coyote kills

[nastynate]

I know virtually everyone on this site are extremely ethical hunters who always make use of harvested big game animals through taxidermy and butchering, but how do you guys feel about coyotes? I know most of us regard them as pests and detrimental to deer populations, but at the same time I was always taught to make use of anything you harvest. What is everyone's take on the ethical harvest of coyotes? Leave them where they fall, or make use of the pelt and or meat? Also, I'm not sure, (I wasn't able to download the regulations to check myself) but isn't there a hunting regulation requiring a hunter to make use of harvested game? This little moral quagmire has caused me to let a number of yotes' live another day. I just don't really have a use for the pelts, and don't have much interest in eating them, but I'm not sure about the ethics and legality of just leaving them where they fall. What do you guys think?

[SilentButDeadly]

set up a Poll, they are anonymous -- so people can vote their hearts

[desertsheep]

Crows have to eat to.

[nastynate]

I'm not entirely sure how to start a poll. Any Directions?

[firstcoueswas80]

Coyote... Wheres my gun.

 

I usually strip the tails off and dry them out so they will stay... start a collection.

[bearbait]

It's my understanding that you don't eat yotes...and if you dont use the fur, then leave them for the bears and other critters. Let the circle of life take care of them.

[nastynate]

I didn't really think you would eat coyote

[coueschaser3]

Animals reguarded as predatory or furbearing animals are not included in the "hunters must salvage all useable meat" deal. They are an essential part to arizona but breed and multiply much faster than we can or will ever be able to control. They need to be shot on sight, and hey if ya feel obligated, eat the critter...but i wouldnt recommend it... i could relate it to somthin but not on a public forum. If it yips howls and barks...and is close to in range it is dead. shoot the buggers, especially in antelope country. if ya apply for pronghorn and dont shoot every yote you can in that country your diggin your own grave. sure roads and development hurt em but thats cuz it inhibits their primary defenses, speed and sight. If ya can run and see forever but cant get very far what goods it do ya? IMHO they die there is to many as it is and they only multiply faster, do a few google searches or AZGFD study searches on the effects. You will soon understand. AZGFD tried doing arial shoots for a while during studies on anderson mesa, until shut down by antis, the results....no change in antelope, a 90% fawn death rate due to yotes, but yote litters averaged from 2-3 pups before to 4-5 pups after. they adapt....we need to also....that means 22-250's and lots o' time.

[More D]

I know how you feel. I was raised similarly, eat what you take or don't kill it.

 

But over the years I have read a lot on the subject and I have done a lot of thinking and now coyotes are the only animal I shoot and don't eat.

 

I have never gone out exclusively to predator call for them. Only because I don't know how, the ones I have taken have been while hunting fro deer and birds.

 

Find your own way but hopefully you too can help the coyote population from eating what we love to chase.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Benbrown]

I'll probably get flamed for this, but the biology shows that the more coyotes you kill, the more they breed. I was at Kansas State University when pelt prices went sky-high in the mid-1970s. The annual take for fur quadrupled over what it had been. There were a lot of determined trappers in the state who were very good at what they did, and the amateurs and anyone else who had a rifle that would kill a coyote and could use a few extra bucks joined in the fun. We wondered what this was doing to the population.

 

We had a very good series of age and reproduction records from years of study by a professor who had just retired (I got his job when he left). The Extension Wildlife Biologist was very active with the Kansas Fur Harvesters organization, and he persuaded trappers to pull the uteri from the female kills and clip off the front of the jaw at the diastoma (gap) between the premolars and the canine teeth on both sexes. We provided materials for them to put the uteri and the jaws in a container with a formaldehyde solution. Those jaws came to my lab, where we processed and stained a canine tooth from each animal to age it, and we counted placental scars to determine in utero litter sizes. For three years of very high harvest we processed between materials from between 1,500 and 3,000 animals.

 

The results showed that, prior to the unusually heavy harvest, females were breeding first at around three years of age and in utero litter sizes were between 2 and 3 pups. The age structure of the population was mature--may animals in the 3-5 year age class (but very few older than 5). After the first year of hammering the population, the age at first breeding dropped to approximately one (meaning that every female in the population was now breeding) and the average in utero litter size jumped to approximately 6 pups. Prior to the heavy harvest, social constraints were delaying the age of first breeding to about 3 years of age, and somehow keeping the in utero litter sizes fairly low.

