TEPaul,
Oh, there are some great cow stories in golf architecture all right. Cows are curious, and docile animals, probably w/o a mean bone in their body. The secret to getting to know them is to try to "think like a cow". They probably thought anyone coming in an SUV was likely to be bringing more food, water or salt lick.....
I wonder if there has ever been a pasture walked by a GCA without the owner warning "there is one bull out there, so be careful". Probably left over habit from keeping the GD kids off his property all these years, even if he has agreed to sell it for a golf course.
I did run across a bull once, but I was with the rancher and he swatted that bull on the nose, and scolded him like you would a dog! And the bull actually showed remorse for his "bad" actions of scaring us, and walked away, head down, tail between legs. Never thought I would see anything like that.
Actually, leaving the cows on your 12th would have been a nice folksy touch. How much could a golf ball hurt a hide that will eventually be made into a leather lazy boy anyway? Sometimes, farmers have no real sense of humor.
Unlike Mike C, I didn't walk your 12th, so perhaps I am not qualified to judge. However, I could read the holes you did lay out from the topo, and 1) thought I saw a nice cape hole that could replace it, and 2) that the humpback contours may have been severe enough to cause some controversy from some w/o Tigerriffic length that had their second, or third shots deflected off the hump and down into the rough. At least, it struck me as the type of hole that would be "love it or hate it", and quite likely the kind a professional architect would avoid to avoid such criticism from the "hate its". Of course, being the risk taker you are, you would welcome that criticism! (Unless perhaps from Pat M)
Seriously, there have probably been more designs built that ruined a good peice of land with a poor routing to create a signature/favorite hole than we can count. Yours is the first I have heard of that was canceled because they couldn't build a signature/favorite hole. And, if you were a modern professional architect, you would have simply accepted the 12th in a different location and built a similar humpback somewhere else using earthmoving techniques. Did you ever consider that?
Jeff