It was 3:30 in the afternoon and I was at work when Karen sent me a text message saying she was on a Derbyshire Cave Rescue Organisation "shout" with a calf fallen down a mine shaft in a field near Winster and Elton. I left work a half an hour later as usual and after arriving home fed the cat then grabbed my gear and drove the couple of miles or so to where there were several cars parked in the road-side. I could see Karen and some others in the field and walked over to join them. There was a whole about a metre and a three-quarters wide in the field with an aluminium ladder across it. This was to allow someone to lay on the ladder and see down the hole. Apparently after the farmer discovered the hole and the calf down it that morning, he called the Fire Rescue service and RSPCA but the Firemen decided they weren't able to get down the hole to the calf and then DCRO were asked to assist. By the time I had got there, the Firemen had gone.
At that time we were waiting for Police with fire-arms to arrive in order to shoot the calf and put it out of its misery as it was about 15 metres down and almost certainly injured. You couldn't see much of the calf down the hole but as Steve was shining a powerful light down the hole, the calf poked its head out from underneath the projecting shelf it was under and mooed. So, there was no way the Police marksman could get a clean shot.
The problem was that there was a lot of old metallic rubbish and large rocks on one side of the hole which was undercut and would almost certainly fall down the hole if disturbed. It was suggested that maybe we could dig out a platform and pull the rubbish and rocks from the hole. Bill asked me and another Team Member who had our caving gear to get changed in case we were needed and we started digging out the rocks and move them onto the platform. In the meantime, a JCB arrived driven by someone living locally and under Terry's instruction the platform was levelled and four long scaffold tubes were stuck into the soil on the far side of the hole by pushing them with the JCB's bucket and then these were covered with wooden pallets and sheeting so that the soil and rubbish wouldn't fall down the hole. Then soil was scraped back from the hole at 45 degrees. By now it was dark and the Police provided flood lighting. Once the loose rocks and soil was removed, the arm of the JCB was left across the hole with the bucket laying on the opposite side. We attached a large nylon sling the the arm and a length of rope after removing the sheeting and pallets from the hole and Keith J. abseiled down a short way to have a look at the sides of the hole and remove small, loose rocks into a tackle bag which I had lowered down on a rope. Once this was done, he continued to the bottom and reported that there was no sign of a calf! It turned out that it had been covered by some of the soil which had fallen down the hole but could still be heard mooing every now and then. Keith dug out the calf's head and reported that there was no safe way of getting the injured calf to the surface. After conferring with the RSPCA vet the Team Doctor, abseiled down and administered a sedative and put the calf down using a captive bolt device.
After Keith and the Doctor returned to the surface, the pallets and sheeting were replaced in order to make the hole safe, the equipment was put back in the Cave Rescue Vehicle and we all headed for home just before midnight.
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