Our first roundup: a learning experience

The typical view of the roundup from my body camera.  I'll try using a different perspective next year.

 Our first bison roundup didn't go as well as I had hoped, but we did learn a lot about what we need to change to make things work better the next time.  Although I did wear a body camera during the roundup most of the footage from that angle (chest height) doesn't show you much of what was going on and the few seconds of decent footage have audio of me cussing, which I'd rather not include here.  Consequently I don't have any exciting videos or photographs for this year, but maybe I'll try using some sort of elevated camera next year.
We identified several issues that need work, but our main problem this year was the psychological effect the gateway leading from the main holding pen to the crowding pen had on the bison.  They did not like that gateway.  Each time we got the herd moving in that direction they would stop at the gateway and turn around.  Even when I went into the main holding pen with a freshly opened bag of sweet feed and then walked with the bag into the crowding pen and poured some of it into a trough in the crowding pen the bison would only walk up to the gate way and then turn back.

Eventually, after hours of trying different things, the three biggest bulls entered the crowding pen to eat the sweet feed.  Once they were in the crowding pen it wasn't that hard to get them down the ally and into the chute.  Unfortunately when the first bull had entered the chute I mistakenly started closing the headgate too early and he decided to come to a stop just short of the gate and refused to move forward. I then decided to attempt to use the push bar to get him to move forward. On my first attempt with the push bar the bull kicked the bar with his hind leg so hard that it came flying out of the side of the chute. On the second attempt I was ready for it and managed to keep hold of the bar when he kicked it. This time, although the push bar stayed in place, the force of his kick caused the emergency side exit on the chute to swing open and he escaped. Subsequent examination of the emergency side exit revealed that a pin holding tension on the exit latch spring was broken and needed to be replaced.
At this point we decided that the best thing for us to do was to end this roundup.  The chute needed fixing, it was getting late in the day, and we'd learned what needed to be changed in the corral.  There was no point in putting the bison through any additional confusion until I'd fixed the issues with the corral. Hopefully things will go better next time.