But the fact you’re specifically asking about cattle and deer makes me believe you’re thinking about abattoirs. Those with proper welfare, slaughter the cattle in such a way that they don’t see each other because this obviously stresses the animal and is a welfare issue as well as effects the quality of the meat.
It also depends on what type of a reaction you’re looking for: Do they react in that they get startled? Do they react in that they show curiosity? Do they react in that they don’t seem to recognize the carcass as something to be startled by or curious of?
The context to exposure to the carcass is also important. A deer taken in the middle of a herd will presumably alarm the rest, because they have seen it die and the carcass is a marker of a bad event. This is not to say that the same herd will return and treat the carcass with any kind of caution. Likewise, if you kill and process a cow in front of it’s peers, they will probably be wary of the carcass but I doubt they are capable of recognizing it as a peer and mourning it. I’d have to have a look into the research, but neither are species I’m aware of being particularly cognizant.
Just taking a carcass and dumping it into an area will probably evoke a bit of caution from both, but probably due to object neophobia or the fear of something new and possibly dangerous. That being said I’ve seen a mob of cows grazing around a decaying heifer like nothing was happening. Also, cattle are curious in a kind of awful way? They’ll come up and investigate something, then ignore it or leave.
So when you ask these kinds of questions, it’s important to be specific about what reaction you are looking for, and keep in mind that we cannot quantify emotive reactions like ‘sadness’ without great difficulty, and even then, we make a huge amount of assumptions about an animal that we really shouldn’t be making.
Oh, and deer that need a mineral boost will chew on bones and hide from carcasses that they find, including deer carcasses.
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