Coyotes made Mistake

I'm 64 years old, and have hunted and fished all over Virginia since I was old enough to wander away from the house without my mother having a dying duck fit.

Until about ten years ago, maybe, I had never heard of a coyote in Virginia. A coyote was something I saw on Bonanza or Cheyenne. Since then I've seen maybe a dozen or so, but my outdoor activity has slowed down a lot since my wife became disabled.

I saw one in the woods one morning while squirrel hunting a few years ago. I watched it for a bit, thought about shooting, but (1) I wasn't 100% sure it was legal, (2) thought it was too far for a sure kill with a 22 LR, and (3) remembered my mothers stern warning the day I got my first gun "Don't ever shoot anything you can't brag about."

I also remembered one time when I was a kid, I shot a raccoon. I proudly carried it home to show my grandfather. He looked at it, he looked at me, and asked..."What you going to do with it now?" I felt about 2" tall when I realized I had no idea how to answer that question. I had killed it for no reason really.

I let the 'yote go on about it's business.

(This is not to say I wouldn't shoot one on another occasion or that anyone else shouldn't shoot them.)
 
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Arik said:
Ok kill em all. But in my area we also have a major deer problem. They don't kill your pets but they jump out in traffic and kill you. So let's kill all the deer. I've seen a few foxes around. It's possible they have rabies and rabid animals attack and of course rabies themselves are dangerous. Let's kill them all too. There have been a few,sightings of mountain lions and black bears. Both are deadly predators......kill them all too! actually just kill wildlife in general they are all either dangerous or a nuisance.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
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I have to agree with the logic behind your sarcasm. After all, which species provokes most concealed carry? Should we kill all of them? The argument holds for second place, as well.
 
Drm50 said:
The "how" they got here is the $64 question.
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There isn't any mystery about how they got there.

They walked.
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The PBS station here in Cincinnati has a program tomorrow night at 8:00PM on the coy wolf it is in the Nature series for any one interested, check your local listings.
Glen
 
pinduck said:
The PBS station here in Cincinnati has a program tomorrow night at 8:00PM on the coy wolf it is in the Nature series for any one interested, check your local listings.
Glen
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I watched some of that program last week. It was pretty interesting to me up to the point where some city police department was all proud of themselves for killing one single little female coyote and trying to make a big local media event out of it like they'd saved everyone from some dangerous beast.
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I think it was either in Chicago or some place in Canada. I changed channels and started watching Chasing Classic Cars.
 



All you feller jest keep on posting them pictures of them dead coyotes...

I enjoy see em......When I was cattle ranchin', we'd shoot em
and hang them on a fence post by the road...just to show the
neighbors we were doing our part as well.


As Bobby said earlier in this thread, that ignore feature works wonders for weedin' out the bo weevils.

(I really want to say peckerwoods) But.........I didn't!!!! :D



.
 
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As I am reading the posts in this thread I just happen to turn around and look out the window. Guess what I see standing out in the pasture, a coyote. He is still out there, but he is in a place where it wouldn't be a safe place to take a shot.

The neighbor was breeding chickens like crazy and just letting them run loose all day and night. He is down to just a couple now, and the coyotes were very thankful for city boy feeding them so well.

He is moving towards the chicken guys house, so he is safe from me....for now
 
keith44spl said:
That winter it was so cold the Mississippi river froze, them coyotes jest walk right across it...
no telling how long they'd waited for that opportunity. ;):D
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I remember that winter. It was during the Blizzard of '93 wasn't it? I remember it cause I was driving up I-75 through Ohio right in the middle of it. March 2, 1993. I wonder if the Ohio River was frozen over, too? It was snowing so hard, though, I couldn't see the coyotes.
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Mule Packer said:
Interesting thread.

I've always said that it's a mighty thin pancake that doesn't have two sides and we've been able to see quite a few sides to this thread. Just for the heck of it, here's my two cents worth.

Here in Utah, we have a coyote problem. They have been decimating the mule deer herds so badly that the state has put a $50 bounty on them. You can bet the ranch that that won't wipe the coyotes out, but hopefully it will help the deer herds.

One of my neighbors runs cattle in a pasture across the road from my place. You can hear the coyotes at night, especially now around calving season. In one short night, a few coyotes can cost my neighbor literally thousands of dollars in coyote-killed calves.

No matter what folks may think, coyotes are smart. Darned smart. It's almost impossible to catch them in a live trap, but they will come to a call if it's done correctly.

Shot this one last fall and am gearing up to take a few more in the next month or so. A fifty-buck bounty isn't enough to supplement my retirement income or even begin a cottage industry...but it'll keep me in ammo.
20150914_073115_zpsy4ja19mn.jpg


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It would be virtually impossible to eliminate all of the coyotes. They can adapt to almost any environment. Like someone posted earlier, after a nuclear holocaust, about the only things still living will be cockroaches and coyotes...and...uh...maybe Keith Richards.:)
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Chip, thanks for doing a public service. I'd hope during my August visit we can pop more than one. No matter what lake we end up drinking from.

Fred
 
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The winter of 76-77 has been floated as cause of coyotes in Ohio
Also the River bridges over the Miss. & big cattle outfit bringing
them in to control rats in Crown Vetch. You can hear anything
you want to hear, if you are stupid enough to believe it. At least
we got a few members who are actually " woodsmen & farmers"
to estimate first time they saw a coyote, that is what we call
first hand experience. It seems every one started seeing them
about the same time. I can't talk about the state's West of Ohio.
I don't hunt or farm there, so I can't make a educated statement.
But I do hunt Ohio, Pa, WVa, Va and Ky. Go to these states and the locals will tell you the same thing. One day in 80s coyotes
just showed up, were they had never been to the knowledge of
anyone still living. About 30 years ago we had a monkey in these
parts, I'm sure somebody will say, Ohio has always had monkeys.
Turned out to be Alfie, escaped from Zoo up north. We also had
a idiot over in next county turn loose Lions, Tigers, bears, ect.
Luckily the deputies gunned them all down before some kid got
a big surprise at school bus stop. Nobody had ever seen these
animals around here either. Bottom line, somebody brought the
animals in here.
 
