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Cattle on lease? #5788151 06/14/15 01:27 PM
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birdman99 Offline OP
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I just secured a lease....500 acres, but it has some cattle on it. What are your experiences with deer population on land with cattle?

Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5788157 06/14/15 01:37 PM
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A lot depends on the amount of cattle. If it is stocked correctly then no problem....over stocked then it could be a problem. Is the LO running cattle or is he leasing the grazing?


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Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5788170 06/14/15 01:53 PM
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With all the rain we've had unless it gets hot and dries everything up you shouldn't have problems with them.

My experience has been: look around at the browse and grass. If it's plentiful they should leave your feeders be.

If not, they can be a problem. Especially those ornry bulls. I would put up a good pen around them with hog panels anyway just to play it safe.


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Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5788172 06/14/15 01:54 PM
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Usually doesn't affect the deer population but will require you to fence off your feeders.

Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: billybob] #5788181 06/14/15 02:04 PM
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moderate grazing can actually help the property - little bit of a hassle in that gates have to be closed, fenced off feeders, etc. but otherwise little impact


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Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5788208 06/14/15 02:41 PM
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There's a couple hundred head on our lease. Never been a real issue. Good deer population. Like it was said above, closing multiple gates, particularly at night can be a hassle.



Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5788211 06/14/15 02:42 PM
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Overgrazing can hurt you long term. Not so much from the hunting standpoint but more of fawn survival. I am battling this issue now with the drought in my area. I have not had any cattle for a while now and the few does that live on my place have had good fawn survival. The neighboring ranches graze very hard and fawn numbers are almost nothing. I think those does that come onto my place have only raised 3 fawns in the past 2 years. Will cause gaps in the age structure and limited mature buck numbers in the future years. Hoping this year will be better for fawn survival.


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Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5788241 06/14/15 03:06 PM
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I've never had great luck hunting properties with cattle and there always "seemed" to be fewer deer. The only exception would be properties where the cattle is rotated to another property or pasture before the season. It took some time for the place to "settle down" but the deer always seemed to come back eventually.


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Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5788242 06/14/15 03:06 PM
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Depends on if the deer can get away from them. Does generally won't have a prob with them, but bucks tend to shy away outside of the rut activities.

Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: kry226] #5788278 06/14/15 03:31 PM
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Originally Posted By: kry226
I've never had great luck hunting properties with cattle and there always "seemed" to be fewer deer. The only exception would be properties where the cattle is rotated to another property or pasture before the season. It took some time for the place to "settle down" but the deer always seemed to come back eventually.


Same, I was on a lease and the LO put free range cattle on it. I packed up my stuff and left.

If the cattle are fenced off and you hunt another area I think it is fine, but free range cattle are a head ache.

Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5788339 06/14/15 04:12 PM
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Wow, thanks for all the great input guys.

22 head of cattle per 500 acres. Free range. With all the rains, there is a ton of grass.

Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5788363 06/14/15 04:25 PM
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I seem to have more luck not fencing my feeders where there is cattle make sure you stake down your feeders. Now with that said I don't use the 99 dollar feeders. I use 1 1/2 legs or 2' pipe for feeder legs. if you use a slide together cheap feeder hogs and cows will destroy them.


Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5788388 06/14/15 04:45 PM
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I put up a barbed wire fence around my feeder. Then I bought a solar powered fence charger and wired it to the top strand. Deer jumped fence, hogs went under fence, cows touched top strand and decided corn was not on the menu.


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Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5788433 06/14/15 05:25 PM
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Originally Posted By: birdman99


22 head of cattle per 500 acres. FREE RANGE.



Not sure this is going to be a good deal. I would be leery of a land owner who has been taken in by this "free range" propaganda. Probably some liberal tree-hugging demonacrat. No telling what kind of nonsense he might come up with next!


Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5788455 06/14/15 05:50 PM
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They will definitely tear up a cheap feeder.

I had to run them off a few times last year but they were not too bad. The main headache was when the rancher would come through dragging his feeder trailer and making tons of racket. I think one day he came by like 5 or 6 times trying to get them rounded up. Luckily I had already shot my buck for the season so I wasn't too upset grin The rancher is super nice though and is the LO's nephew.

Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: aeb] #5788484 06/14/15 06:15 PM
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Originally Posted By: aeb
Originally Posted By: birdman99


22 head of cattle per 500 acres. FREE RANGE.



Not sure this is going to be a good deal. I would be leery of a land owner who has been taken in by this "free range" propaganda. Probably some liberal tree-hugging demonacrat. No telling what kind of nonsense he might come up with next!

I am confused with the term "free range cattle". Does that mean they are on a LF property and they are known jumpers?

Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: don k] #5788525 06/14/15 06:38 PM
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Originally Posted By: don k


I am confused with the term "free range cattle".


So am I roflmao


Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5788537 06/14/15 06:50 PM
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The last place we hunted had probably 25-40 head on about 350 acres and we saw 10-15 deer every hunt.



Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5788736 06/14/15 09:20 PM
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As many have said, if the rancher doesn't over graze, it has little effect on the deer (sometimes a positive effect). The main issue I have is what the cattle do to your equipment....blinds, stands, feeders, cabin,etc. Plus, you never know when 20 cattle on 500 acres turns to 125 cattle on the same spot. With everything else equal, I would always go for the lease with no cattle.

Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5788862 06/14/15 10:56 PM
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Great info guys. I will definitely stock up on good quality feeders.

Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5788885 06/14/15 11:12 PM
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dont seem to bother deer. cows knock over feeders if not fenced seems like

Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5789074 06/15/15 12:52 AM
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As a hunter, they don't seem to bother the deer, turkeys, ducks or pigs that come to the feeders.
A few years ago during the draught it was different....

As a land owner and rancher, those 500 pound calves are worth 1200-1500 EACH right now.
It doesn't take many of them to offset the lease money.

As for feeders, you can fence them if you want but it better be solid panels or electric or the calves will walk right thru it like it's not even there.
Don't waste your time with the multisection feeder legs as a cow rubbing on the legs can take them apart faster than you can put them together.
Once the feeder is on the ground, it's party time!!!
Get some 1 1/4" galvanized conduit, the threaded kind, not the thinwall stuff.
Plastic barrels are so much fun for the cattle to spread the legs and drop your corn on the ground.
The best way I have found to secure the legs it to raise the feeder and then drive a TPost right along the feeder leg at the same angle as the leg, drive it a little deeper than normal and tie the leg to the TPost in 2 or 3 places where the TPost runs along the feeder leg.

Cattle usually aren't trying to get the corn but rubbing on the inside of the feeder leg.
If you drive your TPost in the ground at a right angle to the feeder leg, the cattle get on the inside of the leg and while rubbing on it, they push the post right out of the ground, then spread the legs of your feeder until it's on the ground.

I've lost a few feeders before I figured out how to put the TPost in correctly.
Haven't had one on the ground in three seasons since I figured this out.
As of now, only one of my feeders has a fence around it but it's been there a long time - before I figured out how to stake them down.


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Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5789082 06/15/15 12:59 AM
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^very informative on the correct way to set up tpost with a feeder



Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5789087 06/15/15 01:03 AM
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a few years ago in the drought we had a place in Crockett and the cows over run our hog panels and destroyed our feeders several times, pain in the a...

Obviously they were more hungry than normal because of the lack of grass

Re: Cattle on lease? [Re: birdman99] #5789604 06/15/15 02:30 PM
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Cattle can be a real pain when it comes to equipment. We have learned the hard way that they can be real good at wrecking equipment if not properly protected. My advice:either go with feed pens, or plan to invest in some quality ground-fill (with a full heavy cage around control unit) or winch-up style feeders. These hold up better to cattle. If you do go with "tripod-style" leg feeders, drive T-posts as explained by Vern above. Also use a leg bracket with a "set bolt" at the top that rigidly attaches the leg to the feeder body. These will hold up better than the "slip-in" style.

And, if you have any notions of feeding protein, feed pens are a must.

34" tall works for most well-fed cows. But, all it takes is for one to stumble into the pen and pretty soon you have the whole herd in there wrecking shop. We have gone to 46" tall pens after Opening Day was ruined last year due to the cows.

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