Wild bull

“ A Bull in a field is vicious enough, as I daresay you know; but a wild Bull is worse than anything. Wild Bulls are tremendously strong, and they can fight with almost any beast of the forest, even Lions and Tigers. ”

“ On notice being given, that a wild bull would be killed on a certain day, the inhabitants of the neighbourhood came mounted and armed with guns, &c., sometimes to the amount of a hundred horse, and four or five hundred foot, who stood upon walls or got into trees, while the horsemen rode off the bull from the rest of the herd until he stood at bay, when a marksman dismounted and shot. ”

“ He was a hunter whose fame went wide in the settlement. He could master and slay the cunning kindred of the wild by a craft finer than their own. He knew all their weaknesses, and played upon them to their destruction as he would. In one hairy hand he held a long, trumpet-like roll of birch-bark. This he would set to his lips at intervals, and utter through it his deadly perfect mimicry of the call of the cow-moose in rutting season. Each time he did so, there came straightway in response the ever-nearing bellow of the great bull hurrying exultantly to the tryst. ”

“ I felt, however, that one bull-fight was enough for me; the treatment of each bull is of necessity the same, and the mules have no sooner galloped out of one door trailing the dead bull and his victims out of the arena, than another dashes in from the opposite side, only to meet the same fate. The way in which the bulls come in is very striking: they rush in madly like wild beasts, and generally charge rapidly at one of the picadors or chulos. ”

“ On a wintry morning, when the sunrise was reaching long pink-saffron fingers across the thin snow, a puff of wind brought with it from a tangle of stumps and rocks a breath of that pungent scent so hateful to a moose’s nostrils. The whole herd stopped; and the young king, his knees quaking under him and his eyes staring with panic, crowded close against his mother’s flank. The tall bull stamped and bellowed his defiance to the enemy,—but the enemy, being discreet, made no reply whatever. ”

“ They dwell amidst scenes of picturesque beauty; they gaze over green savannas—down into deep barrancas—up to the snow-crowned summits of mighty mountains—without experiencing one emotion of the sublime. A tortured bull, a steel-galved cock, Roman candles, and the Chinese wheel, are to them the sights of superior interest, and furnish them with all their petty emotions. ”

“ The old bull was beaten, but gathering himself together he recovered his legs and disappeared amidst a scene of the wildest excitement; men shouting themselves hoarse and otherwise expressing their delight. The excitement did not last more than a few minutes, then everybody quietly discussed what was held to be a great fight. ”

“ A wild bull, of the fiercest kind, which has been caught and exasperated in the same manner, is now produced; and both animals are turned loose in the arena of a small amphitheatre. The mortal fight begins instantly ”

“ Sometimes the young bull declines to charge the tentador, submitting quietly to his overthrow, and only desiring to escape. He does not get off without a second fall; but if, after this, he still refuses to charge, he is at once condemned—doomed to death, or at best a life of agricultural toil. A note is taken of each selected bull (its colour, size, and shape of horns, and general appearance) ; and each is entered in the herd-book, under a particular name—such as Espartero, Cardinillo, Linares, Flamenco, and the like. ”

“ But the little cow was not to be caught so. Almost as the bear delivered his lunging stroke she checked herself, jumped aside with a nimbleness that no bull could have begun to match, and sank both horns deep into her great antagonist's flank. Before she could spring back again beyond his reach, however, with a harsh groan he swung about, and with the readiness of an accomplished boxer brought down his other forepaw across her neck, smashing the spine. Without a sound the gallant little cow crumpled up and fell in a heap against the bear's haunches. ”

“ All the year round captive buffalo bulls are given to fighting, and for one bull to injure or kill another is an occurrence all too common. Even in the great twenty-seven thousand acre reserve of the Corbin Blue Mountain Forest Association, fatal fights sometimes occur. It was left to a large bull named Black Beauty, in our Zoological Park herd, to reveal the disagreeable fact that under certain circumstances a buffalo may become a cunning and deliberate assassin. ”

