How We Got The Story: How We Got The Story: Tracking down a tracker who captured a bull on the loose in Barrington Hills

It is no bull to say that stories about animals on the loose draw the eyeballs of newspaper readers. The public is naturally concerned for its safety when, say, a coyote is reported roaming a residential area. But readers are especially captivated when the animal is one rarely seen in their area, such as a bear or alligator.

So when Barrington Hills sent the alert that a bull had breached its boundaries and was wandering somewhere in the area, Daily Herald reporters followed efforts to capture the animal.

After the bull had been missing nearly a week, my colleague Eric Peterson reported that Wesley Bush of 2B Wild Cattle Catching Services, which had been hired by the owner, had located and wrangled the 1,600-pound bull.

But there was still a lot more to report - including the fascinating details behind the capture and the story of the real-life cowboy who rode to the rescue. Thus, during the Tuesday morning editors' news meeting, I was roped in, so to speak, to advance the story further.

I immediately took the bull by the horns (something the missing animal, by the way, did not have) and, after receiving contact information from my editor, Chuck Keeshan, reached out to the cowboy, Wesley Bush, leaving voicemail and email messages and sending a query to his company's Facebook page,

To my delight, I found that he hailed from Morrison, Illinois, near the Iowa border. My college buddy at the University of Illinois, Sam Huber, a one-time fellow lounge lizard at Illini Tower, had been raised in Morrison. Sam, who now resides a short walk from Wrigley Field, used to call it "Tiny Town." Being a Chicago boy, I would enjoy his references to growing up in this small community.

While waiting for Bush's response, I used the time to research the story. My colleague Susan Sarkauskas pointed me to a previous article about Bush's helping locate missing calves in Maple Park in July. I also used my newspapers.com account to look up his history, finding some interesting, if irrelevant, information that he had been recognized as an exhibitor of junior agricultural products at the Whiteside County Fair in 1996.

I also contacted Barrington Hills to get more information about the capture. Barrington Hills provided information about the bull's owner and how the owner faced an administrative adjudication hearing as a result of the bull leaving its pen.

Bush returned my call, and we had a wide-ranging conversation, during which he shared not only the events in Barrington Hills, but how he developed his roping and riding skills as a youth and eventually took over the cattle-catching business of Chet Peugh, the man who accompanied him to Barrington Hills to help catch the bull.

He also shared photos of the two at work in Barrington Hills. After a few follow-up calls to check facts, the story was tied up and ready for print.