I glanced back, hoping I was imagining things, but no, that thousand pound buffalo cow really was chasing me and I was a long ways from my four-wheeler in an open field. My heart seemed to throb like a drum circle at a pow-wow. But somewhere in the back of my mind I knew what I had to do.
You see, I had trained my whole life for this moment. I guess you could say Montana ranch kids are trained to be bull-fighters. Not the quintessential Spanish Matador, with his sombrero and red cape (or whatever you call it) though I'm sure they are amazing. No, I mean the guy on the ground during the bull riding at a rodeo. Not the funny one who jumps in the barrel when the bull riding starts, but the one who actually distracts the bull while the rider gets to the fence. These "clowns" are real athletes. There is a high degree of danger, a high degree of athleticism and a high degree of necessary knowledge on how bulls act.
I never thought about it til recently but lots of ranch kids have great training for this profession. I remember at a farily young age (9 or 10), my Dad telling me how to escape from an angry first calve heifer who is "trying to eat your lunch". He said that four legged animals can't turn as fast as humans (two legs) can. So as a human you must run toward a fence and when your four legged foe is pretty close, you must sharply turn or cut one direction. Then with your pursuer off your immediate tail, you must beat it for the fence. We had one heifer during that time who was especially viscous: "number 71" (so named because of her ear tag). She chased pretty much everyone but me during that time and was probably made into hamburger after her calf was weened. I was chased by another heifer and had just enough speed to get to the fence before she caught up with me without using the "quick cut" trick.
But I did use, or try to use that wisdom a few years later. I was in college and back at the ranch for Christmas break. We needed to doctor a large cow and so we had roped her and tipped her over so we could give her a shot of penicillin. It had been quite an ordeal and she was not happy but seemed subdued and reluctant to get up. I had pulled the ropes off her and thought I might try to motivate her by rubbing the flat part of her forehead with my hand. It worked I guess, because she sprang to her feet and began to chase me. I remembered my Dad's words of wisdom and prepared for my sharp cut. At the precise moment when I made the cut, I tripped over a frozen cow pie and sprawled in the direction I had turned. Fortunately I was just enough off the path of the cow that she didn't try to hit me on the ground and simply jumped over my feet.
It was this exact memory that was running through my mind as a ran for my life from a very defensive buffalo cow a couple years later. The only difference was I was out in the middle of an open field a good hundred yards from the four-wheeler and I was all alone on a ranch on the remote Montana high-line. The adrenaline coursed through my veins as she gained on me (buffalo can out-run a horse for the first hundred yards). But somehow in the back of my head I knew that all I had to do was make that cut right before she got to me. This would not end the chase though, as I was not close enough to the four-wheeler to sprint after just one escape. To my great relief it was a bluff charge and after she closed within ten feet she stopped and snorted, almost as if to let me know what she was capable if she so desired. Later that same buffalo cow chased someone on a four-wheeler with her horns locked on the rear bumper and vehicle floored for over a hundred yards. She also rammed a truck with passengers in the bed, so I am glad my incident occurred before she matured into a full fledged man-eater.
Montana really is a wild place in a lot of respects. More people are killed in national parks by moose than any other animals and we have an abundance of them. Buffalo chase people and beef cows, especially during calving season see humans as a major threat. So weather you've lived in Montana your whole life or you're simply visiting, remember: if you're being chased by a four-legged creature, let them get close, make a sharp cut and try not to trip over anything while you do it.
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