Now they are good coyotes.
Coyotes are primarily nocturnal, but will adapt to day time foraging, depending on food sources. Many dogs and cats in cities become meals for urban coyotes, where they operate nocturnally. Here in the boonies, they kill dogs, cats, sheep, goats, calves and foals. They snag free range chickens and pets during the day. Had a neighbor loose one of her Yorkies off the back porch in broad daylight.
If coyotes restricted themselves to their traditional diet of rabbits, possums, raccoons, ground squirrels, mice, rats, insects and snakes, I'd have no problem with them. As it is, I shoot them on sight, even if it means giving up a shot at a good deer during deer season.
Most around here kill just before sunrise, but we have had a couple kills in the day.
And they have pretty good pelts. Given their adaptation to the more urban areas I would think more and more would see the solution and not have a problem using them as REAL FUR accents to coats, gloves, etc...
Much - Much better than the faux fur (petrochemical) accents that pass as expensive fashion today
Their use and removal would be a profitable public service [ Social Justice!! ] in the name of Quality Fashion - with American made products !!
Win - Win - Win - Win !
Great Catch BYW!!
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We don't use the pelts that often, and if we do it's just for something to lay over the back of a couch. They stink too bad to skin and the 30 bucks we could make for one isn't worth the long skinning process (their skin is insanely hard to pull off, you have to cut nearly everything).
Thanks!
Another good coyote for your viewing pleasure.
:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:
Nice catch. They've become a problem here in SW FL too. I used to hunt fox in NE for the pelts. We used them to make certain fly patterns for fly fishing. I'm betting coyote fur would work in a similar manner.
Thanks. I'm not a fly fisher so I haven't tried that, but I imagine it would work too.
Is their population getting out of hand or something? Are they missing their traditional natural predators? Don't get me wrong... I am just asking. Here in Spain, with the almost extinction of the wolves, they wild pigs are out of controll. They thrash the crops, farms and such, and hunters do their best to keep their population controlled. I don't hunt, but I do spearfish. However unless they are latear eaten, I find hard to justify the killing of animals just because... in this case, the coyotes!
Someone care to elaborate?
Mikel
They take 90-150 dollar paychecks out of our lambs almost every night. They don't eat more than a tongue 90% of the time. They only really have one natural predator in Virginia as we have no wolves or mountain lions (there's a can of worms
), and that is humans. If we see one we kill it and that's just as natural as them killing a lamb or a deer whenever they feel like it.
Congrats guys!
I was opposed to hunting/trapping coyotes for a while. I feel that predators do what predators do. By no fault of their own, they are successful at killing and eating because Mother Nature taught them how.
That being said I do feel that, at least in my area the population needs to be managed. On any given night we can hear them yipping around the house. I even got video of a big one at mid day on a trail camera about 100 yards from where I plan to build a house on our new property.
I have recently bought an electronic caller, hand calls, and a decoy so that I can go to the property and attempt to thin their numbers or at least establish a "danger zone" of sorts around our property so that when we are living there our future livestock are safer.
I plan on tanning the hides and disposing of the rest of the carcass deep in the woods for the rest of the critters to capitalize on.
It will be sort of bittersweet for me but I feel it is for the greater good of my property.
We also have foxes, both gray and red, as well as bobcats that show up on the trail camera. I want to make a wall hanging with a coyote, fox, and bobcat pelts to display in my new house.
Jeremy
Thanks Jeremy.
I grew up killing them and I plan on keeping on as long as I'm able. I agree with you to some extent, but I consider our claim to the land and livestock stronger than the coyotes, and at this point it's either defend a major source of income or let coyotes destroy it because it's what they do.
Humans have been around since the beginning of time (there's another can of worms, but it's what I believe) and we've been hunting since we were able to, so that makes us natural predators too. We don't have claws and sharp teeth to hunt with so we substitute with guns, but we are here just as naturally as anything else.
Sadly I don't think you'll be able to get a danger zone going. My dad has killed them since they first came here in the 90's and they are still coming. Only in the past couple years have we had less lamb kills, but that's only because when one would start killing we doubled the efforts to trap or shoot it.
Good job on trapping the dogs. Even when we (Americans) were allowed to poison them we could barely slow down their population growth. I spent many early mornings watching the sunrise over the Sonoran desert while blowing a caller, coaxing them into 12 gauge range. It can be a very exciting hunt.
Thanks. Maybe no poison is a state law? Here in VA a federal trapper comes and puts out M44 poison traps for us.
