Time to Thin the Pack - Coyote Hunting

Am Shooting Journal ^ | 6/9/20 | J Dickson

[w1n1]

Given their game-, livestock- and pet-killing ways, booming numbers, spring’s prime time to hunt coyotes. - Coyotes are most prone to prey on pets and livestock in the spring because this is when they are having to feed their pups. They breed around mid-February and have their pups 63 days later in mid-April. At first, the female stays in the den with the pups and the male hunts and brings food back to her in the den. Later, they both hunt and feeding all those hungry mouths becomes an intense full-time job for both of them.

Any farm livestock that they can bring down is on their shopping list. They have been known to snatch small dogs that were on a leash, come up on porches and even go through pet doors to kill pets inside the house.
This is also a very bad time to leave babies and toddlers outside, as coyotes have been known to attack small children. So far the only confirmed fatalities are 3-year-old Kelly Kleen in Glendale, California, and 19-year-old Taylor Mitchell in Nova Scotia, Canada, but it’s important to realize that the coyote is technically a small species of wolf.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN hunting, you need to be aware of how to tell a dog from a coyote, lest you shoot someone's pet by mistake. There are three coyote identifying features. Their nose is very sharp, narrow, long and pointed for sticking down holes after ground squirrels and other burrowing animals. The tail is bushy like a fox instead of like a dog's tail. The ears are sharp and pointy, never drooping over like some dogs' do. Coyote tracks are more oval and compact than a dog’s and they have less prominent claw marks in their tracks. The tracks will go in more of a straight line than a dog's will.

Coyotes also have a big home range, just like timber wolves, and may only show up in a given area once every several days. While everyone knows they are there when they are howling, they actually don’t howl most of the time. You may not know they are there until they strike and the chicken you had planned for Sunday dinner or your Christmas goose is gone. At all times, there are three types of coyotes out there: territorial adults, this year’s pups, and adolescents looking to establish their own territory.

THE COYOTE IS not native east of the Mississippi River. The bridges spanning the great waterways and the removal of the timberwolf, the coyote’s nemesis, have enabled it to spread outside its former range. The highly adaptable predator definitely needs to be pushed back to its former range and out of the eastern states, where it constitutes an invasive species. It should be noted that some coyotes were introduced to the east by a fox hunting club wanting something for their hounds to chase. There needs to be heavy penalties for stocking non-indigenous game in the wild, as these well-heeled gents are not deterred by normal fines. Read the rest of coyote hunting.

[Lurker]

Year round season on them here in Illinois.

L

[RayChuang88]

Good luck trying to thin coyote packs. Despite aggressive hunting and trapping campaigns, they're actually more common now than back in the 1800's.

[fireman15]

My parents lose a few calves to them every year and it has been getting worse. Around here they eat all the squirrels, bunnies and cats. Then the mice population takes off.

They were a rarity when I was a kid, now we see them fairly frequently.

[Magnum44]

Same in CO. No license required.

[JBW1949]

“...THE COYOTE IS not native east of the Mississippi River...”

The Cherokee say the coyote travels a thousand year circle around our country...

[katana]

Same here in Ohio. No limit vermin, year round. And there are evenings when the howls sound very close and like a large pack. Our dogs, 50 and 70 lbs. respectively, are kept or brought inside to sit nervously listening. Park rangers have told us to never let dogs on a leash get away into the woods. They’ll get snagged and immobile, easy prey.

[JimRed]

I kind’a hoped it meant hunting the other coyotes...the ones who help illegals into our country.

[smvoice]

Oh. I thought you meant...uh...nevermind..

[Dutch Boy]

In NY you need a hunting license. The hunting season is Oct 1 through Mar 29.

I hear them occasionally in the woods by my house and once saw a pack in my front yard. A few can be seen as roadkill. We have some feral cats near us. I am waiting for them to sweep though again.

[EC Washington]

We live near a creek with ducks - the Coyotes cleaned out all of the nests and killed/ate the ducklings.

[curdogmen]

after raccoon season we’ll use our curdogs to decoy coyotes..so much fun a dog will decoy a pack of coyotes right to you..any dog can be taught to do this...this year in our state they might be adding night hunting with nightvision season for coyotes..so easy even this old guy can do it

[JD_UTDallas]

They like water features. McKinney is over run with the yotes we live on a golf course and they walk with impunity down the street and through yards to and from the water ponds. They trip my motion sensor lights and CCTV all the time. To bad city ordinance forbids discharging a firearm. My 300AAC would make short work of them on the quiet. Out in open country we callem in with electronic calls and blast them with 22_250s or in my case 25_06 85gr 3300+fps makes for an impressive redmist show.