My wife is divorcing me over coyotes

[woodswolf1]

We've been keeping an eye on the coyotes around here in central IN. Personally, live and let live. They leave me alone, I leave them alone. But about 18 years ago, they got out of hand. They had mixed with feral dogs and were not human-shy. People were being chased, small animals and even some livestock were being killed. The farmers thinned them out pretty good. Now they are more cautious. You rarely hear them yip, and then only around 2am and for short periods. I know they skirt my fenced woods and I know where they are there. My two malamutes will stare intently into the thicket outside the fence, tracking movement. But they stay on the porch. Anything else would have been chased. I have a hole in my fence close to their path, so I usually carry a 45 when out at night aways from the house. No point in being careless. I love animals and I adore dogs, but I won't tolerate an attack on me or mine.

 

[RonMar]

I just started reading this thread a few days ago so thought this was a coincidence. Looks like our local pack moved back into the area. It finally got warm up here in the NW and we slept with the window open for the first time last night. About 1:30 this morning we were woke up by the noise. There were a lot of them and what sounded like quite a few pups trying out their voice. I hadn't heard them since last fall. I have recently started finding droppings around my property loaded with small animal fur, which is normal as they keep the gophers in check and I have a lot of those. I see occasional small game(and their young) so the Coyotes have not exceed their habitat's ability to support them. The deer are still moveing regularly and the local doe's have had fawns that have matured every year for the past several years. I have not heard of any local pets or livestock dissappearing and have only seen 1 Coyote in the past 5 years. All sounds about normal. I did hear a lot of distinct voices last night so that might be an indication that things are changeing but only time will tell.

 

[rox]

Ronmar,
Nature seems to be in balance by you. Your wife might feel a wee bit uncomfortable if that pack was right underneath your open bedroom window. In a previous post the original poster said that the coyotes were right under his bedroom window and on his porch. Then a month or so later he posted this latest post.

 

[greatrandini]

Do they have coyotes in France? Ur talking about a 20-30 lb canid. Not really very dangerous. (if they are healthy)....They are like group foxes? Maybe? Mostly timid little scavenger/preditors that eat rodents and dead things.....Wild pigs are about 10 times more dangerous and some of the guys on this forum hunt pigs with a knife.... Merci.....

 

[rox]

I do need to post my recent wild pig recent experience, but I'll go find a pig thread and post it there.

 

[Michael_E_Tx]

I guess we are fortunate to have normal behaving coyotes. For the three years we've been on our place, we've always seen plenty of coyote scat on our roads. In fact my wife judges harvest time for wild raspberries by her observation of coyote scat on the way down to the gate to get the mail. We've only ever seen but a couple, in very fleeting moments.

I know there are many around us, as we frequently hear what we think of as the chorus of the coyotes. Sometimes their calls are quite ordinary, but other times, they are outrageous in the variations they can come up with. Sometimes they sound quite far away, I have no idea really how far. But other times I know they are quite close. When they are in the pond ravine near our house, they are quite loud and their sounds reverberate in the ravine.

Not only are these "choruses" made up of many individuals, sometimes it sounds like 10-20, but there are separate groups that will call back and forth, say one from the southeast, another from the north.

It's quite fascinating when you aren't threatened. I hope that never changes for us.

Mike

 

[EddieWalker]

Guess I should amend my previous post about shooting everything on sight.

I took in one stray that showed up on Christmas day. That didn't work out, but we're not against dogs or anything. It was just a one time incident that we were not comfortable with, so we got rid of the dog.

A few months ago we woke up to a large puppy on our front door. It was scared and hungry, so we fed it and brought it to the animal shelter.

I saw a white poodle walk across my pasture awhile ago. It was moving right along and seemed to be in a hurry to get someplace. I watched it go on it's way.

I don't care eithere way about killing an animal. If it has to be done, I do it. If not, I let it go. Same with hunting. I let more legal deer go than I shoot by a huge margin. There is no thrill in just killing a deer for me, but in outsmarting an old, mature buck. That's different.

I don't care for fur coats for myself, but do admire them on women. It's something that I find very attractive, but it's very doubtful that I'll ever spend the money for one to give to Steph. It's just not our thing.

I did read someplace that coyote fur is the only fur that snow wont stick to. It was used for allot of years for this purpose in winter coats. Then it became unfashoinable along with the discovery of synthetics that did the same thing. When coyote fur was used, there was a price on their pelts. Lot's of people shot and trapped them for their fur and their population levels were way down. Other animal levels went up and things got out of balance.

It seems to me that we're doing allot better job of managing our wildlife and herd levels of deer are doing better than expected in most places. Coyote populations are also doing very well!!!

I might not be accurate on the ones we saw weighing 40 pounds. That was just a guess based on Steph's son. He weighs 40 pounds and the two we saw the other night looked about his size. Hard to tell for sure, but I bet I'm close by 5 pounds.

In California they outlawed the killing and hunting of Mt Lions. Since then, lion attacks have been way up. They have been coming into towns and cities, killing pets and even a few people. They have lost their fear of humans and come into contact on a regular basis.

It seems to me that if there was a hunting season, then they would have the fear of humans back in their thinking and we'd have fewer attacks. Right now the Department of Fish and Game kill more lions per year on depridation permits from promlem cats then at any time there was a hunting season. We wont even get into the money spent to protect a species that is overpopulated that you have to hire professionals to kill versus having hunters buy a tag that only sees a very small percentage that actually kill an animal, but generates revenue to the state.

The same thing will happen with coyotes if left unchecked. Let them run wild, but when they come into contact with people and start to lose their respect and fear of us, and you will have problems. It's just a matter of time.

Shoot the first one that gives you concern, and the others will get the message. Otherwise, I enjoy hearing them sing and night and watching them out in the wild.

Eddie

 

[RonMar]

Ronmar,
Nature seems to be in balance by you. Your wife might feel a wee bit uncomfortable if that pack was right underneath your open bedroom window. In a previous post the original poster said that the coyotes were right under his bedroom window and on his porch. Then a month or so later he posted this latest post.

A Coyote so bold as to break into song under my bedroom window or on my porch would soon be making music with a Harp...

As I said back in my first post on page 1 of this discussion, a Coyote without a healthy fear of man or a domestic dog gone wild is a DANGER and must be dealt with immediately!

I just thought it funny that I started reading about Coyote problems and they showed up here

 

[rox]

Ron,

The thread has gone on for a while so I guess I musta forgot about your earlier post. I was really frightened on that first page when I posted.

I agree with everybody else, as long as they stay on their side of the tree line on my poroperty they would be okay. Once they loose their fear of humans well then... NOT okay.

 

[JimMorrissey]

PB,

Certainly no offense here.......but I wouldn't believe anything (of this nature) that hasn't come from a well recognized journal that has a high quality peer/literature review.....state/federal agency or a university. Everything else is suspect. People can write whatever they want in books and on the Web. That is not the case for scientific journals. Just my opinion anyway.