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?
I never had a problem with walking around cows as a kid and I did it pretty often. Visitors would get spooked occasionally because cows love to follow you and see what you’re up to, but I never got chased or anything. That was beef cattle country though so these cows were mainly cows (female) and steers (castrated males). I’ve heard that some bulls could be territorial however so your mileage may vary if one is around - the couple I’ve walked around were fine but your chances of issues are higher with them.