they use to eat my dads watermelons up here in Mississippi....they would even roll the melons out of the patch into the woods sometimes it they would roll them 50 foot or fauther....unreal...charlie

Charlie, that’s interesting that the coyotes rolled the melons. I’ve never heard of that before. In Saskatchewan, I’ve seen the damage caused by bears rolling on the oats in the fields. It made those areas a loss since you can’t combine oats that have been flattened. If they just ate the oats and didn’t roll on them the damage they caused would be much less. The interesting thing is that they never bothered the canola fields. Just the oat fields.

I had a farmer friend up there, called Snuffy, who just grew oats. He claimed that the bears did a lot of damage to his oats just before harvest and used to carry an ancient Winchester Model 94 on his tractor. He shot all he could that were within range and dragged them out of the fields and dumped them into the woods. When he heard that I had arrived in the small town, he would call my French Canadian friend Lawrence and tell him to send me over to shoot the bears.

I shot a total of only four over a couple of years before I decided not to shoot them anymore except for the somewhat rare cinnamon color phase. I got a cinnamon and never shot another bear. To me, it was just like shooting a big racoon, albeit with an incredible nose. I was watching a big boar bear in the fields and he was about 600 yards away but feeding toward my stand. I decided to take him when he got to the 200 yard range. I felt a momentary slight breeze on the back of my exposed neck. I thought no big deal, the bear was too far away to pick up my scent. I was wrong. In about a half minute his head went up into the air and he bolted into the woods.

The oat farmers up there don’t mind the coyotes. But bears are vermin to them.

Bears sure raise hell with corn fields around here. They wait for the corn to get in milk stage and then they can destroy a field in short order. Fields that border the woods are particularly venerable.

Pertaining to bears in the corn...



.

Dean, they shoot print that in the Parker Pages.

Maybe Harold.... We’ll see.





.

Tom:

Sorry I missed this. My load is a box load by Hornady 140 gr, Boat Tail Spire Point Interlock bullet. It has taken a bunch of coyotes and deer. Most all dead right there out of a New made Browning 1885 High wall.

I will offer another perspective, and not in the least to try to persuade those of a different opinion. I am a row crop farmer, have been my whole adult life. i grow corn, cotton, peanuts and occasionally soybeans. I do this to make a living, not for entertainment or sport. I own a good deal of the land I farm, but lease many other farms. The deer population in this part of GA is unbelievable to those who have never seen deer per acre this high. Much of the reason it is so high is the high quality food they have ......... my crops, and those of my neighbors.

I hunted deer as a sport for many years, but quit about 20 years ago. The numbers were such that it was not hunting anymore, but just shooting. Near the end it gave me as much pleasure as stepping on a cockroach. I ate what I killed, and enjoyed it, but no longer do (hunt for sport or eat them). Why? The sheer numbers of them have turned me against them in almost every way. They destroy many, many acres of crops of mine every year, costing me tens of thousands of dollars in income. Replanting is not an option. They will eat the replanted crop as fast, or faster, than the first. They are NOT a game animal anymore, IMO, but a nuisance. Vermin. No different from a rat that slips into the barn and eats the cow's feed. No different.

I can, and do, obtain depredation permits to kill them while they are about the business of eating my crops, during the growing season. I can't stop them all. But, I do my best. Coyotes do a better job of killing them than I ever can. A turkey hunter here found an occupied coyote den one spring and put a trail camera on it. The female 'yote brought 8 fawns in to her young to feed them that one spring. So ..........coyotes are my allies, and are protected on any land I have control over. Deer eat my crops and cost me thousands upon thousands every year, coyotes eat deer, so....... coyotes are my "friends".

I don't expect those of you who think you are doing the world a service by killing coyotes to understand. You shouldn't be expected to. You perceive that they are doing you a disservice by killing the deer you love to hunt. I don't expect a cattleman to change his mind either. I have seen, firsthand, what coyotes do to newborn calves. I'm just offering a different perspective. One man's meat is another man's poison.

SRH

Stan, that is a whole new perspective on coyotes. Certainly could not argue against that.

