heard was  one of the red bulls' heavy ribs. The broken rib was then forced straight through his heart. 

This would be a great place to close the story, but little Baldy was not finished showing off. That summer, we took our two-year-old heifers up to the mountain along with the herd bulls for breeding. Baldy went on a sexual rampage. He bred everything in sight. At the end of the summer, we got a call from a rancher nearly 20 miles away from our grazing permit who said that Baldy was busy breeding all of his stock. We thought, for a bit, that he just got loose right away, but the truth was that he was bored. The neighbor's cows looked more interesting. The following spring, over half of our calf crop followed their father by not developing horns! Little Baldy, who was not pedigree nor registered, ended up being not only our toughest bull, but also our most productive. I often wondered if any of the elk on the mountain were born a more orangish color with no antlers.