So my family owns a small place in Navarro county that my brother and I hunt on.
We have 2 feeders and 2 ground blinds, it's a little over 80 acres.
Fences on the frontage road side are pretty bad but the sides that adjoin neighboring properties are pretty fair best I can tell.
All of a sudden, this fall, we have a dozen or so cows on the place, picks of them on the trail cams, see them the last 2 times out there.
We don't know who owns the properties on the sides or who's cows they are or where they belong.
Most have ear tags, a few don't.
If they are there opening AM I'll be more pissed than I already am.
Any suggestions?
Call the county Sheriff's office?
I won't do anything stupid or illegal but I need them gone.

Look at your county tax apprasel map and it will show who owns properties on each side.

hope this helps

Welcome to the country. I spend money on fencing to keep other folks cows OUT. If you have no fencing, you are SOL. If you do have fencing, get behind the cows With your ATV or horse and get them trotting, and they will most often go out the same gap they used to get in. Then fix the gap.

After 10 years of living here, I know who to call when I have a new cow visitor. If it’s an old gaunt ‘gummer’, it’s Larry’s. If healthy with no ear tag, it’s Ron’s. If healthy with an ear tag, it’s Mike’s.

Hmm, so it's my responsibility to have good enough fences to keep cows out?
I'm okay with that, but, it seems like the owner of the cows would be concerned enough about his investment to keep them on his property?
And thus, sure up the fences as needed to do so?
Welcome to the country indeed.....

Good fences make good neighbors. Problem here is some people don't care. I usually allways do what 603 said and drive them back in and call neighbor. on our place riding fences and repairing is a regular thing.

My question is, what are they hurting?

Call the sheriff's office. They should have the adjoining property owners' information and they may know exactly who they belong to by looking at them. As far as fencing responsibility, you may have more incentive to fence the cows out than the owner does to fence them in.

I have good neighbors now, thank goodness. For some years I shared fence with a guy that spent NO money on fences of leased land. I fixed the fence, and I wasn’t happy about it. When I found out that the cheap guy hadn’t paid the lease fees, I suggested a good guy to the land owners. Problem solved. He pays his bills and he has a dozer for when we need it.

Good luck to the OP. I do hope there are fences than CAN be repaired.

Had an old tired cow on the place the other day. Got in behind her to trot her to the gap. She wasn’t trotting, no sir. I finally gave up and she apparently went home later. So there’s a gap, but I don’t know where.

Earlier this year we had a couple of cows keep getting in the property we lease. My landowner had enough with the absentee owner so the last time they came over, he just bought them! Not saying cows look good but one of them is just butt ugly!

+2 for call the Sheriff.

I can't speak for him, but from my personal experience they can knock blinds over, wreck feeders, eat your corn, and show up at the most inopportune times and keep deer from coming in. That doesn't include the fences they can damage in order to get on the property to begin with.

In my experience, calling the sheriff really doesn’t accomplish much. Calling anybody just hasn’t worked for me, other than calling the cow owner.

Truth is that the sheriff or anybody has stuff more important or more interesting or more rewarding than driving to your place to catch a cow. On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s not even a 1. Now...if the OP happened to be a super hot 30-something divorcee with long blonde hair, you’d get the sheriff and half the department and any cowboys that listened to the cop channel. And heck, I’d be over there too. And most of ya’ll.

So get a blonde wig and hope for the best.

Wait until election year then call the sheriff.

603 I like the blonde wig idea
We don't see a whole lotta deer on the place, and kill even less.
But there are hogs GALORE.
Since the cows showed up, hogs seem fewer.
I got trail cam pics of the cows bedded down under the feeders half the night waiting for it to go off in the morning.
Trail cam pics from the last 3 weeks show 2/3rds cows and 1/3rd hog pics.
Prior to this fall, there have been less than 5 pics total of a cow on the cams over the past 4 years.
It's been a place where we can get a deer if we try, and more hogs than than we can eat.
Right now it might be tough to get a hog without thermal or NV.

Have you walked the fence to see where they might be coming in?
Might try that and run them back through that place and then try to repair it good enough for them to stay in. Just my
If you call the SO the owner probably won’t show up to move them until opening morning. Think about that.

If you don't know or have contact info for the neighbors you can look it up on county CAD website or call the sherifs office to report the escaped / unwanted cows.

In my experience they'll take your name & the location, brand or ear tag info, usually they can find out who surrounds your place or who owns the cows without involving the sheriff or deputies.

I've known people that don't own cows or have any reason to keep their front gate closed, so the front gate gets left open until the cows wonder off.
Not saying thats a good way to handle it, but some folks do.

Most folks have to lease / pay a LO to graze cattle, I sure wouldn't let someone graze for free. Unless the cows owner was like 603Country mentioned.
The long blonde haired one, that is.

It's your responsibility to maintain a fence to keep them out. I wouldn't call the sheriff's office because that might very well cause strained relations with the neighbors and that is never a good thing. I would just look at the CAD website for the county to see who owns the property; usually you can get their contact information, then you should try to get into contact with them. It'd be better to try to sort the situation out with the neighbor personally to not get into bad relations with them.

Have you asked the family members that actually own the property about how you should proceed with the trespassing bovine?

Well I won't be back until this coming Sat. so it'll be what ever it is I guess.
The place is VERY thick with trees and brush, only a couple of open areas and the boundaries are really grown up with brush so much so that it's hard to see or even get to the actual fence for at least 80% of the perimeter.
To make matters worse, it's covered with mesquite and locust trees....THORNS EVERYWHERE. ya know...those BIG thorns with more thorns growing out of the base thorn.
Keeping tires up on an ATV is a pipe dream, and chasing cattle through the place would literally require a track drive vehicle.

Yes my mom and step father own it, they are elderly and pretty much rely on me and my brother to deal with it.

Yup, not collecting any grazing money for sure.

They already trashed our ground blinds...granted they were pop up hub blinds but they were usable before the cows arrived....wasted them.

When it becomes my responsibility to keep somebodies else cows off my land when I don't want them there that front gate would be open and I would herd them right out the gate!

Texas is an Open Range State. You should call the Sheriff and they will handle the rest unless your county has passed Local Stock Laws. At least that is what I remember reading about an Open Range vs Closed Range

Very few counties are open range now.
Navarro county was one of the last but passed a stock law in 2014.

Some of you are either obviously not landowners or think your cattle should have the run of the world (many do). Nothing more frustrating than another man’s cows eating the hay meadows I fertilize and the food plots I plant. And their sorry owners not coming to get them or waiting forever to do so. Been there, done that.