That is indeed a very interesting perspective that I have not heard before and, having been raised in farm country, much appreciate. Somehow, though, I just cannot imagine having too much fresh venison in my freezer! I think we should all show up en masse at Stans at some point, each of us pulling a small trailer or a pickup with a freezer and small Honda generator and have a cleansing deer drive.... all in the name of taking stress off Stan and his crops, of course! :p

Stan, I can certainly appreciate your perspective. The oat farmers I know in Canada have the same perspective on the bears. Also, on the property I hunt in NY, corn used to be grown for silage for the cattle. The deer did tremendous damage so we got crop damage permits from the NY DEC to use in September. The DEC came out and viewed the damage then took a rough estimate of the deer per acre on the property (I don't know how they did it). We got permits for the excess.

I'd go out evenings and kill four or five from the fields and then call the game warden to pick them up at the barn. One day I asked him what he was doing with the carcasses. He told me that they take them to a dump. I never turned in another deer after that. I shot them but I butchered them all and gave most of the meat away. It was a real chore processing the number of deer we were shooting but I just couldn't see them going to waste.

I tested a lot of different calibers and bullets back in those days from the .222 to 30-06. In the end, my favorite caliber for field shooting was the .243 with 100 grain bullets. I use mostly a .270 with 130 grain bullet now for everything from deer to moose. The .243 is too light for game larger than a deer or bear.

We had very few coyotes back then unlike now. We have fewer deer on the property than we did years back, but they average bigger and are probably better conditioned. Coyotes might be the reason why. I hate the thought of them killing deer but they are probably beneficial to our herd.

I understand about the loss of income, Is the land posted ? Here in NH the F&G dept. wont give out permits to thin out the deer if the land is posted. They want the hunters to help control the deer problem, up here xmas tree farms take a pounding when bucks rub up the trees. You should have hunters come in to help thin out the heard.
scott

Tom, we are allowed to shoot them at night, under permit, because that is the most efficient way to cull. I use a .300 Blackout on an AR platform with an ATN thermal scope. Head and neck shots only. Here is a short video filmed through one of our scopes showing the neck shot efficiency.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmuM5trgpL8&t=96s

Scott, the land is not posted, per se. In GA private land does not have to posted with "No Trespassing" or "No Hunting" signs to be considered posted. It is private land and it is understood that it is private unless one has written permission, on their person, to be there. I have hunters working at the problem. Problem is, very few will go to the effort to hunt if they can't have a chance at killing a big set of antlers. And, you don't kill old bucks by shooting the first doe that steps out.

It's a very big problem. The density per acre here is so high that I have actually let land go, and stopped leasing it to farm, because I'd lose $$$ on it every year due to deer predation. This may be hard to understand, but having a problem with feral hogs too, I'd take the hogs over the deer any day, if I could get rid of one or the other. I can put a pack of hog dogs on the sounder of hogs a couple times and those left will relocate themselves to another area. Deer won't leave until the last one is dead, and they often birth triplets here because the nutrition is so good.

SRH

The crop damage permits in NY, at least in the years we got them, were issued to the land owner to do with as he pleases. By law, we had to turn in each deer to the game wardens. I stopped doing that as I mentioned in another post.

Allowing hunting on the property might work and, then again, it may not. We considered it years ago but decided against it. The concern was damage to standing crops but the biggest issue was strangers on the land. The owner of the land and I both agreed that there was too much potential risk to opening the property. We have airplanes and farm equipment up there and turning strangers loose on the property to see all that was there wasn’t a good idea. We have had thefts over the years even though you have to enter the property on a long private dirt road and the airstrip and hangers are well back on the property. I lost my .243 field gun to theft.

We watch the property carefully, most days I am in the shop on the airstrip but people still sneak in. A few years ago I chased three guys who were deer hunting on the lower end of the property. They walked back to their car and then emptied their guns into the trees over my head. I could hear the slugs whistling. They were screaming F bombs at me. I had no idea who they were.

Permitting hunting might help solve the deer problem, but it could potentially open up other problems.

