Marksman unit | Gwulo: Old Hong Kong

Marksman unit

Marksman unit

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In the 1970's HK purchased live cattle abroad and it was shipped in and off loaded by floating lighter from ship to shore. These were cows for meat. Illegal were the very big bulls with full horns that could be smuggled in and used for breeding.  One dark rainy night, a shipment was being off loaded and the cattle were frightened by the storm. One jumped overboard and instead of swimming to the Kowloon shore, made its way into the mouth of one of the big storm drains from Kowloon City and went inside. It wasn't a cow but a very large, fully horned, very mad bull. The lighter crew called the police about the escape but failed to tell them about the identity of the escaper. A police SDU unit went into the storm drain with shotguns and pistols after the escaped cow.  THE SCENE. Dark-Inside a large dia. storm drain. Rushing water and other unknown noises. Dark cut by torch beams and mist rising off the storm water, coming to a pipe junction with noises coming from one direction but which one with all the noise mixed together. Suddenly a huge rush and a black shape the size of a single decker bus with horns ploughing thro the police, injuring some enough for hospital, a shot gun blast which makes the bull even more mad/bad and another rush back thro police officers and into the pipes. Would you go after it? The MU were called together with ballistics officer Al Chimino (it was going to be a police open fire situation) and the Gov't vet as it was an animal. WHAT to do.. The boss Bill Duncanson consulted the storm pipe plan and we moved to Kowloon City about the area of Forfar Road. Raising the man hole covers, small lighted, flaming boats were dropped into the water at selected locations and the smoke and flames flowed downstream and pushed with it the bull. At the main junction of the various pipes we waited looking down into the pipe and the bull, quite angry and mad appeared, looked up and the vet now face to face with the true nature of the mad bull (instead of the cow) authorised its shooting due to it being too dangerous to get near it in the confined space. One shot  .223 base of the skull. The power of the bullet was total and the bull died. The vet still wasn't happy to examin it there and then and ordered 3 more rounds to be put into the beast to make sure it was dead before he would climb down to check it. Later that morning the press found out about the story as they recovered the carcass and reported that the police (MU) had to shoot the animal 4 times and this of course  led to great ribbing from the SDU Fan-Ling mob that the MU could shoot straight. But this is the true story. The first shot shattered the skull of the beast together with 14" of spine and the downwards trajectory took the bullet blast into the chest for the heart and lungs. Instant.