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