Nice video Stan. I don't know if we were allowed to shoot at night. I never asked. What I would do is drive to various fields in the evenings and shoot from the hood of the Jeep. I could usually take two deer from a field before they would dissappear into the woods. They would invariably run at the shot but some would stop at the wood line and look back. My favorite gun for this shooting was, as I mentioned, a .243 (later stolen). The .243 with 100 or 95 grain handloads usually put them down on impact if you shot high on the shoulder. I always aimed for the shoulder since some shots were long. They usually ran a bit if you shot lower on the shoulder or in the heart. I learned to place my shots higher.

There was an area next to the farm house that was thick and the deer were always in there. I shot this area in the morning with a high powered rifle till my friends wife complained that I was waking her up. I then went to a .22 magnum. I only took shots within 50 yards and aimed for the shoulder. Deer would usually only run about 50 yards or so. I never lost one. I picked my shots carefully. I'm not suggesting that the .22 magnum is a deer load but with shots well placed by a careful person, they did the job well.

Have airplane, will travel to shoot deer:corn:

Stan’s post is a good reminder that predator control has a situational aspect to a person’s opinions. Even the same animal separated by a relatively small distance can make it a kill on sight or ignore situation. I’ll apologise for the long post now, but I wanted to add my thoughts.

A few weeks ago someone on this site posted a picture of a litter of wolf pups that he and his co-workers would pass daily on their walk to a mine site. It reminded me of a similar litter of wolf pups that I’d park and watch while coming home from work near where I lived. Another member took exception to my post when I called the person who shot that litter of wolf pups an A-hole. He said a guy told him that wolves killed dogs in rural areas. Called me an enthusiastic uncontrolled wolf population A-Hole and implied I was vehemently anti-hunting. Then some more nonsense about spotted owls and trees. I have to admit I never read his post to the end and missed the name calling until I searched for the thread today. No matter, back to my point. The area I lived in was about 1200 square miles of mixed farmland and bush surrounded by a large area of government owned forest, the vast majority that was first growth. You could add Pennsylvania to the 6 New England states and fit them all in that area. Few roads, two towns, a few Metis settlements, and some First Nations reserves. Less than 20,000 people total. I lived on the northern edge of the farmland and wolves hit my neighbors hard. One night a nearby neighbor kicked his door open and shot two wolves while they were dragging his dog off the porch. My next door neighbors each lost several dogs to wolves. One of them heard llamas would protect livestock so he bought one and put it in with his horses. The wolves ate the llama in less than two weeks. The ½ mile buffer of cleared fields I kept between the house and the forest didn’t prevent them from coming up to the house, but I brought the dogs in at night and never lost one to wolves. We did lose one to a coyote. I'm glad my wife wasn't looking over my shoulder when I had Dean's pic of the coyote with the dog in his mouth on screen. I posted a few times on this site about when our Jack Russel terrier was killed by a coyote in our drive way. My wife loved that little dog and hardly stopped crying for a week. She'll still shed tears if she sees a picture of him.

Like all my neighbors I kept a rifle and ammo handy in case I got a crack at a wolf or coyote in the yard. At any time in the 25 years I lived there if there were a pack of wolves in my yard I would have killed them all if I had the chance. Not only would it be legal, the county would have, and still would, pay a $200 bounty for each adult shot on private land. A policy I whole heartedly support. Losing our dog led to my dusting off my predator calls and taking my 223 WSSM out to kill as many coyotes as possible around the house. I’m aware of the hypocrisy of carving farmland out of forest and then killing any predators that come onto MY land to do me or mine harm. The wolf pups I posted about lived in the forest area far from any residences or private property. Out there the ratio of predators and prey stays pretty much in balance, regardless of human intervention. Just because I would shoot a wolf or coyote in season while hunting that area doesn’t mean I’d illegally shoot a litter of pups. My wife had gone from accepting to tolerating my hunting as she almost morphed from neutral to an anti-hunting leaning over the course of our marriage. About a week after our dog was killed I wondered aloud about the effectiveness of an electronic predator call on sale in the Cabela’s flyer I was looking at. A week later it showed up. It’s just all situational.

A coyote killed a young girl in Los Angeles county over 20 years ago as reported on the evening news at the time. The sheriff came on and said although it was illegal to discharge a firearm in parts of the county anyone doing it to kill a coyote would not be charged.He had seen the body which was partially devoured.