The cartoon describes well how coyotes have expanded their ranges eastward from the traditional Western habitat. As land management practices changed and more development occurred every new house was a trash can to raid along with possibly an outdoor cat or small dog thrown in for good measure.

We also had a massive expansion of commercial poultry growing and in die-offs it might take the farmer several days to cover the disposal pile so coyotes would not only try to rob the houses, but raid the dumps.

Almost every issue with problem varmints revolves around food sources. Here is a snippet from an article about their expansion in Arkansas:


Though coyotes are now found in every county in Arkansas, they’ve been here only a relatively short time. There were few, if any, coyotes here when the earliest settlers arrived, and before 1950, these grand masters of adaptation were found only in the most western portions of the state. As agricultural practices changed and more open lands were created, coyotes extended their range. They had reached the central part of the state by the early 1950s and had reached the Mississippi River by 1964. Today, coyotes thrive alongside human habitation and can actually be found right in urban neighborhoods.

Coyotes are good news, bad news critters. The good news is coyotes play an important role in balancing populations of mice, rats and other pesky wildlife. And as scavengers on dead animals, they help clean up the woods and fields. Bad news is that coyotes cause serious damage to livestock and melon crops in some areas. Poultry, hogs, sheep, goats and young calves are common domestic prey, and at times, coyotes take fawns, young turkeys and other wild game.
 
The last coyote I killed was with my department-issued Crown Vic just before I retired. U-111 Bacchus Highway by the Kennecott copper mine entrance about 2:00 a.m. Made quite the thump, I thought I would have damage somewhere on the undercarriage, but lucked out. He was bigger than any coyote I had ever seen close up, and well fed but still looked coyote-ish.

A couple months later a rabid-acting coyote bit a Kennecott mine worker in a fenced, heavily industrialized area near the mine, middle of the night, just snuck up behind her and bit her on the calf of her leg. A couple of my officers went looking for it and it rounded a small building, bared his teeth and came at them. Officer made a really excellent shot and put one just between and below his eyes at 20 feet (AR-15). Officers were really excited still when I got there 20 minutes after they shot it. Coyote charges are not part of our training. County animal control picked up the carcass and tested it for rabies but said it tested negative. The bit woman got tetanus shots and stitches, looked like it hurt to me.

I worked a lot of the graveyard shift early in my career, and then a lot more the last six years of it, and in spite of the building and population growth here in the Salt Lake valley, the coyote numbers have grown faster, if the number of them I saw was any indication. They seem bolder, too, far less likely to run from a vehicle at night, often just standing or sitting there when lit up with a spotlight. They have adapted to life in the suburbs very well. Like Mule Skinner said, Utah has a bounty on them but it doesn't seem to matter, too many of them live in populated areas where it just isn't safe to shoot them.
 
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I don't remember the date, 1780-90s, after Revolution a boy was
killed by wolves in Belmont Cnty, Ohio. This happened at what
is now Dillies Bottom, Ohio. There was a Fort there at the time.
Situated along Ohio River, opposite Moundsville, WVa. The boy
was sent to a neighbors and never made it back, winter time.
I had a G-G-grandfather who was a bounty hunter in SE Ohio.
He is mentioned in a few history books, but he can be tracked
through the records of paid out bounties in several counties.
Wolves seem to have been his bread & butter, although criminals
and run away slaves paid better. I read so much of this type stuff
I forget what book it's from. I think most of this can be found
in Caldwell's History of Belmont and Jefferson Counties (Ohio)
a hard to find book, most libraries in local area have copies, but
you have to view book there.
 
Worthless said:
As I am reading the posts in this thread I just happen to turn around and look out the window. Guess what I see standing out in the pasture, a coyote. He is still out there, but he is in a place where it wouldn't be a safe place to take a shot.

The neighbor was breeding chickens like crazy and just letting them run loose all day and night. He is down to just a couple now, and the coyotes were very thankful for city boy feeding them so well.

He is moving towards the chicken guys house, so he is safe from me....for now
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He did come back after his dinner, but I saw him to late. Maybe today will be his unlucky day :eek:
 
actually, it does. there have been coyotes on the high plains since the beginning of time.
but everyone shoots at them.
they know about guns.
so they simply don't approach houses.
i've been here 12 years. i've seen only one coyote get near my place, even tho i hear them howl often.
 
Mule Packer said:
Golly. You don't have to get flippant about it. I don't know...maybe you were just trying to be humorous, but there's a difference between humor and sardonicism.

As I said in my previous post about shooting the coyotes, "You can bet the ranch that that won't wipe the coyotes out, but hopefully it will help the deer herds."

Just thought I would show that I'm trying to do my part, although small, in helping out. That's all.:)

I don't think anyone will argue with you that coyotes are here to stay, but maybe we can try to curb the population somewhat. At least that's what were trying to do in our state, and it seems to be helping a little.

There are a few ol' boys out here that are making quite an income out it. While some of us are only turning in two or three scalps and mandibles at a time, there are several who will in turn bags of 25 or more at a time on a regular basis.
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It was not my intention to come across as flippant, rather, simply stating the fact that you can't curb the Coyote problem through a bounty process. Since my youth in Montana there have been prices on their heads. Most ranchers shoot them on site. It hasn't worked. Just saying.
 
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