Bringing in a Damaged Bull

Every other day we check the cattle out in the summer pastures.  'Checking' involves refilling the salt and mineral feeder, making sure the water is flowing at the tank, and driving through the cattle, looking for sickness or injuries. We had one bull that had a limp that we allowed to be off by himself, so to have some space to recover away from the others.  Unfortunately it had been pretty wet and I hadn't gotten out to follow up with him due to some swampy areas to get to him. After a week or so of not setting eyes on this particular bull (named 941) it was past time so see how he was coming along.  Even more unfortunate this is what I found:

He was very dead. Its hard to tell whether he was struck by lightning or had gotten into a fight with one of the other bulls and in his weakened state broke his neck.  Regardless I needed to come back with a tractor to take him away. My dad recommended just dragging him to a corner of the pasture we aren't using due to how much the sand had blown in that area over the years.  I hopped on the old Allis tractor with a log chain, drug him across the field, dropped the fence and pulled him over the wire. Sadly, the split in the hoof snagged the wires and ripped out a post further down the lane. So that was sad.  Now I needed to do the pleasant thing of yanking out jammed up barbed wire out of a rather fresh smelling, oozing, decomposing bloated bull carcass.  Trying not to breathe, I pulled on wires, but gave that up and I snipped the wires out with my fencing pliers and deposited him in a sand dune. Earlier during the checking of the cattle I had also noticed another bull who had an injury to his reproductive organ. The deformity and swelling made it bad enough he won't be able to breed anymore. So we were now down to 1 bull to 60 cows, which isn't a great ratio, and we needed another pretty quick.  

Blessedly we were overstocked a little in the North Pasture due to a recent purchase. There we had four other bulls and could spare one.  That one was fairly easy to load up as he was up by the water when we arrived.  Here is a video of loading him.  [I purchased a fairly low-end action body camera for such a time as this, so you're getting more than you wanted in this post.]  You'll notice me cowering on the fence at one point while my dad bravely got him in the trailer. 

We then unloaded that one in the West Pasture and tried to locate and bring in the injured one.  Unfortunately I had help with me. An over-eager-untrained-half-breed cattle/guard dog. Who oddly enough wasn't much help.  

 We gave up that day to avoid risk of injury.

The following day we opted for a third person (thanks Jacob!), no dog, and my dad in a tractor.  Now this bull turns out is more of a socialite and was determined to run circles around us to return to the herd of cows. Some bulls are loner bulls (looking at you Ferdinand) and others more socially adept.  After half hour and finally figuring out we needed to bring in half the herd up with him we were able to get him.  Here is a half hour clip of the nearly 45 min of bringing him in:  

[WARNING, it has shaky camera syndrome pretty bad.  Also yelling at him might be kind of loud so turn speakers down.  But blessedly, I believe, there is no language. I tried to cut out the worst shaky camera parts of it, though no pressure to watch the whole thing unless you're really into this sort of thing. ] 

As of writing this he is scheduled to go to the sale barn to become a future steak or burger near you.  Chew with the knowledge that the food the Lord has provided you may have also been a vessel of sanctification to another.