Officials React to Coyote Infestation in Massachusetts

AmmoLand ^ | January 5, 2023 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

In 2022, the officials of Nahant, Massachusetts, started noticing they had a coyote problem. The coyotes had become so disdainful of people they had snatched, killed and eaten three pets directly from leashes. Numerous other pets were killed and eaten. No one knows precisely how many.  From December 15, 2022,  abcnews.go.com:

Local officials said eight to 12 coyotes inhabit Nahant, a densely settled town of about 3,300 people on a peninsula about 15 miles north of Boston. The animals have killed pets, including three that were taken straight from leashes held by their owners, said Antonio Barletta, the town administrator.

Coyote populations are on the rise all over the country. They are causing problems, killing pets and livestock and even attacking the occasional person, from California to Texas to now Massachusetts.  Several coyote attacks against people prompted a program to reduce the coyote population in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Nahant town officials decided they needed to reduce the coyote population. They decided to hire federal agents from the Department of Agriculture. From cbsnews.com:

The town of Nahant will become the first community in Massachusetts to bring in trained marksmen to shoot and kill habituated coyotes. Town officials voted Wednesday night to enter into an agreement with the United States Department of Agriculture.

“We have risen to a level of public safety threat in the town,” said resident Vivien Gere who lost her dog Snoopy to an aggressive coyote back in June. “I had him on a short leash and the coyote just took him off the leash and slaughtered him and ran off with him right in front of me.”

[marktwain]

Coyotes are doing what all animals try to do: Be fruitful and multiply.

True.

This also applies to Mosquitoes, flys, bed bugs, Cholera bacteria, rats, mice, starlings, wood ticks, and every other pest which cause great problems and grief.

When those things become large problems, we refer to them as infestations.

[SamAdams76]

Hard to shoot those things with a shotgun however.

[marktwain]

Most of them. But many rats and starlings are shot with shotguns.

[M Kehoe]

Hi.

Coyotes are on the rise in the Bay area. We see them a lot, even during the day.

5.56mm

[Southern_Republican]

I watched it on Crackle back last summer.

[Hootowl99]

Yep…. Ditto everything you described about the Blue Ridge in North Carolina. I'm in the far southwest corner of the state. Live in a cabin in the mountains and have about 20 neighbors within a 1/2 mile radius with half or more of those being 2nd homes that are normally unoccupied most of the year.

I've never heard or seen coyotes in this patch of forest but it's logical that there are a few. Camping out of Robinsville, there seem to be a lot of coyote packs. They really party up a storm at night with yeps and howls.

Wild camping in the Tellico River area, I've heard bobcat numerous times at night and seen one once. Bobcat are real shy and avoid people. Also, I come across wild turkey occasionally. Owls serenade at night.

Several full time neighbors made a point to stop and say hello when I first moved here. Who's the new guy kind of thing. Most of them advised carrying a sidearm when outside because of black bears. I do. The bears around here don't really hibernate over the winter, just sleep a lot then go wandering around for a bit. ZERO trash is stored outside. Supposedly there is a wolf pack with a territory about 5 miles and several mountains away from the cabin.

I imagine that the only predators that actually live near me would be coyote and fox. Most of the residents have a large dog such as a German Shepard. This tends to keep coyotes away. There's a big fat raccoon on that visits routinely at night and a possum is around occasionally. Deer are numerous like jack rabbits since predators are not as common around me.

In primitive regions, the mountain folk are in the forest year round with their hunting dogs, usually hounds and beagles.

[SamAdams76]

My point was that coyotes (and other backyard pests like deer) used to be easily dealt with back when most households had a rifle or shotgun. The "hunting" culture is fading away, especially in the urban areas and Nahant is just outside Boston proper.

People used to shoot deer just to have meat in the freezer. Not sure that coyote meat makes for good eating but they would just get shot down so they didn't eat the chickens, pet dogs and such. Good way to teach a young kid how to handle a rifle. Send him out there to shoot a few coyotes. Problem solved.

That's in the more rural areas. For urban areas, maybe not practical to send a kid out into the neighborhood. But there are other ways to trap and kill coyotes.

[marktwain]

Thanks for the clarification.

