Rodeo bull enjoys brief taste of freedom

A bull broke loose from the Blue Moon Rodeo on Thursday night near Columbia Falls. 

LaVonna Bowers, who has photographed the rodeo for about 10 years, said she’d never seen anything like this happen at the rodeo. 

“I’m sitting on a far end, in a strategic spot, and this bull got rid of his guy real quick,” Bowers said. “He started coming for the back fence and went charging to a gate and banged it open. The next one was not closed, and he was off.

“It’s not like it isn’t secured or anything. It was mind-boggling to see it.”

During rodeo events, there are two or three outriders on horseback at all times in case anything happens. Bowers said that two outriders chased the bull into the back pasture.

Within about an hour of the escape, the outriders roped the bull in a nearby hayfield and loaded him into a trailer. 

Rodeo producer Vance Brash said that he had some fence to fix but that was the extent of the damage. 

“He didn’t do any harm,” Bowers said. “The only thing it did is stirred all of the horses up. They were jumping around like cats on hot tin roofs. It just startled everybody.”