Cattle on the lease

Well the cows wiped out 2 feeder pens on our place. My pen made of hog panels was wrecked or should I say part of it was. If I did not have t-post every 5 foot it would have been worse. Trail camera got it all...first cow reared up and then rested her mid section on the panel then just came on in. Four more did the same. The cows were after a new deer block I had just put in the pen, they ate it all. The other pen was not a very good pen and they got in there and turned over the feeder which bent all three legs. That feeder had those light weight legs that slip into each end to make 8 foot and were staked down with lightweight stakes. This is a new set of cows that were recently brought in by the rancher who is not the owner. Wish I could do something about it besides put it back together with barb wire around the top and don't buy any more deer blocks.

Does the landowner lease the pasture for cattle of own them? If lease you can see how much and try to pay for that also... then convince him to get on wildlife since im sure he gets exemption for cattle..

long shot but never know.

I will never pay for a lease again that has livestock.. unless its very low stocked (rare) and the most perfect place for big deer also rare lol its not happening.. to much of a headache not half the wildlife

Nav, yes the landowner does lease the grazing rights. Suppose we could try your suggestion.

Wire the panels about 6-12 inches off the ground. Not much can go under and this usually makes cows think twice about going over. A string of barb wire across the top after that will also help.

You and others may scoff at the suggestion, but forget about feeders and hunt heavily used trails, funnels and pinch points the old fashioned way. After some field work and a little planning, you'll save money and could easily see just as many deer, including the ones too smart to ever hit a feeder in daylight.

Build real feeder pens. Concrete, pipe, and cattle panels

That should do the job...have the panels but no concrete or steel.
Thanks!

Put up 2 strands of barb wire, hope that does the job.

Not cringing at the trail option but those trails will be hard to distinguish and be unreliable with livestock on the property

If anything you want to find a section of the property less used by livestock and try to hunt it... I would however agree with staying away from feeders... find a spot heavy with scrapes and maybe put some scent out... spreading corn out by hand can also work better than feed stations

I had that problem once with my cows. Actually it was just one cow and she was a jumper. I ran a hot wire around the top of the feeder pen and once she got shocked a couple of times I just turned it off and never had a problem after that. Should have sold her but she always had a pretty calf.

Shoot the cow. Fills the freezer faster than deer.

Got tired of cows and pigs and built 6 of these, made out of old propane tanks.........at least if they bust through the pin your feeder will be ok.

Our cows became unruly out of nowhere, our hog panels were no match and was getting calls from the landowner that his cows kept getting trapped in our pens (he made us put them up). This past weekend we ran a strand of barbwire on the top of 3 pens. My buddy said they'd walk up to the new taller pens and size them up and walk off. Hopefully we're done with this cow/pen debacle.

Cows and deer dont jive. I hunt near a big cow pasture. The deer stay way the hell away from those nasty cows. The hogs dont care. Kinda the same catigory. If forced to, the deer will work around cattle to live amoung them, but I can promise you they hate cows like I hate pigs. PS they hate pigs too.

IMO, yes and no. Deer will follow their prey instincts and choose travel routes that maximize cover, meaning funnels and pinch points that mean nothing to cattle will mean everything to deer.

Just ignore the cattle trails and view the cover and terrain from a deer's perspective. For example, if surrounding pastures have thin fingerlings of grown up fence lines or other structure that meets with the area you're hunting, you can expect these to be entry and exit points for deer as they move through the larger area.

Studying an area to locate these hot spots can take your deer hunting satisfaction to a new level as you feel you've done more to earn success, rather than just waiting for something to show up and eat.

We have cattle on our place but they never hit the feeders. Never had a pic of one on camera earring the corn and never seen them eat the corn while hunting. We are blesse

You are!
Our rancher takes them out just before gun season, (it's in our contract) but sometimes he cuts it pretty close, and I can tell you from experience because he always puts different cows in the pasture from year to year, that those cows have personalities.
Some cows never bothered the feeders and I've had some that tore them down to get at the corn.
The last bunch he had in there would come meandering over to the feeders just before they went off, and then just stand there under the feeder.
We haven't tried fencing them off, but have re-enforced them to keep them from being knocked over.
We've had the place for seven years, but never know from year to year if we will have the place. Had we known we would have probably built pens, so I guess that's the beauty of a long term lease, but our land owner won't do it.