 

Since coyote packs are territorial, this means that before the increased harvest a pack (usually with only one or two females breeding) was supporting only about 2-5 pups each year. After the dramatic increase in harvest, a pack was probably supporting at least a dozen pups, and in some cases, maybe a lot more. This means that those that survived the harvest were being forced to kill a lot more food for the pups. This situation also results in a lot of pups getting kicked out of the pack and being forced to figure out how to make a living on their own. We saw a dramatic increase in coyote depredation on domestic sheep and even house pets.

 

In normal situations (absent a prolonged drought or dramatic rodent decline), coyotes just don't take many deer, and most of the deer taken are fawns. Coyotes are very opportunistic critters and eat a wide range of things, from prickly pear fruit and mesquite beans to deer and javelina, but they are primarily small mammal predators. They do play a role in keeping deer populations within the carrying capacity of their habitats, but are certainly not the only factor that determines how many deer will perish each year.

 

There is pretty general agreement that deer populations are resource-limited--that is, population densities are dependent on habitat quality and the availability of food. The Edwards Plateau of Texas had no coyotes for most of the first two-thirds of the 20th century, as the sheep and goat ranchers killed them with every means available to them, including poisons and aerial gunning. Their deer populations reached levels of one deer to less than ten acres in good years, with adult animals weighing around 100 lbs. A series of a few good years were inevitably followed by extensive die-offs in the few years that followed when there were way too many deer for the habitat. In addition to malnutrition, they succumbed to diseases such as bluetongue and epizootic hemorhagic disease, things that were enzootic in the population, but generally had negligible impacts until the animals became nutritionally and socially stressed.

 

In contrast, much of the big buck country of south Texas was characterized by coyote populations that approximated 5 per sq mi and healthy deer populations with lots of really big deer at densities of one to 25-40 acres. Several studies have looked at experimentally removing most of the coyotes to see if deer densities could be increased. All of these studies show increased fawn survival into the fall, but none have been able to detect that these additional fawns are added to the hunted herd in the following year. In west Texas, attempts at so-called quality deer management have included feeding tons of high quality rations year-round to produce bigger deer and grow bigger racks. If you go out on these ranches, you find that the native vegetation is badly overused, as the primary result of increasing the nutritional plane has been to produce more deer--apparently more than can be removed by the annual culling permitted under the QDM permits.

 

So, the bottom line is, shoot coyotes if it makes you feel good or if you regard them as suitable targets to hone your marksmanship, but don't fool yourself into thinking that you are somehow doing the deer a favor. I like to call coyotes. They are wary critters and getting one to come is still a challenge that satisfies some of my sporting urges. I use a mouth call, not an electronic call, and I do shoot as many as I can. I take maybe a half-dozen to as many as a dozen in a good year so I don't think that my efforts are doing much to hurt the local coyote population. And I don't eat them nor do I take the pelts--down here it's just not worth the effort.

 

[AzTrapper]

Well for one say shoot them and skin them! While the price of the hides in Arizona are not as high as some states we do have more than those states. Coyotes minus the really "junk" will bring you $25.00 and up as a average which in my book isn't too bad, if you take the time to learn how to handle the fur right and sell it right you will do better than the $25.00 almost everytime. I for one ship my fur and find a $37.50 average closer and i live and do most of my calling south of Tucson. So with a little time and effort to learn you can skin a coyote in 15 minutes or less so thats about $100.00 a hour not bad money. After all how many of us make $100.00 a hour doing something we enjoy? Plus the extra money coming in can pay for the gas and extras we buy when we go calling and then with a little luck have some money to buy the wife something nice or take her out to dinner which can go a long ways when we deside to go the next year:)

[AzTrapper]

I'll probably get flamed for this, but the biology shows that the more coyotes you kill, the more they breed. I was at Kansas State University when pelt prices went sky-high in the mid-1970s. The annual take for fur quadrupled over what it had been. There were a lot of determined trappers in the state who were very good at what they did, and the amateurs and anyone else who had a rifle that would kill a coyote and could use a few extra bucks joined in the fun. We wondered what this was doing to the population.

 

We had a very good series of age and reproduction records from years of study by a professor who had just retired (I got his job when he left). The Extension Wildlife Biologist was very active with the Kansas Fur Harvesters organization, and he persuaded trappers to pull the uteri from the female kills and clip off the front of the jaw at the diastoma (gap) between the premolars and the canine teeth on both sexes. We provided materials for them to put the uteri and the jaws in a container with a formaldehyde solution. Those jaws came to my lab, where we processed and stained a canine tooth from each animal to age it, and we counted placental scars to determine in utero litter sizes. For three years of very high harvest we processed between materials from between 1,500 and 3,000 animals.

