Yeah, Frank, for some reason, a bull was the only animal my dad would allow me to be afraid of, and I've always been quite cautious around them. One friend of mine was past 80 and still had a small herd a few years ago. He went to look at a bull he was considering buying, went in the pen with the bull, petted him, led him around, etc. Went back the next day and was attacked and nearly killed as soon as he entered the pen. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif If he hadn't had his son with him he probably would have been killed. And no one knows why.
I grew up with milk cows and since they're handled every day, usually very gentle. The other extreme was the neighbor that my brother and I helped. His cattle were never touched by human hands, except for branding, vaccinating, attaching ear tags, and/or dehorning.
Now everyone knows that the best way to work cattle is on horseback, like Cowboydoc, right? Well, we learned that's cattle that are accustomed to seeing a man on horseback. My rancher neighbor didn't have any horses; just pickups, tractors, and Kawasaki Mule. The cattle pretty much ignored those machines and people on foot; just wouldn't let anyone get closer than 20 or 30 feet. And then he hired a couple of experienced cowboys with their horses to move the herd from one pasture to another. I don't guess those cows had ever seen a horse, much less a man on a horse, and everyone got the surprise of their lives. When those guys rode in, the cows scattered like a covey of quail, ran through barbed wire fences, some swam across a creek, etc. That was one time I really regretted not having a video camera with me. It was a stampede the western movie folks would have loved and weeks before he finally got most of his cows back on his property.