I moved to Maryland(Deep Creek lake area) 3 years ago and was having some work done on my house. The contractor ask if I had ever seen a Fisher while trout fishing in some remote areas I go to. I said no and had to go look on the internet and see what they looked like. I live in the woods just off the main highway and see game almost everyday(Mainly deer-small game and the occasional Bear) I was looking out the door one day and noticed a strange creature in the back yard coming about 20 yards by the house. It was a fisher-the first one that I had ever seen. I don't know how aggressive they are towards humans but I really don't want to see one in the wild and find out. The contractor told me that at night they sound like babies crying and sitting out on my deck one night I heard that sound. I figure I might have a family of them close to the house but have only seen the fisher one time in the last 3 years.

We have a few panthers, some black, some brown, around here. They are the same cat as a cougar. They are highly efficient predators of deer and pigs. The cry of a panther is the most blood-chilling sound i've ever experienced. I was a kid, hunting 'coons at night near a big swamp, when I first heard it. It must have been within 100 yards, as loud as it was. It's been nearly sixty years since that night, but I recall it vividly, even now.

I lost all interest in 'coon hunting for awhile after that.........

SRH

Stan, does the Georgia DNR admit to cougars in your area, or are they like most other eastern states that deny it. With the advent of all these trail cameras, its hard to deny. I have had pts. show me trail cam pics of cougars here in eastern Ohio.
Was hunting in Marquette county of the UP one year and ran into a guy with his Brittany on a leash--told me he was up in the area I was headed to, and got a very eerie feeling, turned around to see a cougar crouched down and creeping up on him--he was white as a ghost and truly scared. The next year was a film clip of 2 cougars crossing Rt 95--it came from the cameras on the front of the Michigan Highway Patrol.

In the 80's when I worked in Boston and travelled Rte. 93 South every morning at 6:30 I was on my way in to work one morning when I saw what I thought was a smallish doe, dead up under the guard rail of the median. But as I drove past it and could see it from a different angle I discovered it wasn't a deer at all but was a cougar with the tail nearly as long as the body and the face of a cat. I should have stopped but the rush hour traffic was too intense.

I never heard or read a word about it on the TV news or the newspapers. It's as if the story was covered up.





.

They used to deny it. I haven't spoken to any of them about it in years. Not sure what their position is now. You're absolutely right about the trail cam evidence being overwhelming these days. Trail cams have been good for lots of things.

Panther numbers have been on a gradual increase here since the late 70s, IMO. Bald eagles, too.

Best, SRH

I’ve noticed a somewhat interesting situation on the property. Throughout the fall and early winter there were many coyotes on the property. Now, for some reason, they seem to be gone. We have a lot of snowmobile and horse trails throughout the property. I have been all over the property on a snowmobile but have not seen a coyote track since we got the heavy snows. The deer tracks are thick in every area of the property, but no coyote tracks. I’m at a loss to explain it.

Look around the deer yards, if you have any in the area.





.

We don't have deer yards. The snow is not high enough for them to start yarding up. It's been about fifty years since I've seen deer yards on the property. We lost a lot of deer that year, the only year I can remember with major losses.

I caught one yearling deer. She wasn't hard to catch. I wanted to save her so I placed her in the barn with a lot of feed. She died the next day. Stressing her out to catch her probably didn't help. I wouldn't do that again.

There has been a number of reports of cougars here in Alaska. Can't remember if there are any pics.

I bet the rabbit population is down the reason the coyotes have moved on to other places or else distemper has killed them off....charlie

It's hard to figure Charlie, with as many deer as there are in the area. Rabbit populations were pretty high this year as were squirrels. I would imagine that a lot of their food is rabbits and squirrels. But with all the deer I would have expected them to stick around all winter. I'll be watching to see if they return in the spring.

Turkey season isn't that far away and I'm already geting excited. I generally don't shoot turkeys in the fall although I get pleanty of chances when bowhunting deer. But the spring gobbler season really gets me going.

If I may suggest.... perhaps your population was hit hard by mange. That could provide a heavy die off if the weather has been bad enough. We have seen it here in Southernmost Illinois.

