ok well i recently got a hunting lease in clay county..its a great property. 300 acres half hard woods, half mesquite, 1 mile of river frontage. well when i checked it out..there wasnt to many cows, now there seems to be quite a few of them. my question is, how will this effect the hunting?

Get a good relationship with the landowner, first and foremost. He's leasing it to you to hunt, but cattle may be his main source of income. Decide where you're going to hunt and/or put up feeders. Ask the landowner if there's a way during hunting season to keep the cows on the other side of the place. You'll probably want to put a fence or panels around the feeders so the deer can jump in to eat, but the cows stay out.

Hooper21 is right, you will need fence around your feeders. I have seen cows jump hog panel. Go with regular 52 inch cattle panels. The cows may try to push the panel down, if that's the case try using 2 X 4's instead of wire between the T posts or whatever supports you use. Wire will just cause a deer to get caught. Outside of that cows don't compete much with deer for food and their feet break up the ground increasing your likely hood of forbs for the deer to eat. Good luck with it.

He probley will pull them closer to hunting season, i bet he is just taking advantage of the rain

yeah..i should have asked him before i leased it if they were ganna be there during deer season..

I have shot a deer between cows while they rubbing on my blind. I had more cows invade my feeder when I had a pen. I took my pen down last year and put t-posts on the legs and never saw a cow within a few hundred yards of it. They didn't bother us at all last year. I watched deer at the feeder and a bobcat hunting a tree line while the cows stayed way out. I just depends on the place and where they like to eat. With all the rain this year and browse, they should not bother you. But every place is different.

lots of hunters will disagree with me but I feel that the cows dont hurt the hunting at all. I have watched lots of deer in the same pasture as cows and have also shot deer while cows were present. I have been in my blind when the guy with the grass lease came in to feed the cows and watched the deer move into the cover only to come back out as soon as he left. The deer are not afraid of the normal. It is the un normal that spooks them. Like the guy that shows up on an unregular schedule to walk in the dark to the box sitting along a tree row. Like txduckman said I also have not had a fence around my feeders and have no problem with the cows. I did have bad pig probs this year so I bought six hog panals and put them around my feeder using t-posts. For two years in the early 90's I hunted a 1300 acre place with lots(about 150) of yearling cattle and we could not keep them off the feeders fence or no fence. That is the only place I ever really had a problem with the cows. When my daughter was twelve (now 18) she shot her first and only buck and we had cows all over us. We had to wait about 10 minutes before she could ever get a clear shot. So in my opinion cows wont hurt your hunting.

Cows are not a problem unless a big one learns how to lick the wheel on your corn slinger. A varmint cage will fix that problem.

After fighting with cows using feeder pens and every other method to keep them out this is what works for us. put the feeder high enough that they can't reach the spinner plate and stake the legs with T posts..Cows wont pick up much off the ground but as stated before they will stand and lick a spinner plate all day..They will destroy a varmint cage to get to it as well.. We use cages still for coons and squirrels but since we raised the height we have had no cow issues.. Steve

I disagree, when cows are present I have always seen less deer. Put good feeder pens up or they will knock over your feeders. Cattle panels are the fastest and work well, but make sure you put enough up to make the pen big. I suggest 10 panels at minimum and more is better. If you use barb wire anchor the corner posts or the cows will break it. Also make barb wire very tight otherwise the cows will get in. The panels are more expensive but you can put them up in less than thirty minutes and move them if you want to change feeder locations.

I lease a place that is covered with cows.. We have 10 feeders cover 2 and a quarter sections. in the last 2 years that we have leased the place there has been a minimum of 20 cows 15 calves on the place. I have never built a feed pen but one guy on the lease did..every time i hunted this feed pen i had to watch cows standing around it and now since he has left i am going to have to go in and tear out t posts and barbed wire from the set up..the cows are all in it and its a hazard. of the 10 feeders one has been torn up by cows and it was in a frequent bedding and feeding area...i suggest taking hog panel and cutting out shapes to fit and to wire around your feeder legs up around the barrel..if you dont like that , try tree limbs..i cut several mesquite limb stays that were large enough to hold a cow out and wired them to the legs around the timer also...just remember that you will also need to put some underneath because a cow will bump the bottom of a feeder until all the corn comes out. i have watched the cows try and eat my corn off the ground and very few will do it..they will usually try to do so and then meander on. having been around cows all my life i will tell you also that they prefer things that they can pick up with their teeth and corn is tough for them to get unless it is piled up well...try going without a pen..i think you will see more deer...oh yeah i forgot..the smallest buck i have killed in the last 2 years was a 18 inch 3 yr old 8 point..they dont mind the cows..there is also a yearling hog that lives with the cows..got some really nice trail cam pics of that one

I only have 50 acres and no cows, but when my neighbors cows get out and start hitting my food plots and feeder i dont see any deer at all! When he puts em back in his fence the deer come back so i pretty sure the cows will effect your hunting at least a little.

Now all this is JMO, but man cows r some good eating! not hard to track, easy to stalk, and a lot more meat than deer or hogs!!

Some places cattle can cause the deer to move out, others not so much. Kind of depends but they will eat your food plots to the ground and lick up any corn they can under your feeders. Build some feeder pens. The cattle are tall in relation to your feeder so they can rub on your motor & timer causing a problem or break it.

On the other hand, you can use the cattle to hunt with and give you cover from the deer. The deer usually don't pay much attention to the cattle, so you can move in about about them and not get detected.

Ya just need one of these.

Here's what I know about the cows on my lease. I've got 2 feeders without fence and one with.The feeders without a fence do have cows visiting them and yes they mess them up somewhat but I seam to see more deer at those than at the one with a fence. When the cows start to move in on the feeder I've watched the deer move out of their way but not leave the area. The cows usually don't stick around for too long. With that being said I've watched the pigs come in and the deer will completely vacate the area.

This cow figured out how to knock the spinner to the side and get all the corn.




Then he called all his buddies to the dinner table. Didn't take them long to finish it all off.

A cow is cheaper to kill than a deer and a heck of alot better eatin'!

If ya make an 8 or 10 panel pen using the 52 inch cattle panels with something like a 2 X 4 running along the top cows won't get in. If you use wire the odds are sooner or later a deer will get hung up. The 2 X 4 keeps the stupid cows from pushing down on your panels with their necks. Try it, it works.