Greetings,
How do y'all avoid cows when trapping?
AT

Stay on the opposite side of the fence is best if you can. A step down dirt can help avoid sprung traps some. If your targeting cats crowd the set under a bush or low hanging branches. Stay awry from real loud lures and baits. Trapping with cattle can be an up hill battle depending on the concentration of the cattle in the pasture.

Don't let them see you make the set if you can. Be sneaky

By no means should you carry your gear in a pail or bucket when crossing a pasture. Cattle (around here at least) think you have feed for them and will follow you around everywhere. Flint is right, he sneeky!

No way to avoid them. If they have access to your sets and you use lure, bait or urine they will find them. Just a fact, no sneak about it. Cows, horses, sheep, deer etc. all are curious and will investigate any new odor in their travels in time. You may get lucky for a few days or so but that depends on the pasture size as to how long it will take for them to get to your sets.

I wont spoil it for you, just one of those lessons in the life of a trapper.

All the things above, and i use about a 6"-8" rock and no then 3" tall (flat rock) in front of the trap and put some urine on it . I think they the cows come up to it sniff it maybe lick it and move on. Its not a 100% but all the places i trap have cattle .

Cows nose is as good as any deers.

There’s two kinds of cows in this world, bored cows, and hungry cows. Bored cows suck. Hungry cows don’t have to much time to mess with your stuff.

Staying away from urine and any bait/lure with Fish oil in it helps but there’s no cure all.

Make sets in cows and a certain percentage will be stomped out no matter what you do.

Allow plenty of extra time to remake sets. Wild pigs are fun to.

Sounds like our deer. The only way I’ve gotten deer to leave my sets alone was to quit using fox urine and go with a liquid bait. They don’t seem to seek out bobcat urine for some reason. But bobcat chunk bait they have to check out.

Stay out of the pasture is the full proof way. I feel your pain. That said, some cows are more mischievous than others. Only one way to find out.

There is a bottleneck where the K9s cross the pasture, best location on the place. It is also where the cows like to stage often. Worked it out with the farmer to pasture in another field for a spell. Prior to this it was challenging to keep sets working.

Use the tire set and you won't have to worry about cows. Don't know how many coyotes you will catch but you will be pretty much cow proof.

I have tried the tire set, ive hid behind the pickup to make my sets. You guessed it, stomped sets. Now I carry some wire. insulators, and a few rebar posts, and fence off areas to set. Usually it is on a pasture edge, so I can tie onto the existing hotwire.

Cows have stomped my tire sets. I made 3 last year, all stomped.

So they are stepping Inside the tire? Or are they pushing It away from the trap?

The trap was tripped, and the tire was moved.

They are a pain...

Make a hole behind your backing at an angle. Then find a tree branch that will fit the hole and long enough to hang over the set. Position the branch where you want it then stomp the hole to secure it. This will help but as usual in trapping nothing is a 100 percent.

Or put in 2 sets, one for the cows and one for the coyotes. Be ready to remake a lot of sets, it's just part of the game. Coyotes love to hang around the cattle. That's a fact.

They are just a pain in neck. Don't set trails - set off to the side. One thing you don't ever want is to catch a calf.

Caught a large buck sheep once. Still get a chuckle from it when I pass the place. Had a civilian along for the ride that day. He will occasionally send the pic of me standing behind it, with jesters comments. Made for a lasting memory. Next day that set held a whopper of a Bobcat.