The Hunt for the Golden Bulls will start on March 1, 2025.

Follow us on social Media for the most up to date information and clues.

Hello Golden Bull Hunters! Are you ready for the 2025 Hunt? We have all new riddles, puzzles, history, and locations for you to solve. We have worked to create puzzles of varying difficulty and want to give everyone a chance to feel they can win free burgers for a year.* Here are some key tips, and pointers as you get ready for the 2025 hunt.

As big fans of Willy Wonka, the original movie with Gene Wilder, we thought we’d have our own golden tickets, err bulls that is.  We hide five golden bulls (okay they are brass, we couldn’t afford solid gold) at different times throughout the month in and around Durham. Five lucky winners who found a bull, win a free meal each week for a year*.  How do you find a bull?Throughout March, we reveal clues here on our website and in social media regarding where to find a Golden Bull.  If you find one, follow the directions below to claim your prize.  Full details in the “fine print” below.  Let the hunt begin!

Ground Rules for the Hunt: Please do not destroy any personal property.  No bull will be hidden in a location which requires going inside a non-public space.  No bull will be buried or sealed inside anything.  Nothing will need to be damaged, broken, taken apart, busted, cracked, or dismantled.  The bull will always be accessible 24/7 once it is hidden. Please respect any and all people, businesses, or property while you search.  Thank you and good luck! Teams are welcome, but there can only be one winner on the team.

Because we want everyone to have an opportunity to hunt for at least one Golden Bull, we pick different types of riddles with different days and dates to be inclusive of as many hunters as possible. With that in mind, here is some information to help you plan and strategize.

*****Also, and WE CAN'T STRESS THIS ENOUGH***** there are no known photos of the Golden Bull. It is essential to keep it this way! Therefore, no photos or social postings of any kind will be accepted. Breaking this rule will be grounds for immediate disqualification and a lifetime ban on future Golden Bull Hunts.


​I found a Golden Bull, What do I do?
  1. call BCBB and talk to a manager (919) 680-2333
  2. arrange a time to bring in your golden bull and claim victory
  3. bring your photo ID and be ready for a photo to go on the wall
  4. within 24 hours email a description of how you found the bull (moocow[at]bullcityburgerandbrewery[dot]com)
  5. please do not send a photo of the bull or take photos of you with the bull. You may be disqualified if you take or post any photos of the bull.
*The contest begins March 1st and ends when all bulls are found. The first free burger day for winners is April 1st or the first day in April BCBB is open. The last day of free burgers is March 31 the following year. Must be 18 years or older to claim a prize. IDs will be checked. Bring your ID. One Golden Bull winner per person and per family. If you find a Golden Bull redeem it in person at Bull City Burger and Brewery during regular business hours. Please call us to let us know you are coming in at 919-680-2333. Winners receive one hamburger or veggie burger per week with one specialty $1.25 add-on topping, one regular dirty fry order and one non-alcohol beverage of choice. No substitutions for specialty burgers or special features. Can’t be used toward a specialty burger. Cannot be used toward a hotdog. No alcohol included. A week is defined as any hours BCBB is open for business Sunday through Saturday. BCBB cannot be held accountable for acts of God, weather, and business interruptions during any week. Only one free burger meal can be claimed per week. Cannot be used online.  Multiple burgers cannot be saved up for redemption in one week. Only the person claiming the Golden Bull can receive the free burger each week. No family members, spouses, former spouses, children, cousins (kissing or otherwise) can claim your prize. Winners consent to the use of their names and photos or likeness by BCBB to promote the contest on the website, in the restaurant and in print. Again, we will check your ID. No employee of BCBB or Bull City Solera or Pie Pan Inc. can win. No employee of a business we partner with for the Golden Bull can win. One winner per family please. No repeat winners. No scammers, no loophole finders, no twisters of the rules. It’s free burgers for about a year, that’s pretty good. That’s our fine print. Approximate value is over $1,000.00 USD
“I, the undersigned, shall forfeit all rights, privileges, and licenses herein and herein contained, et cetera, et cetera... Fax mentis incendium gloria cultum, et cetera, et cetera... Memo bis punitor delicatum!” - Willy Wonka
Bull #1 - Hunt Begins on Saturday March 1, 2025
​This is planned as a 1 day hunt. It begins at BCBB 11:11 AM. Ask for the cipher. Your code is BCBB.
​
Here is your first clue. Decipher this: 
TKWSVHCZIHCLKWG, XKZ FLFWC NLW XBC. SK CK H WBN NKQBWG TIKCALWS GCKVB KW QHLW
Sunday 3/2 - hint
Here is the sequence to solving this bull.

1. Go to BCBBB get a cipher. The clue to using the cipher is BCBB. Use that cipher to solve this code:
TKWSVHCZIHCLKWG, XKZ FLFWC NLW XBC. SK CK H WBN NKQBWG TIKCALWS GCKVB KW QHLW

2. Once solved it will lead you to clue #2 which is a code and well known. Solve this and it will take you to a third location.

