Lightning Strike on The Ranch

(This is a repeat of a post I published once before on an earlier website of mine.)
People who don’t fear lightning are few. Having spent a lifetime working outdoors, in the pasture and in the corral, I’ve witnessed many natural phenomena. Living in central Florida, lightning is one.

Below are a few pictures that document the lightning events on the ranch. They represent only about a third of these events. In the old days, not everyone carried a camera in their pocket as they do now.

Actually, I found these girls the next day. We had a thunderstorm the night before. Probably occurred some time in the 70’s.
I feel pretty confidant in saying that lightning storms are not nearly as bad today (2016) as they were back then.

This was a close one. We had a group of 40 two year old bulls in that pasture. We had just put out feed in the troughs and were driving away on the tractor when a lightning bolt struck dead center of the group of 40 eating feed. We may have been 25 yds away. As you can see, it is not that far from the feed trough to the barn where we were heading.
At the moment of the strike, about 20 bulls crashed to the ground. After a minute or two of struggles, all the bulls got up except for 4or 5. Those 4 or 5 were stone cold dead.

lightning12-1 — Same dead bulls, different angle

In spite of the loss, we decided to make the most of the situation and made steaks out of one of the bulls.

I think that I dragged these two animals to the edge of our old garbage dump with the intention of pushing them in and covering them up. I later changed my mind and disposed of them in another way.
In those days we did not have the equipment to dig a hole and bury the animals quickly. Have you ever tried to shovel dig a hole for a thousand pound cow?

In 2009 we had the worst strike of all. We lost about 15 head, both cows and calves.
We had a typical summer storm that evening and I found them in the morning. They were probably standing in a tight group, waiting out the storm.