[GQuagmire]

was by there recently those towers still there.

[GQuagmire]

im sure they walk at night on the beach with out being seen. Also when i was a kid there were no wild turkeys around this area that I saw (North Shore). Now they are everywhere

[FamiliarFace]

Yes, coyotes gotta eat, too, but not my cats, please! My first experience with them at this house was hearing them at night once, they were feasting on something. The sounds were chilling. I discovered the carcass of a white tailed deer on our property about a week later when I had time to investigate.

Then a few years ago, I found this fella and two of his friends sniffing out where our cats used to hang out when they went outside.

After that, our cats were never allowed outside again until we could give them a safe place. Besides coyotes, we have to worry about other predators here, like an occasional bobcat, but plenty of hawks, and a couple of owls. We opted to build a cat enclosure on our deck that they can get to through a window. It has a cat door that leads to a tunnel to get inside the cat enclosure. They love it. They use it year round, and when we leave for vacation, they aren’t stuck inside. Everyone’s happy.

Here are some photos of it from inside the house, and what it looks like on the deck.

If anyone is interested in info about a cat enclosure like this, let me know. I’m happy to share what we’ve come up with as a solution.

[gundog]

Foxes and coyotes will run right past people go get where they wanna be.

[wardaddy]

When I was a boy in the 60s I lived in Central Mississippi and we had a Lakehouse across the river in Louisiana at Lake Bruin just south of Vicksburg and we would see coyotes and armadillos but back then never east of the river

It’s a big ass river there now those sons of bitches are in Central Park I hear at times and I’ve seen coyotes in downtown Nashville it’s amazing very smart dogs

I’ve tried to call them in to shoot them at my Deer camp and you cannot get them to come in except on open terrain they always circle around to get behind the wind

[Dr. Franklin]

Coyotes can easily climb over a six foot fence, which is frequently the height limit on fences set by municipal ordinance. Coyotes can easily climb a six foot fence and are a danger to not just small pets but also babies and small children. Don’t rely on that low fence to keep anything in the back yard safe from coyotes.

[wardaddy]

When I was a boy in the 60s I lived in Central Mississippi and we had a Lakehouse across the river in Louisiana at Lake Bruin just south of Vicksburg and we would see coyotes and armadillos but back then never east of the river

It’s a big ass river there now those sons of bitches are in Central Park I hear at times and I’ve seen coyotes in downtown Nashville it’s amazing very smart dogs

I’ve tried to call them in to shoot them at my Deer camp and you cannot get them to come in except on open terrain they always circle around to get behind the wind

[wardaddy]

Coyotes give my Rottweilers a wide berth but a female Coyote in heat will allow them to mount her

[rlmorel]

I am so jealous. My wife would be a nervous wreck, but I would live up there in the most severe storms!

[Varda]

I don’t think anyone has used that definition of species in many decades. Coyotes and wolves are considered separate species in the same genus. At self sustaining numbers, they’re two independent gene pools. Many species in related genomes will hybridize if there is a lack of mates. Add to that that genus Canis is more likely to speciate by hybridization than others and you get a new species in the Coywolf.

[vetvetdoug]

A friend of mine was a Memphis LE and saw coyotes crossing the Hernando DeSoto Bridge regularly at night. This was in the 70’s and just West of Memphis we didn’t have a coyote problem then. The Corinth PD shot a male coyote in front of the Courthouse back in 84’ early on a Sunday morning that I estimated weighed almost 90 pounds. It had been grazing upon small dogs and cats in the city and was well fed. I’ve shot dozens of them on my farm eight miles North of Corinth over the years and before I left they instinctively gave the fields around my home a wide berth as I used a Remington 700 Police Sniper .308 to routinely pick them off around three hundred yards from my back porch. None were as large as the one killed in town. These days stray cats and small dogs are just fare for the coyotes. I did notice the rabbit population has come back though. The people that bought my farm don’t shoot coyotes and have lost chickens, pets, goats, and rabbits...

[Redcitizen]

“ I often want to tell all the little old ladies feeding all the feral cats around here, that they’re not really feeding the cats, they’re feeding the coyotes.”

Circle of life.