A "pretty banged up" farmer and his dogs were airlifted to safety by a rescue helicopter after a bull attacked him.
The attack happened just before 8am Thursday on a farm at Puketitiri, west of Napier, after farmer Robert Pattullo went to check on 25 bulls with his four farm dogs.
He tied the dogs to a fence about 50 metres away from the herd to keep them at a distance from the bulls and not upset them.
As he approached the bulls on his quad bike one of them charged, knocked him and the quad bike over and continued to attack.
He said the bull "hunted me down", gored him into the ground, inflicting head and chest injuries, and wrecked his quad bike.
Although he lost his cellphone during the attack, Mr Pattullo set off a personal locater beacon and the Hawkes Bay Rescue Helicopter was sent to the area.
However, one of the bulls started acted aggressively towards the helicopter as the two paramedics went to treat Mr Pattullo.
He was quickly loaded into the helicopter but insisted the dogs be collected, afraid they would be killed by the bulls.
The paramedics untied the dogs from the fence and squeezed on board with them, Mr Patullo, the pilot and a flight-crew member.
The dogs were left at a nearby woolshed and Mr Patullo was flown to Hawke's Bay Regional Hospital for treatment. He was discharged that evening.
A trustee of the Hawkes Bay Rescue Helicopter Trust, he said he is grateful for the service and thankful he was wearing a helmet and had a locater beacon, as cellphone coverage was spotty.
"I was pretty badly banged up when they arrived [but] getting my farm working dogs in the helicopter exemplified the dedication of the crew.
"This is as bad as it gets, totally unexpected and random from a single bull in a mob that gets shifted regularly."
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