Coyote Lore

I once visited a man in Texas who was paid by his county to kill coyotes. He used a spring loaded thing that looked like a tent stake and was driven into the ground like a tent stake. It had a felt washer/trigger at the top which was painted with the bait (meat he put in a one gallon pickle jar and sat it in the hot sun to decompose to a liquid state). The projectile was a capsule of cyanide. The coyote seldom made it more than 50 yards from the POI (point of ingestion).

He told me about coyotes and pretty much indicated that once you have them you will never get rid of them. Their litter size increases with the food supply and low populations (competition). And of course decreases with reduced food and higher populations.

But the key point he made is that we kill the stupid ones and the smart ones remain to produce larger litters which are harder to outsmart and kill. And the result is that we will never get rid of them.

Makes sense to me!

good logic

I read an article maybe QDMA publication (can not recall ) that said a few scientific studies have confirmed that basic idea.
They also say that when you kill a coyote that one or two more move in to fill its spot (it has something to do with their complex social structure
killing a few here and there makes it worse. you have to downright slaughter them or leave them be
but I am no expert that is just something I read in a magazine over the summer

Yeah, I've read similar articles but I'm not convinced. As Knotwild said, there is a finite carrying capacity for each critter. WE may be making them smarter, but I don't believe the 2 for 1 deal.

injun joe said:

Yeah, I've read similar articles but I'm not convinced. As Knotwild said, there is a finite carrying capacity for each critter. WE may be making them smarter, but I don't believe the 2 for 1 deal.

Click to expand...

I believe a good trapper will catch smart ones too. Yote's will adapt to new situations though. They are awesome creatures.

He was probably talking about one of these, a 1080.




I am currently reading "hoofbeats of a wolfer" by L. Craig O'Gorman.

They have shot them, poisioned them, trapped them, denned them, EVERYTHING they can do to get rid of them in eastern montana for DECADES and they STILL have them. And that is in an area with very few trees compared to here. He has personally trapped/killed going on to 40,000 animals total, mostly coyotes. This is ONE GUY among many in that area.

Think about that. They're here and not going anywhere.

T

Throwback is right, it was a 1080. I wish I could find the pictures I had of the coyotes he killed. He laid them out in rows at the rancher's gates so they could see he was earning his pay. One gate had about 25 laid out in varying stages of decomposition. His name was Harold Broughton and he also built custom rifles and made barrels. He could smoke em with a rifle too!

You are referring to a cyanide bomb (the 1080 above). They are lethal on coyotes. When I grew up in South Dakota, the coyotes would get so thick, they would start to kill a lot of livestock. To control them, Federal game wardens swarmed the state setting these babies by the thousands. These bombs erradicate coyotes. They were mindful of balance of nature and only used the number of bombs that were required to reduce coyote populations to a manageable level. When Nebraska paid a bounty on coyotes ($5 each), they took the lower jaw as proof for the bounty so that they didn't double pay. The meat of the lower jaw would be yellow if the coyote died of cyanide poisoning. These things were highly effective and could just about wipe out coyote if any state DNR actually wanted to do such a crazy thing. They like to maintain a reasonable balance of preditors because it actually helps other prey populations grow. Although I saw many dead coyotes resulting from these, I heard of no incidents of dog deaths or child deaths resulting from the bombs. The game wardens were very good about locating them where only coyotes would find them.

Mr. Broughton (the guy who used the 1080s) carried an antedote kit with him. He said the only time he used it was once on a calf that had tripped the trigger for some reason. The calf survived.

I think that using them in my area would result in a lot of coon, possum, dgo, and bobcat losses.

I am not sure we always understand nature's balance when taking predators. I have several friends that manage for quail and the prevaling line of thought at one time was to kill all predators, especially hawks. But one older man told me about a war he waged and won on hawks many years ago and the end result was that the woodrat population grew exponentially. As a result the quail population dropped dramatically.

I do believe Mr. Broughton's observations that we will never be rid of them.

Throwback said:

He was probably talking about one of these, a 1080.

I am currently reading "hoofbeats of a wolfer" by L. Craig O'Gorman.

They have shot them, poisioned them, trapped them, denned them, EVERYTHING they can do to get rid of them in eastern montana for DECADES and they STILL have them. And that is in an area with very few trees compared to here. He has personally trapped/killed going on to 40,000 animals total, mostly coyotes. This is ONE GUY among many in that area.

Think about that. They're here and not going anywhere.

T

Click to expand...

Slim Peterson did this also told me he even shot them out of planes and helicopter's did what ever it took to kill them for the sheep framers but just kept them thinned out never got rid of them

does this coyote bomb explode or inject ? I looked it up on google and it just told of what it was used for and the effectiveness . I take it they dont use these things anymore ?

They pop a cyanide capsule in the coyote's mouth. They seldom go more than 50 feet after that.