Coyotes and Deer

[tungularafishcamp]

So...has anyone tried coyote meat?? I have eaten dog a couple times and liked it, I would think coyote would be as good.

 

[N80]

I am gastronomically adventuresome. I'll try most anything except brains (having cared for a CJD patient before). But I'd have to be mighty bored or mighty hungry to eat a dog or a coyote. My beloved and noble Labrador smells like a garbage dump in Georgia........in August. However, the male coyote I killed the other day did not smell bad at all....a hint of muskiness but nothing really awful.

 

[tungularafishcamp]

The Filipinos in town here marinade and shiskabob dog and it is great, I try not to think about whose pup it was, of course that is is the same folks that eat balut soo.......

How bout it one of you coyote hunters wanna try it and let us know?

 

[N80]

Not sure what the infectious disease risk is for eating coyote. Distemper is a very common problem for coyotes but do not know if it is a pathogen for humans. Fortunately most communicable diseases are killed with adequate cooking and/or sufficient freezing.....except prions.

But just think of the pride and sense of accomplishment one would feel if he was the first one to discover that coyote was as good as pork! I suspect he would actually find that coyote was stringy, chewy and has just a hint of rotten road kill.

 

[J35]

It's been my experience that the only thing that will eat a coyote is maggot's.

When the trap line is working I get a good size carcass pile going back in the sticks, the bobcat's go first then the fox and the coyotes are left to the maggot's. The buzzards, eagles and hawks and skunk's leave them to rot.

When I was a teenager I kept three airedale x greyhound's to kill coyotes with.

I would bone out the coyotes that the dogs killed and boil the meat with cracked corn and wheat bran and feed that back to the dogs. They would have nothing to do with the raw meat.

good eating-- J

 

[Fi-Q]

A example of how coyote control can benefit deer is what happened on the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec, just north of the Maine border. In 1986, had a healthy herd of about 15,000 whitetails, and a low coyote population.

However, after several consecutive harsh winters — and extensive clear-cutting that eliminated traditional yarding areas — coyotes got the upper hand and wreaked havoc on the deer population.

By 1991, researchers estimated that only 500 deer remained on the peninsula. To save the herd, the province banned deer hunting, implemented strict logging regulations and implemented an aggressive coyote snaring program.

According to Noonan, 80 trappers were trained to snare coyotes, and they were instructed to focus their efforts on 80 percent of the remaining deer yards.

The plan worked. In just three years, the trappers caught 1,500 coyotes. Deer numbers rebounded, and by 1999, the peninsula had a population of more than 2,000 whitetails.

However, the coyote problem didn’t end there. When the snaring program was stopped for two years, the coyote population rebounded, and the deer population again decreased.

As a result, the peninsula instituted a subsidized trapping program that is still used today.

 

[cqaigy2]

A example of how coyote control can benefit deer is what happened on the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec, just north of the Maine border. In 1986, had a healthy herd of about 15,000 whitetails, and a low coyote population.

However, after several consecutive harsh winters — and extensive clear-cutting that eliminated traditional yarding areas — coyotes got the upper hand and wreaked havoc on the deer population.

By 1991, researchers estimated that only 500 deer remained on the peninsula. To save the herd, the province banned deer hunting, implemented strict logging regulations and implemented an aggressive coyote snaring program.

According to Noonan, 80 trappers were trained to snare coyotes, and they were instructed to focus their efforts on 80 percent of the remaining deer yards.

The plan worked. In just three years, the trappers caught 1,500 coyotes. Deer numbers rebounded, and by 1999, the peninsula had a population of more than 2,000 whitetails.

However, the coyote problem didn’t end there. When the snaring program was stopped for two years, the coyote population rebounded, and the deer population again decreased.

As a result, the peninsula instituted a subsidized trapping program that is still used today.

So if i understand it correctly, this low population of coyotes was able to deplete the depleted deer population. Maybe if they had a season on clear cutters?

 

[N80]

Maybe if they had a season on clear cutters?

I agree:thumbsup:....but that isn't the point. The point is that once the damage was done with bad winters, clear cutting and what sounds to be a HUGELY out of control coyote population (there were 500 deer left and yet they trapped 1,500 coyote), the only thing that could be managed in the short term was coyotes. And when the coyotes were managed the deer population was able to rebound but only to one seventh of its previous level. Then, as is almost always the case with predators, once the pressure is removed, the coyotes rebounded immediately and deer populations declined.

The real point is that it is possible, in some places and in certain conditions to manage coyote populations in such a way as to have a positive impact on deer populations.

I do not think that hunting them with guns could achieve this level of control unless every deer hunter was more focused on coyotes than deer....and even then I don't know.....

 

[westcliffe01]

I think that coyotes have to learn how to take down bigger game. Once they have mastered that, why should they go to the trouble of catching the smaller critters when 1 kill can probably keep them satisfied for over a week ? Then the population of the smaller rodents explodes too. If they wipe out the herd of the bigger critters, then they start back down the food chain of the smaller ones. So there is no immediate population "bust" when the deer numbers are down. Thats assuming there are no livestock around, else you are in trouble.

It seems that the only programs that have a massive impact on predator populations is shooting them from the air. They cannot be exterminated, but you can reduce the populations by 80-90% and make them super skittish about even showing themselves during the day. Using traps and snares is only viable when there are not other larger critters to get caught in the snares. The MI trapping regulations are very restrictive on snaring since the snare has to be weak enough to be broken if it were to catch a larger animal like a deer and at the same time it is not permitted to close too tight to choke the target species. Based on the rules, snares are one time use devices. And they have to be checked daily, else are illegal.

 

[dmccarty]

Last night I heard coyotes very near the house. At least two of them and they were chasing something. That something had to be a deer. There were running in an area in circles in a space that was about 1,000 feet long. I heard them and came back in the house to ask the wife if she had hear the coyotes when she was outside with the chickens. She said yes. I put on a coat, grabbed a pistol and a mag light and my oldest and I went to a trail intersection to wait to see if the show would pass us. The wife heard the coyotes to our SSW. I heard them circling down at the road which is to the SSE but the time we got back outside the chase was almost directly south of us and heading west. We got to the trail intersection and waited but the chase moved way to the west and we could just barely hear it. There are some thick pine stands to the west that have been thinned and have trails. From what I can hear it sounded like the chase followed our trails, hit the property line, maybe followed a property line that is somewhat cleared and then hit the pine stand trails. There is a road about a mile west and I think the chase crossed that road and went into some heavier woods.

I would guess the part of the chase we heard took place over an hour.

Later,
Dan