In areas where the nearest trauma hospital is some distance away, helicopter rides for car accidents are pretty common. There is more or less a standard set of criteria for deciding who flies, and head trauma with Loss of consciousness would point towards a ride. That said, if you are fully competent (alert and oriented) you can refuse any medical treatment, but the first responders are going to strongly recommend you go to the trauma center ASAP -- the effects of head injuries can take awhile to show up, but then it is a bit late to decide maybe you should have gone for the ride after all.
I hope they found the cow quickly -- I can't imagine it wasn't badly injured at least in the legs, and hate to think of it suffering. I don't mind steak and hamburger, but the process shouldn't be drawn out.
One dark morning I (as a fire department first responder) was called to an accident scene where a guy on a motorcycle hit a full grown cow (also black). I expected to find the guy in bad shape, if not dead. However, it was the cow that was dead, the bike was bent, and the rider, while having a few scrapes, refused treatment and transport and went home under his own power. Go figure.
When I first got to Texas I did some research on fencing laws, and was intrigued by the fence-in/fence out rules. When Texas started converting from open range to fenced farms and ranches (and automobiles), it was eventually worked out that each county had to decide by vote if they were going to be a "fence-in" county. In fence-out counties, live stock could roam and if you didn't want your neighbor's stock wandering onto your property you had to fence them out. If the county voted for "fence-in" then the owner of the livestock had to put up fences to keep stock from wandering. This affected the right-of-ways too -- in fence-out counties, it was generally driver beware. I had thought the only fence-out counties that might still exist would be in the far south and west, but I don't know. Guess you are going to find out.
Happy retirement, btw.
