Was just getting ready to say the same thing. Definitely a fox. The white tipped tail is definitive.
Foxes are a hazard to your poultry, but not to your pets or other livestock.
LCDR, I am astonished that your hunt does this. Most hunts try to discourage coyotes because they push out the foxes. Coyote make different sport, as they tend to be very fast and run in long, straight lines, rather than obligingly running in a large circle and going to ground close to the trailers, as do red fox.
I guess one could get a larger predictor such as a wolf that will eat the coyotes. With the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone, coyote numbers decreased by half
Yep, I was fooled by the tiny picture on my iphone mini screen when I chose that picture.
I think I need a bigger iphone. Getting too old to see the screen well, especially when the tiny screen is filled with tiny pictures.
My hunt primarily sees coyotes. Cotton plantations destroyed fox habitat decades ago. Fox hunters in my area had coyotes shipped in from Chicago and released them to breed and create the sport we have today. I have actually seen the shipping receipt for 100 coyotes bought from a fur supplier during a time when coyote fur prices were down.
What about no climb fencing with a hot wire slightly above the ground at the bottom of the outside of the fence and another one at the top of the fence?
I have a deer problem. I’ve invested in a bunch of electric fencing trying to keep them off my baby trees. They eat every leaf. Finally put field fencing inside the electric fencing to keep them off the trees. It’s a real pain. As pretty as they are even one does a lot of damage.
I have coyotes out here judging from the noise they make at night howling. In 20 years I have just seen one and it was across the street on the property next door where nobody had been living for years. It looked as big as a GSD. But there were a lot of deer hunters and hunting cubs out here and they shoot every predator and also stray dogs so I think the coyotes have learned to be very wary of human beings.
Never lost a barn cat to a coyote. Even Stinky. Before I adopted him and got him neutered he was a traveling man making the rounds for miles as a tom cat. I have no idea how he survived. I am back and forth to the barn from the house a lot at night and the horses are mostly out at night so maybe that keeps them away. I also do not have any coyote bait - chickens, goats, rabbits, etc.- that would attract them to my property. I do think that being shot at by hunters is a pretty effective deterrent around here.
I have read that if you get rid of the coyotes you have they will just ramp up their birth rates to get the population back up.
Unnerving to the coyotes, et al., yes. AFAIK humans are considered the largest and most dangerous predators on Earth. We encroach upon everyone else’s territory. And then act like it’s our right. 
It’s amazing how some cats survive. We had a white, stone deaf barn cat who died of old age. She couldn’t hear a dump truck in a nitroglycerin plant. How the owls or the coyotes didn’t get her, no one knows.
coyotes here can clear jump most fences, there are videos of them going over six foot stockade fencing. They also can dig. under a fence if there is something they want
My previous hunt was almost all coyotes. They gave good chase.
I have an established family of coyotes on my land, with the same female bringing up pups every year. I have free range chickens and the coyotes have never come close. I have a large dog who keeps the barnyard marked, the chickens are cooped at night, and the coyotes respect that.
I also have not seen a lot of fisher cats or fox come close to the fences on the trail cams since the coyotes moved in.
I enjoy groundhog-free fields and fewer mice and rats. I probably couldn’t keep a barn cat, but that’s the only downside.
As a matter of fact, the only proven threat to my chickens is the ever growing number of bald eagles. But everyone is way more sentimental about them.
Coyotes are highly intelligent, and if there is a potential food source they will figure out how to get it unless the risk is too much.
They are not a danger to adult humans, healthy adult horses and large ponies, donkeys, cows. They often prey on small dogs and cats, poultry, sheep, goats.
The #1 coyote solution is a properly trained livestock guardian dog. Or two. They are not an install and forget about it solution. Read up on how they work, and why it works on predators. It isn’t much like a personal or home guard dog. They patrol their boundaries (which can be very large – you have to control that – and they bark. Barking is how they tell coyotes that they are on watch and that they are too big to tangle with.
They are not pets, and cannot live with you, they live with the livestock from puppyhood. If they haven’t been raised that way, they may never be reliable LGDs.
Another solution is to fence everything with electrified netting and keep it hot. That too is a maintenance challenge.
Things that do not work, or not for long: motion sensors. Repellents. Any climbable or dig-underable fence. Neither does trapping or shooting – you just leave a niche open for other coyotes.
The good news is that they do not have opposable thumbs, so we’re ahead of them there.
Wolves will kill and eat coyotes but they also compete with them for prey, so it might be a combination of factors.
I’ve always lived around coyotes with many cats, chickens and a chi; I worried about them but in all these years I’ve never lost one and I had 13 cats at one time. We’ve had a GP for most of those years which undoubtedly helped but I did still see coyotes close to the house, some passing through, some shopping. I think another good thing about a GP is they can be, or used to be (so many of them cranked out now), good judges of character. I’ve seen them watch some coyotes go through and let them go and then I’ve seen them chase. All the barkings though, all the time. And they need the same fence to keep them on the place that a coyote needs to stay out. They are great dogs but not a “toss it out there” solution.
Where I’ve lived the coyotes etc have had their natural food; our little homestead in the middle of nowhere was not a primary food source and we made sure it didn’t become one. We never fed cats outside, our chickens free ranged during the day but got locked up at night. Cats, I don’t know how they did it and we also had a weird white one that I always think the coyotes considered him “touched” b/c he had no fear of anything and lived a long long life.
I think coyotes are very different from one place to another. If I found myself in a situation where I knew the coyotes were coming around my place looking for food I’d have a close high fence for the little dogs by the house, maybe with an electric wire on the outside, and never leave them unattended. I’m a fan of electric fence for any/all purposes. I would be sure there wasn’t any food left out for barn cats or chickens left vulnerable. Not everyone wants a GP so while that CAN work it’s a whole other hairball to deal with, literally and figuratively. I have never had to worry about coyotes with horses/cattle and when we lived on a sheep ranch the GP took care of that so I’m more about the close stuff. It’s good that you’re out at all hours (1:30 AM) and when you do see them I’d discourage, protect your territory, air horn, bb gun, whatever you’re comfortable with to establish the boundary but not kill them all dead on sight. If these are there, others will fill that void if these are all shot and we’ve usually been able to get along with the ones we had around. Protect everything you can from them with fences, discouragement, etc and haze them away when you see them which should stop happening pretty quickly. I do think they need to learn that you don’t want them around so they have a healthy fear of people and don’t want to be by you. Fully admit that worked for us in MT will not work for everyone, this is just my experience. If you’re going to feed anything, feed all the little mice that live out away from your house lol
We do coyote hunts here too, well I don’t but my SIL’s do.
Where I live now we have wolves instead of coyotes for a variety of reasons. We haven’t had trouble with them (yet) but it could happen; they come through town.
in Kentucky we lived on a rural farm on the Ohio River, packs of wild dogs were prevalent. The only way we got rid of them was to take a short metal post that was driven into the ground then wrapped a hunk of beef on top of the post to be held on place by wrapping with electric fence wire.
Plugged up the fence charger
About midnight the dogs showed up then there was this tremendous ruckus followed by whining whimpering dogs running away never to be seen again
In the case of coyotes and my geographic locale, people were here waaaay before coyotes.
The coyote didn’t get to Massachusetts until the mid-20th century.
I personally have been here longer than they have.
so coyotes filled the ecological niche that the extinction of wolves opened up?
in the northeast because the St. Lawrence River, now is kept ice-free in winter for ships, presents a major barrier for wolves to migrate from Canada into New England where they once were common
I’ve read that coyotes and foxes eat a lot of mice that carry ticks. Ticks are a big problem where I live, so I try to mentally tolerate the coyotes.
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