3. At the third location is a new code. It requires a cipher. You will need to figure out where that cipher is located. Decoding that message gives you a clue to the final location of the golden bull

Get that bull!
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Golden Bull #1 found by Devon S. Here's how he did it:

I was so excited to hunt for the Golden Bull again this year, hoping that I would finally be able to claim a victory after missing out narrowly for 2 years straight; I was much dismayed to find out the first hunt would be on the morning of a long-planned golf trip! My partner started the hunt alone at BCBB and I did my best to assist via text between holes, but we were stumped with just the sheet of letters and clue “BCBB.” We decided to take a break, assuming someone would find it in the first hour or two as usual.

At 7pm, we heard that the bull is still out there! We got back to work but didn’t make any progress until I decided to check the website in case we missed anything. Sure enough, I found a scrambled code there, but still didn’t know how the key factored in. As an avid escape room goer and fan of all sorts of puzzles, my intuition was to crack the code as if it were a substitution cipher. After about 15 minutes of trial and error we had it figured out and headed to our first stop, a new women's clothing store on main called Rose and Lee. (Coincidentally, my partner stopped here earlier after she picked up the first clue, but never saw the clue there!). We got there around 9pm and found the second clue right away, recognized Dash from The Incredibles, and figured it must be Morse Code. 

Solving this sent us to Anjappar where there was another puzzle I was familiar with, a Pig Pen cipher. We cracked that using a traditional Pig Pen key online but it only led to garbled letters. We solved the message below with the first key and headed back to BCBB to get the second key. We decided to grab a drink at Oak House to ponder all of the clues, but the fortune teller had us stumped. We focused back on the Pig Pen code, and using the same kind of brute force trial and error, we eventually landed on a phrase that worked: "Find the green honeycomb."

Immediately we knew where to go, as in the weeks leading up to the hunt every year I've made a list of all new Durham businesses in case they are used in the hunts. Ment Beverage Co. sprung to mind as it's owned by Honeygirl Meadery so we quickly looked up their logo and sure enough, green! We headed over to ATC, ran down the walkway, and found it right away hiding on top of their sign! What a relief! 
Bull #2 - Hunt begins on Friday, March 7, 2025
​This is planned as a multi-day hunt

Clue #1:
Clue #2:
Golden Bull #2 found by Becky F. Here's how she did it:
This story actually starts in 1972, when my late parents first moved to Durham. Here in the Bull City in the late 80s, they had me and my brother. And three decades after that, I’ve relished in the Bull City Burger Golden Bull Hunt every year. A group of us has been working together for *years* on this hunt (shoutouts to Nida, Towqir, Leah, Garrett, and Jeremy). We’ve come SO close a few times now, but this year we knew we had to find the bull, once and for all. When I saw this round’s clues were maps, I immediately reached out to my brother, who has a degree in urban planning, and now lives in Canada. He was incredibly helpful, orienting each map north and south, and helping me see landmark streets (Swift Ave, for example) even when I didn’t believe him. Then I started on a PowerPoint where I layered each clue map over a screenshot of a current Google maps image of this area of Durham- which is right by where I live. I’d then video that progress of the map layers and send it to my Great Bull Hunt group chat. I felt like a complete crazy person this weekend as I played with map layer transparencies, coloring each circle differently so we could see the overlap more clearly. The group was theorizing different places that would be cool to hide the bull on this side of town, and one of the team members suggested the Duke Arts Annex even before the 4th clue dropped. I was in a conference call refreshing my phone waiting for the 4th map to load this morning. Then when it did, my brother helped orient the map via text, I layered it onto my PowerPoint map, and I sent a screen shot to the group chat— and I started walking outside in the direction where all the circles overlapped. The group chat again thought that the Duke Arts Annex made the most sense. When I got close, I started to jog, as I saw a car with a couple driving by…we eyed each other. We knew where we were all headed. When I got to the Duke Arts Annex, there were a handful of people carefully looking around. As I walked by one of the satellites, a woman stopped me and said: “If I saw the golden bull right now, but I didn’t want to claim it, would you want it?” She nodded her head just barely to my right a few inches from where I was standing, on a metal beam holding up a satellite. There was the golden bull. She told me to take it, and she just wanted to show it to her wife, who was searching on another side of the building. This beautiful couple said they were moving away from Durham, they didn’t want their names and photos on the internet, AND they’re vegetarians, so they actually didn’t want the burger prize. But when they drove by me a couple minutes before walking/jogging, they knew I was just as committed as they were— they were the ones I’d eyed!!! Then we hugged. They both touched the bull and giggled about having found it. I put the bull in my pocket, and the rest is history. PS one of the maps was from 1972, the same year my late parents came to The Bull City, and this week is my late father’s death anniversary, so I feel like it’s all a sign that they wanted to give me some love this week ​
Clue #3:
Clue #4 (Final Clue):
Bull #3 - Hunt begins on Sunday, March 16, 2025
​This is planned as a 1 day hunt
Bull #4 - Hunt begins on Saturday, March 22, 2025
This is planned as a multi-day hunt
Bull #5 - Hunt begins on Saturday, March 29, 2025
​The final hunt, planned as a single day hunt