North Texan

Cows don't bother deer much. Deer shy away from cattle a little, but they by no means avoid areas cattle frequent. Their preferred diets don't intersect a great deal, so you can even use cattle to improve your deer habitat. Deer do not eat much grass, usually only the emerging tender new shoots. Cattle will eat good grass in all stages of growth. By eating the mature growth, the cattle encourage it to put out more new shoots.

Deer largely prefer forbes and legumes. Many of these are low-growing annuals and short-lived perennials. Cattle grazing the grass opens up space for these type of plants to germinate and grow. Even if it is a species cattle eat, cattle don't have top teeth, so it takes a bit of growth for them to eat it, if it is something they eat. The deer will start in on these plants as soon as they surface and stay on them as long as they are there.

Cows also eat very little browse. For a deer, that's a large part of their diet.

Unless you just want a food plot to have one, you may not need one. A lot of places don't.

3boyshunting

Here is my experience.
I have mainly stalk hunted on our property up to recent yrs. One thing I have learned is that bucks during Rut will stay near cattle, especially during the day. One of the biggest bucks I have seen on our place was in the middle of a group of cattle. The cattle spotted me, stop/stared he took off before I knew he was there to begin with. have seen this numerous times over and over with mature bucks over the last 20 yrs of hunting. When stalk hunting I try to stay away from cattle as rule of thumb.
This past season I was blind hunting with my 10 yr old, he shot at and missed a nice 10 point at feeder. We sat approx 45 minutes after missed shot and cattle moved into feeder area. On the edge of the cattle a 9 point came out of brush with 6 point close behind. THe 9 continued to watch cattle as he moved. We waited till he got to a clearing to shoot and my son dropped him with a clean neck shot. THe whole time we watched him, he watched the cattle. The 9 point did move not without looking at the cattle.
We were in 10' blind, had we been on the ground who knows what would have happened.

BobCo19-65

I always try to keep the deer and cow relationship to myself and never argue the point. Most people want nothing to do with cows when deer hunting is concerned. - Not me...

shamlin

My cows have never affected me seeing deer but they have destroyed a food plots before. The only thing about cows is if they see u in the stand they seem to stand and stare and some may crowd around this may bring unwanted attention to u if deer are close by. U can put up 50 strands of wire but that green grass in the fall and winter is too tempting for them.

mossbergman11

yeah i will probly hunt there but not plant a food plot

3boyshunting

mossbergman11 can you put up feeders in Ohio?
I have never really had a problem sitting in a blind and cattle giving me up. Rather stalk hunting and walking up to a group of cattle in a brushy area. See typically here where I hunt, bucks especially during rut will for the most part travel head down below brush. During the heat of day they will lay down in a group of cattle, in my experience the older bucks use the cattle as an alarm of sorts if you will. I am the kind of hunter that likes to stay out all day(that is, when my kids arent hunting with me, have not got them to that point yet, working on it though.).
shamlin, on the fence thing. Are you talking about a loosly strung fence(cheap) around a foodplot? I plan on putting my 1st food plot for deer this year in a pasture with cattle. I will build a "real" fence, just like we have around our roundbale hay storage area. A nice tight 5 strand barbed wire fence.
I know back in the day when my grandparents planted oates we never had problems with cattle running over fences to get to it. That is in a field application though, not afood plotin a field application.

mossbergman11

yup we can use feeders

Gobblinthunder

need to put a fence around your feeder,or youll just waste your corn.cows will finish up one spin of the feeder like it was just a small snack.

I used to put up feeders without fences and it was VERY ANNOYING to wait a whole work week for Saturday morning get up a 600 am and get theyre and theyre is 30 cows on your corn,you cant hear anything over the snorting and stomping and mooing..ruining a saturday LOL

mossbergman11

man thats would suck

3boyshunting

Mossberg11, I'd start running feeders in the feild with cattle to see what happens. I have not had a problem with cattle coming in and cleaning out the corn from a feeder. Now if I pour it from a bag out heavy,yes. When they find it they will clean it up. From throw/spin castfeeder no. I had one feeder that had no varmit guard and the cattle would come in and push on motor part till the corn fell, bending the motor part out of the way. I fixed that feeder,put a varmit guard on it, no more problems.
On our place we have a total of 8 feeders and no fences around the feeders, 70 head of cattle. Just keep the feeders away from where you normally feed the cattle, put out bales of hay etc.
added in edit:
We use pipe legs for the feeders, no multipart cheap legs. I use T-posts driven in at angle for each leg and clamp the T-post to feeder leg. That keeps the hogs/cattle from tipping the feeder over.