Cows and Your Duck Ponds

I have heard people say they scare ducks off and people say cows do not bother ducks....what is your take?

From my experience ducks seem skittish and do not want to commit when they can see cattle around the pond I hunt.

Thoughts?

I'm not sure about cattle, but a herd of jackasses will flare dux every time.

Actually I've hunted around cattle quite a bit. Never had a problem with them... other than the craters they leave along the shoreline. Not fun when picking up dekes.

Buddy yesterday was telling me 2 cows followed him as he was walking up to a tank to check it. 14 gadwall never even gave him a second look and he got up to about 20 yards from them. might be changing our tactics come second split!

Could be a strong addition to your blind set up.

Apparently there is a market for it:

haha ZachW a few years ago you'd be onto somethin!

Ducks don't flare over cattle. Their hooves are killer on duck food though. The SC lakes I have got a lot of cattle around them. No problems at all. Where we plant and flood, we keep the cattle out 6 months of the year.

The only problems I have with cows are:

1)They eat damn near everything.
2) Cow holes.


I've seen a duck land on a cow's back.

Used to use something similar to sneak on snow goose feeds in NoDak. We just used a plywood cut out in the shape of a cow and some paint. Worked awesome for sneaking up to em & when you dropped your shied and let the Saigas bark...quite the sight to see

So you have hunted with Dave Speer, Garrett and Hogman too?

We have had great success using the real geese cow silhouette. I was amazed how well it worked the first couple times we used it!

The cow silhouettes would be great for sneaking up on snows and skillet shootin' em. Wait, does that ring a bell as a thing last year or two or did I just imagine that?

In the book, A Hundred Years of Texas Waterfowl Hunting, it talks about training cows to slowly walk up to ponds while hunters followed behind so they could jump shoot ducks and geese.

Well...sounds like we've finally found a use for a cow besides eating them.

I love to eat them but I sure hate to hunt around them...they are stupid and will mess with you. Don't even think about trying to build a blind where they are...there isn't much they won't eat.

And where they eat, is where they chit!

Layouts become even a bigger mess.

Not cows, they used steers

That was a pretty entertaining read and some good thoughts/points. Thanks!

I will add to this discussion, that where ducks are on tanks or other water and are routinely scared off by someone feeding cattle, they are generally used to coming back in a short period of time...as they don't typically get shot at when run off by the person feeding. This tends to lead itself to good opportunities to Drive up and kick the ducks off the tank throw a few decoys down and let them come back …At least that's been my experience hunting our places which all have cattle on them.