Here's another one with Brett and Paul. He was a big bull this one.
We also got to go with the bull catchers catching these bulls alive. That is the most dangerous thing I have ever seen. Lots of laughing and loud talk but deadly serious all the same. They chase them out of the scrub with helicopters, then chase them in modified 4WD until they get them at the right angle and bump them off balance. As the bull starts to fall one or two blokes from the cut down vehicle jump on the bull to hit him as he hits the deck on his side. Tailman will grab the bulls tail and pulls it between his legs and up over his flank and back around toward the back end. This keeps his top back leg from getting to the ground. Without that one movement he can't get up. Second bloke has a strap like a long belt and wraps it around the back legs a few times above the hock before buckling it tight. Same thing on the front legs. Then one bloke will go to the head from the back and tip the horns with a saw, just the tip, no blood but the bulls don't like it anyway. When theres a couple on the ground out of the mob gathered by the chopper, a little truck appears out of the bush with a lay down ramp leading up to a thick rubber flap that leads into the stock crate. They get one of the 4wds on one side of the truck and run a wire rope from the front of the 4wd through the truck, down the ramp and onto the bulls horns. The 4wd reverses and pulls the bull up the ramp. When the head is about to go in through the rubber flap, the men whip off the leg straps so the bull is loose. At that moment the 4wd reverse further and the bull slides into the stock crate on its side. The horns are tipped because when you get a couple of bulls on the truck they cab try to kill one another. I saw nine bulls on the truck when I was there. They caught 24 for the day.
The fight in a scrub bull and its willingness to engage is unreal. So is the absolute sense of power you get when you are close to a live one. It just looks like hatred in their eyes... The bloke who ran the show (it was his 640,000 acres and catching bulls was most of their cattle income for the year) seemed relaxed about the whole process. I said this all looked like a serious business. He looked me in the eye and said "it's deadly serious mate..."
Among bush people the fewer the words the bigger the message. I took him at his word and stayed on my toes.
