Up at our cabin this year, the coyotes have been alot more brazen than I have seen them in the past. Our community is a mixture of flat pasture land, and foothills. My place is up towards the top of the community.
They have always been around, with lots of dens in the washes running down through the pastures below. It was common to hear them yipping all night and on quiet mornings, I would sit with my coffee and enjoy their calls.
This year, they've moved up the hillside as several families (including us) have new puppies this year. My cousin walked out of her trailer to find a coyote trying to figure his way into her dog run and get at her small dogs.
Saturay morning, our pups woke us up wanting to go outside. My wife got up to open the door and let them out. I immediately heard a coyote howl not far from us. I jumped up and told her to put them pups back in the trailer so I could investigate. The howling was maybe 150 yards up the hill, and nonstop. I'm just glad our pups didn't take off to investigate.
I got up and got dressed, went outside to see if I could pinpoint where they were. I got an idea of where they were, and started working towards the sound. I made my way up off my lot, onto my neighbors' who has a small saddle between two hills on his lot. I would only move when the coyote was howling, so he wouldn't hear me moving in. The area is heavily wooded, so visibility is limited. I got to about 100 feet of where he was howling when he must have heard (or smelled) me and stopped all the racket and vanished.
It's my opinion that there were probably two or more coyotes up there trying to lure our pups into a trap. My brother and I decided to go the next morning and see if we could call them in and take care of least part of the problem. We hikes up into the saddle and called for half an hour to no avail. It was real quiet. We later talked to another neighbor down off the other side of the saddle, and he had some action in the wee hours that morning- They were sitting up around the campfire around 2 am, when they heard a ruckus out on the road near their place. They jumped in the truck to see what was going on, and found 5 coyotes surrounding a deer in the road. The coyotes were focused on their prey, and didn't even care that the truck had pulled up. After he tried to shoot one of them, they scattered and the deer got away.
I think the coyotes got skittish and cleared out, thus we had no luck four hours later when we tried to call them in. This weekend we are going more prepared.
They have always been around, with lots of dens in the washes running down through the pastures below. It was common to hear them yipping all night and on quiet mornings, I would sit with my coffee and enjoy their calls.
This year, they've moved up the hillside as several families (including us) have new puppies this year. My cousin walked out of her trailer to find a coyote trying to figure his way into her dog run and get at her small dogs.
Saturay morning, our pups woke us up wanting to go outside. My wife got up to open the door and let them out. I immediately heard a coyote howl not far from us. I jumped up and told her to put them pups back in the trailer so I could investigate. The howling was maybe 150 yards up the hill, and nonstop. I'm just glad our pups didn't take off to investigate.
I got up and got dressed, went outside to see if I could pinpoint where they were. I got an idea of where they were, and started working towards the sound. I made my way up off my lot, onto my neighbors' who has a small saddle between two hills on his lot. I would only move when the coyote was howling, so he wouldn't hear me moving in. The area is heavily wooded, so visibility is limited. I got to about 100 feet of where he was howling when he must have heard (or smelled) me and stopped all the racket and vanished.
It's my opinion that there were probably two or more coyotes up there trying to lure our pups into a trap. My brother and I decided to go the next morning and see if we could call them in and take care of least part of the problem. We hikes up into the saddle and called for half an hour to no avail. It was real quiet. We later talked to another neighbor down off the other side of the saddle, and he had some action in the wee hours that morning- They were sitting up around the campfire around 2 am, when they heard a ruckus out on the road near their place. They jumped in the truck to see what was going on, and found 5 coyotes surrounding a deer in the road. The coyotes were focused on their prey, and didn't even care that the truck had pulled up. After he tried to shoot one of them, they scattered and the deer got away.
I think the coyotes got skittish and cleared out, thus we had no luck four hours later when we tried to call them in. This weekend we are going more prepared.
