I thought this would be the best place to ask. They continue to get braver, may have eaten all the local wild bunnies, and have apparently decided that my barn cats (they all hunt out at night) are fair game. They have no natural predators around here, and I love nature and understand the food chain, but, I want them gone or at least thinned out. Since 40 acres is hardly enough to offer the local hunt for a fixture, what’s my next option, save sitting out on the hill with a rifle at the top and a chicken on a chain at the bottom?
Can you lock your barn cats up at night? That may be the only way to save them.
Easy, give your cats a safe place at night.
Call your state wildlife department, local sheriff, your mail carrier, gun shop, or the local busy-body and ask them if they know of a hunter who will call the coyotes in and shoot them.
Lock your cats up at night.
We had a lot of coyotes last year (read: 5 mamas, with pups, and assorted family). That would have been a lot of adults in the neighbourhood. Our meighbour shot one mama trying to teach her cubs to corner and kill sheep. When I lost 13 vaccinated, neutered feral barn cats, I called in the neighbourhood hunter. He came with a friend and two coyotecall whistles. With the friend quietly and strategically placed at the edge of our bush, he used the whistle. When the coyote came out to investigate the strange “coyote” the other hunter killed them with one shot. I believe they had five hides altogether when the coyotes moved to another den, and I have not had one barn cat since December, out hunting mice in my orchard. I second the “call a professional hunter” idea. Keeping feral barn cats confined doesn’t work too well.
Wow, we have a pretty big pack of coyotes here cause the local feral cat savior has “rescued” over 100 of them and let them go around her farm a mile from here. Didn’t ask any of her neighbors if we wanted kitties everywhere, however the coyotes have pretty much gotten rid of all the cats, so none have shown up here on our farm. We have tons of bunnies. Hawks are tougher on the bunny population than coyotes, cats are the worst. Actually they are the toughest on the bird population. We love our blue birds and quail.
The problem wih having the local hunter come trap or shoot the coyotes is that they also do the same to the foxes.
Black snakes are the best to get rid of the mouse and rat population in the barn.
JMO
They are not indigenous and therefore you are helping nature if you eliminate them. Im a big time naturalist and had trouble adopting this concept until a large pack herded my horse and attacked him at night. Luckily all he had was a lacerated anus (yeah, talk about ouch!), soft tissue injury in his pastern (took 6 months to heal), and a corneal ulceration that resulted in blindness. It could have been much worse. I wound up moving him from that boarding barn the den was too established to tackle by myself.
Shoot to kill every last one of them. We humans put them here by accident, it’s our job to make it right again.
Call your local state or federal DNR office and one of them should come out and kill the coyotes.
And there are professional hunters who will come kill them for a fee.
Coyotes will wipe all all ground nesting birds, all cats, and small dogs.
And they are smart.
Groro, the professional hunter did not bother with anything except the coyotes he was called for. We seldom bother the wild creatures on our farm, lots of foxes, hawks, owls, deer, turkeys, skunks. But the coyotes cleaned up all the rats, mice, groundhogs and cats. One day my pony mare foaled an unexpected foal and there was a coyote sitting on the opposite side of the fene from the mare and foal looking hungrily at it. That was enough for me; I kept my ponies close to the barn until the hunter decimated the coyote pack. Some of them, he said, weighed around 55 lbs, even thin as they were early in the spring.
[QUOTE=Petstorejunkie;4050374]
They are not indigenous and therefore you are helping nature if you eliminate them.
Shoot to kill every last one of them. We humans put them here by accident, it’s our job to make it right again.[/QUOTE]
Not sure where you are located, but coyotes are native to North America. See below:
“There are currently 19 recognized subspecies, with 16 in Canada, Mexico and the United States, and 3 in Central America. Unlike its cousin the Gray Wolf, which is Eurasian in origin, the coyote evolved in North America 2 MYA alongside the Dire Wolf. It is thought by certain experts that the coyote’s North American origin may account for its greater adaptability than the wolf, due to North America’s greater prehistoric predation pressures.”
Having said that, I would have no problem shooting one if I thought it was preying on my livestock, indigenous or not.
The thing is, unless you change the “easy pickings” at your place, killing coyotes will just open up space for more to move in.
[QUOTE=Las Olas;4050768]
Not sure where you are located, but coyotes are native to North America. See below:
“There are currently 19 recognized subspecies, with 16 in Canada, Mexico and the United States, and 3 in Central America. Unlike its cousin the Gray Wolf, which is Eurasian in origin, the coyote evolved in North America 2 MYA alongside the Dire Wolf. It is thought by certain experts that the coyote’s North American origin may account for its greater adaptability than the wolf, due to North America’s greater prehistoric predation pressures.”