 

The results showed that, prior to the unusually heavy harvest, females were breeding first at around three years of age and in utero litter sizes were between 2 and 3 pups. The age structure of the population was mature--may animals in the 3-5 year age class (but very few older than 5). After the first year of hammering the population, the age at first breeding dropped to approximately one (meaning that every female in the population was now breeding) and the average in utero litter size jumped to approximately 6 pups. Prior to the heavy harvest, social constraints were delaying the age of first breeding to about 3 years of age, and somehow keeping the in utero litter sizes fairly low.

 

Since coyote packs are territorial, this means that before the increased harvest a pack (usually with only one or two females breeding) was supporting only about 2-5 pups each year. After the dramatic increase in harvest, a pack was probably supporting at least a dozen pups, and in some cases, maybe a lot more. This means that those that survived the harvest were being forced to kill a lot more food for the pups. This situation also results in a lot of pups getting kicked out of the pack and being forced to figure out how to make a living on their own. We saw a dramatic increase in coyote depredation on domestic sheep and even house pets.

 

In normal situations (absent a prolonged drought or dramatic rodent decline), coyotes just don't take many deer, and most of the deer taken are fawns. Coyotes are very opportunistic critters and eat a wide range of things, from prickly pear fruit and mesquite beans to deer and javelina, but they are primarily small mammal predators. They do play a role in keeping deer populations within the carrying capacity of their habitats, but are certainly not the only factor that determines how many deer will perish each year.

 

There is pretty general agreement that deer populations are resource-limited--that is, population densities are dependent on habitat quality and the availability of food. The Edwards Plateau of Texas had no coyotes for most of the first two-thirds of the 20th century, as the sheep and goat ranchers killed them with every means available to them, including poisons and aerial gunning. Their deer populations reached levels of one deer to less than ten acres in good years, with adult animals weighing around 100 lbs. A series of a few good years were inevitably followed by extensive die-offs in the few years that followed when there were way too many deer for the habitat. In addition to malnutrition, they succumbed to diseases such as bluetongue and epizootic hemorhagic disease, things that were enzootic in the population, but generally had negligible impacts until the animals became nutritionally and socially stressed.

 

In contrast, much of the big buck country of south Texas was characterized by coyote populations that approximated 5 per sq mi and healthy deer populations with lots of really big deer at densities of one to 25-40 acres. Several studies have looked at experimentally removing most of the coyotes to see if deer densities could be increased. All of these studies show increased fawn survival into the fall, but none have been able to detect that these additional fawns are added to the hunted herd in the following year. In west Texas, attempts at so-called quality deer management have included feeding tons of high quality rations year-round to produce bigger deer and grow bigger racks. If you go out on these ranches, you find that the native vegetation is badly overused, as the primary result of increasing the nutritional plane has been to produce more deer--apparently more than can be removed by the annual culling permitted under the QDM permits.

 

So, the bottom line is, shoot coyotes if it makes you feel good or if you regard them as suitable targets to hone your marksmanship, but don't fool yourself into thinking that you are somehow doing the deer a favor. I like to call coyotes. They are wary critters and getting one to come is still a challenge that satisfies some of my sporting urges. I use a mouth call, not an electronic call, and I do shoot as many as I can. I take maybe a half-dozen to as many as a dozen in a good year so I don't think that my efforts are doing much to hurt the local coyote population. And I don't eat them nor do I take the pelts--down here it's just not worth the effort.

 

[AzTrapper]

While most of what you say is some what correct what is never showed in those studies, was the fact that killing coyotes and other predators did help the fawns and lowered the amount of damage that was being done buy the predators. Yes they do have larger litters in most cases, but also the fur was better in the following years, due to the on going harvest during the fur season. THATS one reason fur is called a renewable resourse

 

 

 

I'll probably get flamed for this, but the biology shows that the more coyotes you kill, the more they breed. I was at Kansas State University when pelt prices went sky-high in the mid-1970s. The annual take for fur quadrupled over what it had been. There were a lot of determined trappers in the state who were very good at what they did, and the amateurs and anyone else who had a rifle that would kill a coyote and could use a few extra bucks joined in the fun. We wondered what this was doing to the population.