Every one of our neighbors have cows. We converted to wildlife valuation a few years ago. After prescribed burns and cedar removal, our pastures are full of waist high bluestem and KRB. Our deer populations has at least doubled in the past 3-4 years. I won't go back to having cows.

I'm a rancher/hunter and live with my cows at my feeders all the time and learned over the years how to make them as bull proof as possible.
I don't use feeder pens anymore.

Generally, cows don't come to your feeder for corn but because the legs are at just the right angle to scratch their backs.
They get under there and start rubbing their backs to scratch the grubs, fly and tick bites, etc. on their backs where they can't reach.
If it's not staked right, it will be on the ground and once that happens, it's game on for the cows.

OR

Cows will destroy pens to get to the sweet smelling attractant crap and mineral/molasses blocks.
I have pictures of calves laying on the ground for hours licking/eating attractant and mineral blocks until it's gone.
Cows and calves LOVE Buck Jam and WILL destroy stuff to get to it - ask me how I know...or not!

We have had cows on the place for 15 years with no problem. Recently the rancher took all cows out and brought in different ones. This is when our problem started They could not turn my home made "stand and fill" feeder over but they did a job on the panels where they got in. Like Vern1 said they were after a deer block I had put in there. They ate the whole thing.

might as well not have anything if you put up "hog" panels. I have had some cows that could jump standard height barbed wire fences and not touch anything. Your best bet would be to build a standard, or higher than normal barbed wire pen, the deer will slide under it without a problem. They'll go under barbed wire better than they will jump in a hog panel pen...and make the barbed wire pen bigger than normal so the don't feel trapped. cows and deer aren't a problem. Consider planting a sizeable winter pasture plot. Deer would rather eat it vs corn, and it actually has some nutritional value I plant a lot of winter pasture and often times will have more deer than cows in it regularly....

woodeduckhunter, we have too many hogs for the barb wire fence. If not for that barb would work just fine.

That's where my management comes into play since I'm retired and only hunt pigs!
We average 71 pigs a year on my place, mostly at the feeders at night.
We hunt them year around but usually only on Monday or Tuesday night during deer season if they are hitting the feeders.

I hear the word funnel and pinch point and stop paying attention. There are many areas where these features are literally non existent. On our property we se a surge in activity and new trails spring up after shredding roads and lanes. Deer using the path of least resistance and not cover.

We run barb wire pens. Mine are usually 2-3 strands, my buddy has 5 strand. I have tall feeders, he has a stand and fill. I run mine 5 sec once a day, he runs his 7-9 sec twice a day. I rarely have cows get in mine. If they do, they usually are right back out. His gets hit all the time. Think its because of the amount of corn on the ground plus the fact that spinner plate on a stand and fill is about eye level with a steer.

Get rid of the blocks, or other good flavored attractants. The cows will eat regular corn but they have never messed with our pens (made with hog panels) to get the corn. Buddy on another pasture used some orange flavored corn (or something else sweet) and the cows destroyed his pen in one night. He stopped using that and they have never come back. Run barb wire around the top of the panels, this seems to help us as well. Good luck.

When you locate funnels and pinch points that also offer the path of least resistance, you really have found a honey hole.

A very common trick before the days of food plots and feeders was to sweeten a fence crossing by taking a short piece of wire to tie the bottom two strands of barbed wire closer together to create a somewhat larger opening at the bottom. In many cases, these are created naturally by washouts that occur along fence lines. Being the lazy creatures they are, deer will often prefer to scoot under a fence rather than exert more energy to jump over it. I'll make it a point to share a photo of one such place that I've been hunting very successfully for three seasons now. It has been so productive in fact that you might even call it fishing in a bucket.

Where are you located? I'm thinking seriously about doing this same thing. My assumption is that it will really create a bounce in the wildlife population.

I believe it's true. We've kept records and after getting rid of cows the population has really expanded. We're in eastern Erath, in the Chalk mountain area. Check with your county appraisal district. They can give you info on what is required to convert from ag to wildlife. Each county has their own guidelines. Good luck. Feel free to PM me with any other questions.