Coyotes On The Move Across New York

[Culvercreek hunt club]

1 hour ago, wolc123 said:

They do bring some good side benefits.  One of those is coon control.  I was able to get some pretty good late harvests of sweetcorn last year, thanks to the coyotes.  I dont dislike them as much as I used to.

From what I have seen you are giving the coyotes too much credit for the coons not eating your corn. They won't even touch a coon carcass unless they are in some dire straights. 

[Grouse]

12 minutes ago, Culvercreek hunt club said:

From what I have seen you are giving the coyotes too much credit for the coons not eating your corn. They won't even touch a coon carcass unless they are in some dire straights. 

I'd have to agree.  I had dead porky's disappear over night.  Same with red squirrels.  But a coon body stays for weeks unless a bear finds it.

[Culvercreek hunt club]

4 minutes ago, Grouse said:

I'd have to agree.  I had dead porky's disappear over night.  Same with red squirrels.  But a coon body stays for weeks unless a bear finds it.

I fisher will hit it too but fox and coyote seem to avoid them. 

[WNYTRPR]

Coyotes rarely will touch a coon

[Bigfoot 327]

I am not an expert on yotes, since I don't actively predator hunt. However, I have taken several while deer hunting and a couple that made the mistake of trespassing on my lawn. None of the coyotes I have taken was worth anything for fur, everyone was infected with Mange. I question their protection as a furbearer when their hides often have no value. Also, our local population seemed to have rather dramatic swings in numbers. Years of scores of coyotes followed by a period of few if any coyotes. I blamed disease for these population swings. Don't know if it's the mange or maybe something like canine distemper. it was also my observation that a high fox population seemed to limit the abundance of coyotes by competing with them for food. I have a policy of not shooting fox unless sick but shooting every coyote on sight!

[Culvercreek hunt club]

22 minutes ago, Bigfoot 327 said:

I am not an expert on yotes, since I don't actively predator hunt. However, I have taken several while deer hunting and a couple that made the mistake of trespassing on my lawn. None of the coyotes I have taken was worth anything for fur, everyone was infected with Mange. I question their protection as a furbearer when their hides often have no value. Also, our local population seemed to have rather dramatic swings in numbers. Years of scores of coyotes followed by a period of few if any coyotes. I blamed disease for these population swings. Don't know if it's the mange or maybe something like canine distemper. it was also my observation that a high fox population seemed to limit the abundance of coyotes by competing with them for food. I have a policy of not shooting fox unless sick but shooting every coyote on sight!

You'll see coyote swings in the years with good and poor small game numbers and I think that disease does take a toll, especially when numbers get too dense.  The fox observation you made I believe is just the opposite from what I have been reading and gleaned from trapping discussions. The fox population typically has an opposite response to the coyote numbers.  Coyotes have cause fox numbers to drop in areas that were very good red fox trapping places. I know tow guys in MD and they have seen a steady drop on fox numbers as the coyote numbers have spread and increased. That seems to be typical. 

[wolc123]

2 hours ago, Culvercreek hunt club said:

From what I have seen you are giving the coyotes too much credit for the coons not eating your corn. They won't even touch a coon carcass unless they are in some dire straights. 

They love them in wmu 9F.  I had a pair watching me most of the summer.  Early on, they would dig up the carcasses within a couple days of my burying.  Mid summer, I assume one took a live coon out of one of my Dukes, shearing a #10 bolt and taking the trap. By fall, I didn't have to trap any more coons and the yotes were keeping them cleared on thier own.

Edited March 9, 2021 by wolc123

[Bigfoot 327]

I have a friend in northern PA that has given up on burying the wood chucks he shoots. Bears dig them up faster than he can bury them.

[grampy]

I look at it this way........for every coyote we shoot, there is one less coyote running around on our property. They keep making more.......we keep shooting and trapping them. There are less of them here now, than a few years ago. By doing nothing, and just letting them breed and continuously add to their numbers unchecked, just adds up to way too many coyotes! 

Look, I could even live in peace with a few coyotes, within the square mile or so where we hunt. But when you have multiple packs calling back and forth most every night. There are just too darn many of them!

[Culvercreek hunt club]

1 hour ago, wolc123 said:

They love them in wmu 9F.  I had a pair watching me most of the summer.  Early on, they would dig up the carcasses within a couple days of my burying.  Mid summer, I assume one took a live coon out of one of my Dukes, shearing a #10 bolt and taking the trap. By fall, I didn't have to trap any more coons and the yotes were keeping them cleared on thier own.

I have been told they certainly will dig up buried ones even opossum. Not unusual for them to be used in buried bait sets becasue the rotting smell of anything seems to elicited a digging response.   I'd be curious  your results if you utilized coon quarters as bait to see their response out there. 

[Culvercreek hunt club]

32 minutes ago, grampy said:

I look at it this way........for every coyote we shoot, there is one less coyote running around on our property. They keep making more.......we keep shooting and trapping them. There are less of them here now, than a few years ago. By doing nothing, and just letting them breed and continuously add to their numbers unchecked, just adds up to way too many coyotes! 

Look, I could even live in peace with a few coyotes, within the square mile or so where we hunt. But when you have multiple packs calling back and forth most every night. There are just too darn many of them!

I'll be curious to see the fawn recruitment this spring on the 1,000 acre farm we trapped this year. We took quite a few coyotes and fox off there and I know the 50 acre farm adjacent took and additional 7 coyotes at last report. They manage that property pretty hard and run cameras all year so I wonder what they'll shot this spring. 

[wolc123]

3 hours ago, Culvercreek hunt club said:

I have been told they certainly will dig up buried ones even opossum. Not unusual for them to be used in buried bait sets becasue the rotting smell of anything seems to elicited a digging response.   I'd be curious  your results if you utilized coon quarters as bait to see their response out there. 

My neighbor is pretty good at trapping them.  I have not talked to him lately, but judging by the lack of coyote tracks on the snow and night-time yipping the last few weeks, he must have them knocked their local numbers down pretty good.

I have also been seeing a lot more deer lately, on the close edge of the adjacent town. They don't allow any hunting there, but I got to drive thru it twice each weekday, to get to and from work.  When the local coyote population is up, they control the deer population pretty good over there.

[Melvinpeople]

Do Coyotes prefer woods or open fields?

[WNYTRPR]

7 minutes ago, Melvinpeople said:

Do Coyotes prefer woods or open fields?

They utilize both 

[WNYTRPR]

On 3/9/2021 at 10:25 AM, Bigfoot 327 said:

I am not an expert on yotes, since I don't actively predator hunt. However, I have taken several while deer hunting and a couple that made the mistake of trespassing on my lawn. None of the coyotes I have taken was worth anything for fur, everyone was infected with Mange. I question their protection as a furbearer when their hides often have no value. Also, our local population seemed to have rather dramatic swings in numbers. Years of scores of coyotes followed by a period of few if any coyotes. I blamed disease for these population swings. Don't know if it's the mange or maybe something like canine distemper. it was also my observation that a high fox population seemed to limit the abundance of coyotes by competing with them for food. I have a policy of not shooting fox unless sick but shooting every coyote on sight!

Your  thoughts about coyote/fox are actually the opposite.Fox need managed just as much as anything else .You don’t kill fox ,something else will (coyotes,distemper,mange).