Having said that, I would have no problem shooting one if I thought it was preying on my livestock, indigenous or not.[/QUOTE]
Not indigenous to the eastern U.S. But what does that mean, really? It is natural for animals to migrate, change and adapt. I wish I could have been at this years MFHA seminar where I heard there was a wonderful seminar on Coyotes from a wildlife expert. It seems they have no natural preditors, wildly adaptive, and are not in any danger whatsoever of extinction.
So glad to see this thread - I live just north of Chicago, not out in the suburbs, but in a fairly urban area. I wish they could bring hunters in here to dispatch them.
We have coyote - large, healthy coyotes. The last sighting unnerved me. I was on the way to pick up my son from preschool and it was standing by the exit ramp - and it looked me in the eyes while I was waiting at the stop sign. Very freaky - I can’t quite explain why it unnerved me so much. Except that most other animals (wild or domestic) I have made eye contact with have, for lack of a better word, a beauty/a soul shining through their eyes. The coyote truly had an evil, menacing look.
There are some who might roll their eyes at my description - but it was the first time I had seen an animal and felt no admiration. My reaction was almost primal. What is it about coyotes?
We also have 40 acres. We have several large farm dogs, one in particular who is an Akita cross/pound puppy who keeps the coyotes off our property. He “patrols” the farm every day and we have seen him many times chasing them off the borders of the property and/or fighting with them. We have a couple other dogs who help, too. And we have chickens that they would love to get! But they don’t get past our dogs.
Wildlife officials will NOT come and shoot your coyotes- you might get a professional to come and track and kill the problem coyote for you. They won’t be caught in a humane trap and the poison option is, I’m sure you’ll agree, a non-starter.
A large dog would deter them. Otherwise, lock the cats up at night. I lost 3 of 5 to coyotes when we moved to Utah from Virginia- all on very windy nights were coyotes could just sneak up behind. A 4th was attacked but lived to tell about it, expensively.
oddly enough
the two remaining cats have been staying VERY close to the house since Smokey disapeared. I haven’t seen any evidence of the missing cat, but did find a large, disjointed deer leg in the back field. Since we had one hit on the road, I presume that particular limb was dragged there by a coyote, since there isn’t anything else around here big enough that will eat carrion. The surrounding farms have cattle, so there aren’t any stray dogs (zero tolerance around here).
I don’t like killing anything I don’t plan to eat, but as many as there are, if I see them I’m shooting them.
I lock up my barn cats domestic & ferals at night - after sundown. They are not allowed out before sun rise - this has kept them safe - I can tell if a predator is close or has been around at night because my feral cats hang close to the barn. The domestic cats I have to keep my eye on more than my ferals. They have windows with screens and fans to keep them cool at night when locked in the two tack rooms - I constantly worry about coyotes, foxes and owls, hawks with my cats * as we back up to the woods.
You really have little option than to protect your cats at night. Coyotes will be much more productive in their breeding to make up for whatever loss a hunter may make in the pack, or a new pack will move in. Sorry.
Also, by exterminating the wolf and mountain lion in the East, we opened it up to population by coyote…
Sadly, with the number of ‘city’ people populating suburban and even recently-rural areas, there is a ready supply of prey simply because so many of the newcomers don’t have the understanding or vision to avoid contributing to the problem. And opportunists that they are, coyotes thrive on that lack of knowledge. I’m dealing with that now, here in Oklahoma, where the resident coyote population was driven into the center of this section, which is a small wetlands preserve, thanks to the huge increase in residential development on the perimeter. The coyotes regularly get pets from those developed areas, have decimated the local rabbit population, have done a number on the nesting geese and wild turkey, and are brazen enough to hunt in broad daylight.
The local authorities aren’t interested in control measures (but may once the well-heeled ex-city-dwellers complain loud enough). So far, there have been a few complaints over the ‘noise’ when dogs who know the score are doing their job driving the coyotes out of pastures, etc. Great, eh? There is a no-shooting ordinance here, so what legal options do you have? I was told to just put in a 6’ noclimb or stockade perimeter fence… yeah, right. Over a mile of fencing, on ground that washes/erodes badly and will pile up against that fence over time, through a flood plain, etc - what part of ‘you don’t do that to this kind of terrain’ don’t they get?
Coyotes are opportunists as well as being highly adaptable, just like their larger cousins, wolves. However, give them enough natural game, and they’ll likely not come calling.
I’m in a rural area of Virginia where I’m allowed to shoot them if they’re harassing/attacking my livestock and pets, but only on my own property.
I lost all my barn cats except one to coyotes, even though they had a safe place to get away from them. Cats are independent creatures, tend to roam, and are mostly nocturnal hunters, which makes them fair game for coyotes.
OP, if you’re not in an area where you’re allowed to shoot them on your own property, then locking up your pets at night is the only alternative.
