[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/raci...
[1]
He thought about it for a minute and said, "Well, I knew a farmer once who scratched their backs with a garden rake. They seemed to like it."
That put cow hide in context in a way other things didn't.
My dog use to roll her back on top of a tennis ball. Smart dog.
Very common in e.g. Sweden as far as I know. See for instance products by DeLaval [1].
[1] https://www.delaval.com/en-us/our-solutions/cow-comfort/cow-...
It's very funny throughout, but here's the buffalo being repeatedly shot with a rifle:
> I aimed and fired. “Bang-whump”, the bang from the rifle and the whump as the bullet struck the buffalo. He jerked a little, then simply stood there staring at me. “Bang-whump, bang-whump” as I fired two more rounds.
> Now he tossed his head and snorted, then started running toward us. Buffalo charge with their nose high, only lowering their head to use their horns on contact. I fired one more round at the charging animal, head on, simply pointing at him because he was so close, then turned and ran. We discovered later that the bullet had struck his shoulder, ricocheted off his scapula, and exited through the skin on his side. It certainly didn’t slow him down at all: I might as well have been shooting at a railroad locomotive.
So the following weekend he was in an aluminum jon-boat with an AK-47 waiting for it to surface (I swear he's not a redneck). When it did, he fired a round, hitting it in the skull. But that didn't kill it, so he emptied the magazine into it and that did it in.
He found the skull at low tide several months later after the crabs had picked it clean. The AK round had ricocheted off the bone, leaving a divot behind. They're tough creatures.