 

We had a very good series of age and reproduction records from years of study by a professor who had just retired (I got his job when he left). The Extension Wildlife Biologist was very active with the Kansas Fur Harvesters organization, and he persuaded trappers to pull the uteri from the female kills and clip off the front of the jaw at the diastoma (gap) between the premolars and the canine teeth on both sexes. We provided materials for them to put the uteri and the jaws in a container with a formaldehyde solution. Those jaws came to my lab, where we processed and stained a canine tooth from each animal to age it, and we counted placental scars to determine in utero litter sizes. For three years of very high harvest we processed between materials from between 1,500 and 3,000 animals.

 

The results showed that, prior to the unusually heavy harvest, females were breeding first at around three years of age and in utero litter sizes were between 2 and 3 pups. The age structure of the population was mature--may animals in the 3-5 year age class (but very few older than 5). After the first year of hammering the population, the age at first breeding dropped to approximately one (meaning that every female in the population was now breeding) and the average in utero litter size jumped to approximately 6 pups. Prior to the heavy harvest, social constraints were delaying the age of first breeding to about 3 years of age, and somehow keeping the in utero litter sizes fairly low.

 

Since coyote packs are territorial, this means that before the increased harvest a pack (usually with only one or two females breeding) was supporting only about 2-5 pups each year. After the dramatic increase in harvest, a pack was probably supporting at least a dozen pups, and in some cases, maybe a lot more. This means that those that survived the harvest were being forced to kill a lot more food for the pups. This situation also results in a lot of pups getting kicked out of the pack and being forced to figure out how to make a living on their own. We saw a dramatic increase in coyote depredation on domestic sheep and even house pets.

 

In normal situations (absent a prolonged drought or dramatic rodent decline), coyotes just don't take many deer, and most of the deer taken are fawns. Coyotes are very opportunistic critters and eat a wide range of things, from prickly pear fruit and mesquite beans to deer and javelina, but they are primarily small mammal predators. They do play a role in keeping deer populations within the carrying capacity of their habitats, but are certainly not the only factor that determines how many deer will perish each year.

 

There is pretty general agreement that deer populations are resource-limited--that is, population densities are dependent on habitat quality and the availability of food. The Edwards Plateau of Texas had no coyotes for most of the first two-thirds of the 20th century, as the sheep and goat ranchers killed them with every means available to them, including poisons and aerial gunning. Their deer populations reached levels of one deer to less than ten acres in good years, with adult animals weighing around 100 lbs. A series of a few good years were inevitably followed by extensive die-offs in the few years that followed when there were way too many deer for the habitat. In addition to malnutrition, they succumbed to diseases such as bluetongue and epizootic hemorhagic disease, things that were enzootic in the population, but generally had negligible impacts until the animals became nutritionally and socially stressed.

 

In contrast, much of the big buck country of south Texas was characterized by coyote populations that approximated 5 per sq mi and healthy deer populations with lots of really big deer at densities of one to 25-40 acres. Several studies have looked at experimentally removing most of the coyotes to see if deer densities could be increased. All of these studies show increased fawn survival into the fall, but none have been able to detect that these additional fawns are added to the hunted herd in the following year. In west Texas, attempts at so-called quality deer management have included feeding tons of high quality rations year-round to produce bigger deer and grow bigger racks. If you go out on these ranches, you find that the native vegetation is badly overused, as the primary result of increasing the nutritional plane has been to produce more deer--apparently more than can be removed by the annual culling permitted under the QDM permits.

 

So, the bottom line is, shoot coyotes if it makes you feel good or if you regard them as suitable targets to hone your marksmanship, but don't fool yourself into thinking that you are somehow doing the deer a favor. I like to call coyotes. They are wary critters and getting one to come is still a challenge that satisfies some of my sporting urges. I use a mouth call, not an electronic call, and I do shoot as many as I can. I take maybe a half-dozen to as many as a dozen in a good year so I don't think that my efforts are doing much to hurt the local coyote population. And I don't eat them nor do I take the pelts--down here it's just not worth the effort.

 

[couesdiehard]

Worms gotta eat too.

[HEADACHE]

I shoot em and feed them to the foxes, vultures, crows and other cannibalistic coyotes. Just stick your knife in their guts and rip it open, that way the smell carries faster and farther, they are usually eaten up by nightfall.

 

Best to use copper bullets though, we don't want those crows getting lead poisoning like those condors on the Bab.

 

Gosh I crack myself up