Could be Bruce. I have mixed emotions about them leaving the area. On one hand I am happy that they are not taking any deer, but on the other hand, I have a feeling that they are helping to keep the deer herd in check. But I do hate the thought of them killing deer. It's probably a bad way to die.

I am the only one who seriously hunts the property. There's no way I can keep them in check, especially since I don't like to take the does. None of the land around the property is hunted, so if we get a bad winter, I can envision some problems. Starvation is a bad death. I have seen large scale starvation once, I don't want to see it again.

Here's a big blonde female I saw today. She looks very well fed and had no fear of me.



.

Dean,
That almost looks like a coy-dog mix. Do you have those?
In Northern NYS I have seen them.
Bob Jurewicz

Could that be a dog cross Dean??

She is a pretty good example of one of the color variations of the Eastern Coyote. I posted these pics on FB yesterday and have had hundreds of comments from folks calling it a yellow lab, a husky, a shepherd-yellow lab mix, a coywolf, a coydog, and a few more but people are adamant that it can't be a coyote because it is too pretty, too fluffy, too big, too well-fed... ad nauseum. I have seen coyotes that look just like this in Vermont where I spend about all of my hunting time. A trapper there trapped a 64 lb. female that looked just like this one about 4 years ago. He said the blonde ones don't fetch as much $$.

In any case, just for the heck of it I looked up the terms coy-wolf, coywolf, coy-dog, coydog and any variation I could think of and they all came back with basically the same thing - those terms are not scientific but represent the thoughts of rural folks who attempt to describe coyotes with the attributes of the Eastern Coyote, which over thousands of years has developed through cross-breeding with other canine species to what it is today. So, it is what it is - a big blonde Eastern Coyote.





.

The Eastern coyotes come in all sorts of colors. One of the reasons their pelts generally do not bring as much. Too hard to match colors. I've seen blonde, red, and charcoal black in addition to the more common grey. I once caught a red that was colored just about like a red fox except it lacked the black legs and white tail tip. It as unique and quite stunning. Take a look at a pack of grey wolves and you will see the same color variations.

Dean:

Thats a yote. Crossbred, no doubt, but a coyote no doubt.

I dont know how much you may have read on the subject of coyotes but it would seem that based on genetic findings a good percentage of the Eastern strain has cross bred with "other canine" species.... dogs and wolves.

Evidently the opinion of the same kind of experts who denied there are panthers in GA years ago, after i'd seen them alive. If "they" say the EC has developed through cross-breeding with other canine species, I wonder why did it stop doing that?

I have personally trapped animals that I am sure were a cross between a dog (German Shepherd, in one particular case I remember) and a coyote. They don't even act like a coyote in a steel trap. A coyote turns it's head away from you when you approach it in a trap. A coy-dog is aggressive and growls and bares it's teeth at you. JME.

SRH

I dunno Stan - Did I ever say they had stopped doing that?

I will say though Stan that we are far, far less likely to see a coyote that exhibits any "coy-dog" attributes than we are likely to see a coyote that looks like a plain ol' Eastern Coyote. The one I pictured looks like a lot of other blonde Eastern Coyotes I have seen, admittedly she is the biggest I've seen.

I will say that a lot of the guys I know both in VT as well as Maine and NH refer to all coyotes as "coy dogs" just like a lot of folks say "fisher cats" and "Canadian geese."





.

No Dean, i didn't say you said that. My point is that if the so called experts you quoted have decided that the Eastern Coyote has become what it is because of cross-breeding with other canine species there is no reason to think they have stopped cross breeding with other canine species which, obviously, include dogs.

I do not believe, and did not insinuate that, the canine you pictured is a coy-dog. At least it doesn't look like any of them I have ever seen up close. The coy-dogs I have seen all had a much more "doggy" looking head than a pure coyote. For every coy-dog I've ever seen up close I have seen hundreds of brindled yellow/brown looking plain ol' coyotes. They are probably rare, but I'm convinced they do exist, regardless what the "experts" say. It's not only about looks. As I said earlier, IMO coy-dogs are much more defensive, even aggressive, than 'yotes.