City boy checking in.
So, this one time out on a hike in a semi-rural area, the trail opened out on a grassy riverbank kind of place, and there were a dozen or so cows between me and the path onwards.
Now, I mostly grasp which end of a cow the grass goes in, but that’s about my limit; I have no real idea how they operate IRL.
I ended up carefully edging my way past them and gave them as much space as I possibly could, and got extremely stared at by all of them, who probably thought I was nuts.
Just out of curiosity - how careful did I need to be? Can you just like walk through the middle of them, or would that be asking for trouble?
Oh yes. Cow body language is very different when they’re curious and when they intend to cause you harm. These ones wanted us wiped from the face of the earth, or at least wiped from their line of sight.
Edit: I should point out that these were free range beef cattle in the foothills, so they’re a lot less friendly than your average dairy cow. They would only see people a few times per year, and they never liked what they got when people came around, so they likely had pretty negative associations with humans.
Ohhh OK, these are beef cows as well. I don’t know at what point they’re free range, they have 100s of acres, but they see humans all the time.
These lived on 1800 acres of wild land. They normally only saw people when we were driving past to get to the ranch house, or when me and my buddy were hiking. Twice a year they were rounded up, branded, counted, and either sold off or let go.
They were rounded up old Western style, by cowboys on horseback, and driven into the pens by the ranch house. It was actually an amazing experience getting to be a part of that as a teenager and young man.
My friend and I would go exploring all over those hills in the summer time, and that’s when the murder cows caught us in the open a few times. Most of the cows didn’t care, but there were a few that we knew by site to run from if we happened upon them. So we’d skedaddle over near a tree or back to the truck if it was close and hope the cow would just wander off and do cow things. It usually just gave us angry looks and bluffs, but a few times it charged us and drove us up the tree. One time we were tree’ed, and were able to scare it off by firing our guns into the air. Good times.