“ Excepting the song-birds, the wild creatures of today have learned through instinct and accumulated experience that silence promotes peace and long life. The bull moose who bawls through a mile of forest, and the bull elk who bugles not wisely but too well, soon find their heads hanging in some sportsman's dining- room, while the silent Virginia deer, like the brook, goes on forever. ”

“ From the first the animal was unmanageable, out of all control. The goading and the enraging that goes on in the dens behind the arena had been overdone apparently, for the bull, wild with rage and pain, galloped madly round, taking no notice of the pallid group of toreadors.
At last one or two came forward with their cloaks of scarlet; the bull made a dash at them, scattering them on either side, then bounded on and with one tremendous leap cleared the hoarding that separates spectators from the rings, and landed bellowing in the corridor that ran round it just below our seats. ”

“ Others claim, and with some reason, that the bull, more fearless and careless at this season than at other times, comes merely to investigate the sound, as he and most other wild creatures do with every queer or unknown thing they hear. The Alaskan Indians stretch a skin into a kind of tambourine and beat it with a club to call a bull; which sound, however, might not be unlike one of the many peculiar bellows that I have heard from cow moose in the wilderness. And I have twice known bulls to come to the chuck of an ax on a block ”

“ While yet the approaching bull was apparently so far off that even eyes so keen as his had no chance of discovering the ambush, the younger hunter, unused to so long a stillness, got up to stretch his cramped legs. As he stood forth into the moonlight, a loon far out in the silver sheen of the lake descried him, and at once broke into a peal of his startling and demoniacal laughter.
“Git down!” ordered the old woodsman, curtly. [194] “That bird tells all it sees!” And immediately setting the birchen trumpet to his lips, he sounded the most seductive call he knew. ”

“ The people of the East are seldom supposed to give way to demonstrations expressing emotion, but while a bull fight is on the Malays yell themselves hoarse with shouts of encouragement and approval, while the setters-on half mad with excitement simply dance around the bulls. ”

“ The championship for keen strategy in self-preservation belongs to the musk-oxen for their wolf-proof circle of heads and horns. Every musk-ox herd is a mutual benefit life insurance company. When a gaunt and hungry wolf-pack appears, the adult bull and cow musk-oxen at once form a close circle, with the calves and young stock in the centre. That deadly ring of lowered heads and sharp horns, all hung precisely right to puncture and deflate hostile wolves, is impregnable to fang and claw. ”

“ His mother, standing out in the moonlight by the water, had twice with outstretched muzzle uttered her call, when it was answered not only by her mate, the tall bull, approaching along the shore, but by another great voice from up the hillside. Instantly the tall bull was in a rage. He rushed up to the cow, touched [314] her with his nose, and then, after a succession of roars which were answered promptly from the hillside, he moved over to the edge of the open and began thrashing the bushes with his antlers. A great crashing of underbrush arose some distance away, and drew near swiftly ”

“ But among moose, as among men, brains count in the end. When the tall bull saw that, in a matter of sheer brawn, the sturdy stranger might hold him, he grew disgusted at the idea of settling such a vital question by mere butting and shoving. ”

“ A tame wild animal is the most dangerous of beasts. My old friend, Dick Rock, a great hunter and guide out of Idaho, laughed at my advice, and got killed by one of his three-year-old bulls. I told him they knew him just well enough to kill him, and they did. My friend, A. H. Cole, of Oxford, Nebraska, tried to rope a Weetah that was too tame to be safe, and the bull killed him. Same with General Bull, a member of the Kansas Legislature, and two cowboys who went into a corral to tie up a tame elk at the wrong time. ”

“ Their work is to face the bull, infuriated by the pikes of the picadores, and to plant in his neck several darts, each over two feet long and decorated with ribbons. The toreador comes on the scene the last of all, when the bull, though tired, is still dangerous. It would be a mistake to imagine that the bulls are spiritless, or have been so starved that they are weak, without strength, energy, and courage. These animals that we saw leap into the arena were all specially bred Andalusian bulls, the very picture of strength and wild ferocity. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the domesticated bull is more likely to attack man without provocation than any wild animal I know, and those who wandered on foot around the bulls on our Western prairies in the old cattle days probably experienced the same kind of charges one gets from African buffaloes. ”

