On the Prod
Merriam-Webster: “transitive verb:
1 a
:to thrust a pointed instrument into
b
:to incite to action
2
:to poke or stir as if with a prod
intransitive
verb: to urge someone on
Over the years on the
ranches of Montana I have heard the term “On the prod” to describe an animal
that is in bad temper – as is a man who has been subject to constant nagging.
That description
fits a bovine that is stressed by pain – as with an injured or inflamed joint or having recently calved – but is most often
is applied to a bull who may also be described as ‘on the fight’. This is the story of a bull, so I’ll give you
a little background there.
One
might think of the life of a bull as idyllic: the grass is green, the sky is
blue, and lots of the most willing brown-eyed females everywhere he looks. But all isn’t fun and games – even in
paradise.
There
are other bulls with their eyes on the females, and they are big:
as big as a ton. The hills are steep
and rocky; the sun is hot; the flies incessant.
After a few years of that, bulls get tired. By the time they are five years old, most
bulls are either lame, or they have discovered that there is nothing that can
stop them from doing whatever it is they have in mind: not a fence, not a gate,
and not a horse.
A cowboy
can’t really make a bull do anything.
All he can do is make it so miserable in every other direction that the bull finally “chooses” to take the route
that requires less pain and effort.
There
are a few tools in the cowboy’s arsenal: a horse, a dog, a bullwhip, a load of
.22-caliber birdshot, and last-but-not-least – a lariat.
On Saturday
we had a foot of snow, with colder weather in the forecast. The field in which the cows were residing had
too many rocks to make feeding practical.
It was time to move them to their winter range “up west”. First we had to cut out 6 calves which had
crossed the river and two fences to return to their mothers after having been separated.
That wasn’t
much of a ride, as the cows were bunched only a half mile from the
corrals. We rode out, raked through the
cows, took the six pairs on out through two gates and across the bridge, and
into the corral, where we quickly separated them.
We
returned to the cow-bunch, and discovered one of the neighbor’s bulls among
them.
Now
was the time to cut out the bull, as we were only a few hundred feet from the
neighbor’s fence, and we were about to move those cows a couple of miles west.
But
he wouldn’t cut.
When
I tried to turn the bull back, he just ran until we were even with him, then he
shouldered through my horse and kept on agoing.
I tried to throw a few cows
together with him – but he was determined to head west away from his home. I was alone with just a horse and a dog, and
couldn’t hold a small bunch together with the bull.
We could have left him with
the cows, but we were headed a couple of miles west – making it harder for the
neighbor to retrieve him.
We could have turned the
whole cow-herd back into the neighbor’s near-by corrals - but if we couldn’t
cut him back with the horse in the pasture, how could we cut him back in the
corral where we had no space to evade his charge?
Roping a bull out on the
prairie is not a task to be taken on without some prior planning, and I’ve
written a story about that. But this was
a young bull that didn’t outweigh my horse by much, and the corral was only a
quarter of a mile away. I stopped to
tighten my cinches, then shook out a loop.
After having lost a couple
of critters because my rope was too short to dally, I was now carrying a 45’
rope.
The rope was long enough to
dally this time, but I was too late in jerking my slack: he had already stepped
through with both his front feet - and when I pulled tight, the rope was around his chest. I was slowing down.
Taking one front leg
in a neck-loop can be a good strategy: it keeps a critter from choking
down. But with both front legs in the loop, I had a minimum of control.
The wolf advocates of our
country think it is “cruel and unusual punishment” to shoot a wolf who is
tearing apart one of our cattle. They
instead insist on the strategy of making the wolf “feel unwelcome”. With a rope around the neck of this younger
bull, I could have controlled him; but with the rope around his chest, I could
only make him ‘feel unwelcome’.
That strategy worked in this
case. I didn’t have enough control to take the buIl back through the gate
into his own pasture, but Eric was able to push the cow-herd on west while I
held the bull back, and made him feel unwelcome among our cows.
The bull was now separated from
the cows, but my good rope was still on him.
I couldn’t force him back to the corral to pull the rope off in the
chute. I couldn’t choke him down and tie
his back feet while I pulled off the rope.
Robby was due to arrive any time now, however, and we could ride out
together to head and heel him to get this lingering rope off the bull's chest.
It was late and cold before
Eric and I had dropped the cows up west and returned to headquarters. The bull couldn’t get into any trouble with
just a rope on his chest. Tomorrow would
be a bright new day. Tomorrow we could
go out and put that bull back in the field where he belonged, and retrieve my
good 45-foot rope.
If you like this story, you'd enjoy my book Ain't This Romantic!?!
