rox said:
...the coyote looked kind of small to me in the pictures.
Question for you, with all the hog killing are you butchering them and eating them?
...do they ever stink!!!
Final question, if Steph gets another chance will she go for the second coyote? I think having coyotes in your future campground might make the campers a bit nervous, especially those who bring their small dogs and cats with...
Hi Rox,
If I remember correctly, you are from Wisconsin? Not that it matters, but most wildlife tends to be larger the further north you go. From what I understand, they need to be larger to handle the winters. Our animals don't know what snow is, never had the ground covered and had to dig for something to eat. The deer are 100 pounds with an extremly large one weighing 150 pounds. The deer up north can easily hit 300 pounds.
I don't know this for a fact, but maybe the coyotes up north are bigger too? I shot one in Alaska that was smaller then the one Steph shot, but it might not have been fully grown. It had an amazing pelt, but was under 30 pounds. For here in East Texas, that was a pretty big coyote. Of the ten or so that I've shot here, the one Steph shot was also bigger then any I've killed myself. I might have seen one larger then hers, but I'm not positive.
We really enjoy eating wild hog meat. It's totally different then domestic hog meat. Not better, not worse, just a totally different type of meat. Of the meat we get, allot of it is given away. We sometimes give it all away, but usually just keep the backstraps a some cuts for steaks.
The smell doesn't bother me, but some do smell allot worse then others. A big old boar can be kind of rank, but a nice 100 pound sow rarely has much of a smell. I tend to shoot the smaller, tastier ones, Steph likes to pic one out from our game cam pictures and wait for him. She likes the big tusks!!!
We'll shoot every coyote that we see. In another thread, it was mentioned that it's impossible to kill them off or seriously lower their numbers. They are polific breeders, extremly smart and excellent hunters. If an area becomes too dangerous for them, they will just go someplace else most of the time.
My personal reason for killing coyotes is to cut down on the number of fawns they kill. One coyote is good for at least one fawn a year. I've read that to be more, but I've also read that it's a wives tale and they don't eat fawns. I know for a fact that they do kill fawns from finding the dead fawns. I've never killed a deer on my land and might never kill one. I do want to see more deer here and will do what I can to make that happen.
Once the park opens, the coyotes might be a problem. There is allot of land all around me for them to live unmolested. Population numbers are cyclical, so when they are at a high, their food supply will be at a low. The trend is when this happens is for the coyotes to move into towns and eat pets. Some say it's a 7 year cycle, others say it's further apart. I don't know for sure, nor have any idea when they peaked in numbers the last time. When they hit a high, they will eat themselves out of food and then turn to pets. I was at Camp Pendleton in the early 80's when this happened. Small children were also attacked, but I don't remember if any were actually killed.
Hogs might be a problem too, but overall, my biggest fear is snakes. We have allot of copper heads and cotton mouths. I've heard that there are rattle snakes here too, but luckily enough, haven't seen any of those. I wonder what my liablity will be when a guest decides to pick up a copper head snake? That is terrifying!!!
Eddie
Proud of you! Needless to say, Eddie must have been a somewhat better than average teacher... or maybe you are just a better than average learner
