Cows are nice, docile animals for the most part, but the kindest, most gentle cow can turn into the most dangerous raging, insane critter on earth if you are trying to do her a favor by assisting her when she is calving, treating her calf for sickness, helping the little fellow out if he is chilled at birth, or perhaps putting an identification tag in the little tyke’s ear. If you are trying to do the cow’s calf a favor, you definitely need a personal defense weapon.
Only people who handle cattle know how dangerous cows can be. Cows maim and kill many more people than bulls do. Cows kill way more people than sharks do. I, personally, have never felt my life has been threatened by a shark, but lots of cows have put some terror into me
via Spring: A cowman’s fancy turns to … personal defense weapons.
As an inexperienced City Boy, I would have chuckled at this article. But as a City Boy who spent a week at a cattle ranch once (and never again) and was the target of every practical joke available, let me tell you cows can inflict serious damage if you get in the way. And even if they don’t mean to do harm, it is just plain physics, they are much bigger than you. Get them scared and get ready to suffer pain and/or injury. In my very short experience at the cattle ranch, I tried to stop a calf, maybe 2 weeks old from running away…and I stepped in front of it … now I know what it feels to be run over by a Harley Davidson at 20 miles per hour. Lesson learned.
Every time I eat steak, is just sheer payback for that incident. Yeah, I can hold a grudge, a tasty flavorful grudge 🙂
Yep, I remember when I was 8 or 10 and my grandfather tried to teach me how to milk a cow and it kicked at me. They are nothing to mess with.
As a kid I worked in a sale barn, aka cattle auction, and pissed off cows were the norm. They can be mean. I had a Brahma yearling charge and hit me just above the good bits and throw me up onto a 7ft high pen wall. I limped for a while. It was funny.
Now.
I was raised on a farm and in my teen years, worked on dairy farms. I lost count of the number of times I was kicked and mashed up against a wall. A 800 pound Holstein is nothing to mess with. I really miss the farm life, well most of it anyway.
Oh, by the way, I do know what bullshit tastes like and it’s not pleasant.
I did not go the gourmet route during my cowboy week 😛
I try not to remember.
I really need to get something bigger than .45 ACP or .357 Mag for when I’m hiking in the New England woods.
Why? 1) Bears, but 2) and ever bigger threat MOOSE! Not because they’re any more (or frankly less) aggressive than the relatively small and timid black bears we have around here, but because they are DAMN HUGE and don’t seem to much care about anything around them, because they have no natural predators, and they might as well kill you by accident as often as intention.
Cows may be mean and put you in a world of hurt but they won’t eat you like pigs will.
We ran a few piney wood rooters thru the sale barn once. A sow and her litter. The owner of the barn not only banned rooters after that, but banned all hogs, domestic or wild.