Cowboys are being called to lasso a herd of wild cattle that are frightening – and potentially threatening – visitors at a Southern California park.
"It's a very tricky thing to deal with," said Kelly Elliot, superintendent at Chino Hills State Park.
With a limited budget to solve the problem, the park is now reaching out to cowboys who are willing to wrangle the wild cattle for free.
Visitors have posted sightings and photos of the feral cows on the park’s Facebook. Several said they have had close calls with a wild bull, including hiker Ed Loritz.
"He was staring at me and he stared me down," Loritz said. "He had a look in his eye that he wanted to get a piece of me."
Mountain biker Rob Moore saw several wild cows on Wednesday, about 4 miles into his trail at the same spot where other visitors reported sightings.
"They were upsetting a lot of people in the park. The bull especially was scaring a lot of riders, afraid they were going to get charged," Moore said.
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The 14,000-acre park at the intersection of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties is in a region with a long history of cattle grazing.
Some of the bovines knock down fences to get to greener pastures, but others were bred in the park and are wild.
"Ones that have never been handled by humans are a little more aggressive," Elliot said.
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