Ted Mitchell Snr documents a slightly tricky local scrub bull hunt within coo-ee of a major city.
My son Scott gave me a call the other day saying that there was a pretty bad clean skin bull hanging around his and his neighbors’ properties again. These wild old bulls come out of a few thousand acres of rough mountainous country close by, where they have been roaming wild since their birth many years ago. Bad enough is the fact that are very wild and can be quite dangerous; another bad thing is that these big buggers break through fences, make a mess and then try to take the cows back off into the mountains with them.
This particular bad bull had busted the top strands of one fence and a few in another fence and when the farmers tried to herd him away, he would charge them. Then he broke through another fence onto a dirt track and was menacing cars. He had to go.
My mate Todd, being “a good keen man” (thanks Crumpy – Ed) drove up from the coast and along with my son Scott, the three of us walked off into the hills to look for this bull as he had been around the afternoon before. Well as is usually quite normal, he had disappeared. He wasn’t where it was thought he might have been, but we did find his tracks from that morning in the area where he had been seen. Following the tracks was relatively easy as it was that dry. We crossed a couple of hills and gullies and coming over the top of one hill, I spotted him near another fence where it looked like he had already broken more top wires.
He snuck (past tense of “to sneak” – Ed) very carefully down closer as if he had spotted us, so who knew how he would react?
Todd loaded his .375H&H with a fat round topped with a 250grain Barnes TTSX projectile. Trying to get a decent shot at him was hard as there were a few trees in the way and they always seemed to cover his vitals (He didn’t get that old because he was stupid). Then suddenly the big bugger spotted movement and was right onto the other two guys as they had sneaked in closer still. He was a massive bull with one horn turned down along the side of his face and the other sticking out like normal. Looking through my Swarovski binoculars he seemed pretty mean and it looked like he was mulling over the possibility of running off himself, or worse, charge at these annoying blokes and run them off.
The boom of the .375H&H solved the problem for all, as the guys reckoned they were starting to feel a bit vulnerable where they were and knew that a bull that had charged quads and cars wasn’t going to worry too much about running off a couple of annoying people. So Todd had taken quick aim as the bull’s head turned towards them and dropped a sledge hammer on him.
The bull went down like someone had pulled the rug out from under him and lay there twitching a bit. Walking up to him, he still looked like he had a little too much life left in him and Scott was going to stick him, but suddenly he staggered to his feet turning toward them. Another round was quickly fired, ending it all for good.
Big scrub bulls have proven to have tremendous tenacity and are not to be taken lightly at all, as they can do you serious harm if your not ready for them. Todd is about 6ft 3 inches or a tad more and well over 100kgs so you can see the size of this bull.
Anyway, a few photos were taken before he was cut up and all the meat taken. Being too old and tough for us, he would be good dog tucker for the neighbors who had a quite a few dogs to feed. It was a good morning where everything had worked out well.
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