The Night Hunter

David E. Larsen, DVM

I slowed as I made the turn onto Kings Road out of Liberty. Albert had said he had the cow tied to the fence beside the road. I stopped when I came to the cow. Albert was waiting on the other side of the fence.

The cow’s nose was a little crusted with blood around the nostrils, and she had some foamy saliva that sometimes reached almost to the ground.

“She looked a lot worse last night,” Albert said as I stepped out of the truck. “I almost called you then, but she seemed okay otherwise. I thought I would give you the night off. Blood was coming from her nose and in that saliva last night.”

Albert held the barbed wire apart with a foot on the lower wire and pulled up on the upper wire. I carefully crawled through the fence.

“I bet that hurts to stretch that wire like that,” I said. “My grandfather would have tanned our hides if we had messed with a fence like that back in the day.”
“It’s a lot easier than paying you to drive all the way to the barn and walk back here,” Albert replied.

“Is this cow eating this morning?” I asked.

“Yes, and she was eating last night,” Albert said. “That’s why I figured things would wait till morning.”

“Are the others all okay?” I asked.

“Everyone is normal as can be,” Albert said.

I stuck a thermometer in the cow’s rectum while talking with Albert. Her temperature was just slightly elevated. I put my stethoscope on her chest and listened to both sides.

“She has normal lung sounds and just a slight temperature,” I said as Albert looked over my shoulder the entire time I examined the cow. 

I listened to her gut.

“Normal rumen motility and normal gut sounds,” I said. Albert grunted his approval.

“What do you think is going on with her, Doc?” Albert asked.

“I think I better get my nose tongs and get an exam of her mouth and nose,” I replied.

I grabbed her nose with the tongs and tied the tongs to the top of the fence post. The cow was cooperative throughout the process.

I opened her mouth and pulled her tongue from one side to the other. I couldn’t see any problems. There was some dried blood around both nostrils.

“She was bleeding pretty good last night,” Albert said. “I usually don’t check these cows in the middle of the night, but my wife has been worried about this little heifer that will calve in the next couple of weeks. I just came out to check on the heifer when I saw this old girl.”

I untied the rope and lowered the cow’s head. As I released the tongs, I noticed a spot of blood between her eyes. I explored the spot with my fingertip.

“I think I have found her problem,” I said.

I retrieved my clippers from my medical bag and shaved the hair from the spot on the cow’s forehead.

“What’s going on, Doc?” Albert asked as he was trying to see over my shoulder.

“There it is,” I said, pointing to the neat hole. “That’s a bullet wound. By the size of it, probably a twenty-two.”

“She’s been shot?” Albert asked. “Why ain’t she dead, Doc?”

“She’s shot between the eyes,” I said. “That’s too low to hit the braincase.”

“When the mobile slaughter guy comes, that’s where he shoots them,” Albert said. “Those critters just drop like a ton of bricks.”

“Close, but he either shoots a little higher or uses a bigger rifle,” I said. “If you ever have to shoot a cow, the best place is to shoot them in the back of the head. Midline, right on the poll and straight down. You can’t miss the brain that way.”

“How does the mobile slaughter guy do it then?” Albert asked.

“Well, he does it more than once every five years,” I replied. “He is pretty practiced. But if you have to shoot a cow between the eyes, you draw an X from the eyes to the base of her horns or where the horns should be. Then you aim at the center of the X.”

“Then it’s a sure kill if you hit the mark,” Albert said.

“It is easy to miss the mark,” I said. “And then the cow suffers and the people watching suffer. I had to look at a neglected herd of cows once. I went there with a deputy sheriff. There was one cow that was bad enough that we decided it had to be shot. I told the deputy to shoot her in the back of the head. He said he was always told to shoot them between the eyes. He pulled his pistol and shot her between the eyes. She bellowed and shook her head. Blood flew from her nose. He shot her two more times with the same result each time. Then I moved him over behind her head and had him shoot her like I told him to do in the first place. One shot, and she was dead. I think he learned a little that day.”

“So the guy who shot this cow just missed?” Albert asked.

“He was hunting at night,” I said. “You probably almost caught him when you went out to check the cows. He shined a light and shot at the pair of eyes glowing in the beam. So he hit his target. It was just the wrong place to aim. I would guess this old gal made some noise when she was hit. That’s when he knew she wasn’t a deer. He probably left in a hurry.”

“What do we do for her now?” Albert asked.

“I don’t think we have to do much,” I said. “Trying to do anything with the bullet would do more damage than good. I will give her some acting antibiotics, and you will just need to keep an eye on her. As long as she is eating and acting like a cow, we are home free.”

I loaded the cow up with Dual-Pen and puffed some furacin powder into the bullet hole. I felt this was all for the show; she was probably going to heal on her own.

“I have a call out this was on Friday,” I said. “If you have her up in the corral, I’ll stop by and take a quick look at her. My guess, though, is she will be healed by then.”

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Albert called the clinic on Thursday evening to say that the cow was doing well, and he didn’t think I needed to stop by to check on her.

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