“ Wild animal performances are no more cruel or unjust than men-and-women performances of acrobatics. Practically all trained animals are well fed and tended, they welcome their performances, and go through them with lively interest. Such performances, when good, have a high educational value,—but not to closed minds.
Art. 22. Every bull-fight, being brutally unfair to the horses and the bull engaged and disgustingly cruel, is an unfit spectacle for humane and high-minded people, and no Christian man or woman can attend one without self-stultification. ”

“ As just mentioned, it is no easy work to keep the young bulls together, for they are anxious to break away and dart off to join their friends in the distance. When all is ready the herdsmen allow one bull to escape across the flat open country, pursued by two horsemen who are awaiting the moment, garrocha in hand. These men rival each other to place the first lance and to turn the bull over. ”

“ It very seldom happens that a bull is killed or even seriously injured. As soon as the bulls arrive on the ground, they are inspected at close quarters by the backers, while the setters-on give the last touches to their champion. ”

“ Men have been maimed for life, and even gored [Pg 224] to death, in bull baiting frays, held in front of the Carlisle town hall. A large ferocious animal, known as the "Linstock bull," was baited no less than three times. It once broke loose from the ring; threw the multitude into wild disorder ”

“ Usually there is a fight more or less prolonged and when at last one bull gives way and runs for the field, he is followed, caught and brought back again to face his adversary. If he fights again, well and good, but the second bout rarely lasts any time and the beaten bull again saves himself by flight. ”

“ Through the spring and summer the little family of three fed never far from the Mamozekel stream; and the king grew with astonishing speed. Of other moose families they saw little, for the mother, jealous and overbearing in her strength, would tolerate no other cows on her favourite range. Sometimes they saw a tall bull, with naked forehead, come down to drink or to pull lily-stems in the [298] still pools at sunset. But the bull, feeling himself discrowned and unlordly in the absence of his antlers, paid no attention to either cows or calves. ”

“ The owner who draws the short blade takes the upstream position for his bull, while the other bull faces him from downstream. The setters-on then bring their respective bulls closely up to have a good look at each other, slowly pass about ten yards apart, and then bring them face to face. ”

“ A bright-coloured scarf or mantle will always draw away the bull from his prostrate foe; otherwise there would soon be an end of tentadores, bull-branders, and bull-fighters too, for the matter of that. ”

“ The hunters catch them only for their skins, though sometimes they preserve their flesh likewise, which they harden with smoke, using it for provisions when they go to sea.
Here would be also wild bulls and cows in great number, if by continual hunting they were not much diminished; yet considerable profit is made to this day by such as make it their business to kill them. The wild bulls are of a vast bigness of body, and yet they hurt not any one except they be exasperated. Their hides are from eleven to thirteen feet long. ”

“ The men engaged in these operations have, of course, no shelter of any kind; but the Spanish herdsmen, when taken at disadvantage, are adepts in the use of their jackets, with which they give "passes" to the bull, who always follows the moving object. A smart fellow, when caught in the open, can thus keep a bull off him for several moments, giving time for the horsemen to come up to the rescue. Even then it is no unusual occurrence to see horsemen, horse and bull all rolling together on the turf in one common ruin. ”

“ While thus grazing at large on the open plain, the bulls are in charge of herdsmen over whom is the official known in Castile as mayoral, in Andalucia as conocedor, assisted by his ayudante. These two spend their lives in the saddle, each carrying the long "garrocha," or lance, as a defensive weapon. The herdsmen go on foot, each armed with a sling, in the use of which they are adepts.
To return to the two-year-old point in the bull's life—that is, as we have stated, the critical stage in his existence, for then his "trial" takes place. ”