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?
Just don’t walk behind them, or they might try to kick you.
This is really good advice for basically every animal with hooves. They mostly have a blind spot directly behind, like horses:
If you walk up behind them inside that blind spot and then move out to either side and suddenly appear in their vision, they’ll react defensively, usually by trying to kick you with their hind legs.
Basically if you can’t see the animal’s eyes then assume it can’t see you, and stay out of kicking range.
+1 on this. Hiker+Trail-Runner here. So I sometimes encounter cows on high mountain passes where taking a detour can mean hours of delay. But after getting kicked like that once, I am very careful around herds, esp. when they have young ones / horns (as they often do grassing on mountains) / bulls in the mix.
What they say for horses is that if you’re going to walk behind one, stay just behind it. That way if it does decide to kick you, the legs won’t be able to build up momentum and will be mostly vertical before hitting you. Under no circumstance walk 1-2m behind it, you can die if it hits you in the head.
Apply at your own risk to cows.
