Jerry Bucknall Gored By A Bull

You guys reminded me of an incident that took place at Minot on the H-19's. Must be all the H-19 talk that jogged this one from the back room. We were in Missile Command, actually a base flight operation supporting the newly installed missile sites there. We would be tasked to transport the missile crews to the sites and back when their tour was over. The land the missile silos were on originally belonged to the farmers. Some farmers were really upset with the military coming in and taking over the land. They were compensated but we constantly had problems with obstacles and such being placed on the helo pads trying to prevent us from landing. One morning we arrived and found a bull on the pad. We hovered in and tried to scare him away, we eventually got close enough to where he was able to attack the front of the chopper and punch a hole in the clamshell door. Common sense overruled testosterone and we immediately backed off. We eventually landed elsewhere and had the crew trucked in. We wrote the damage up in the forms as "Gored By Bull" Hey Guys....that's no bull!!! We got all kinds of attention when we got back to base. We also found out later the bull was tethered to a stake right in the middle of the pad, he couldn't move if he wanted to. To my knowledge no action was ever taken against the farmer. (Jerry Bucknall)