"predator management"

Originally Posted By: DomesticCatAvengerI know they will make more. My question was more will they create more than normal. (hunted)
No, coyotes will not reproduce more than normal just because they are hunted. Reproduction is related to habitat and health of the animal. As I stated earlier, when animal populations are below carrying capacity of the land, reproduction increases for both prey species and predators. Hunting helps to keep wildlife populations from exceeding the carrying capacity of the land. This protects their habitat from being over exploited and creates healthier wildlife.

Generally, coyote populations in urban areas where no hunting occurs are twice that in the wild. Why? Carrying capacity in urban settings is higher due to more food (pets), cover (landscaping), water (irrigation, swimming pools), and space (urban sprawl). When people in urban areas intentionally feed coyotes, that can increase reproduction too.

If hunting increased coyote numbers, there would be more coyotes in the wild than in urban areas. This is NOT the case. Coyote densities are higher in urban settings where no hunting occurs. There are 30,000 to 40,000 coyotes taken by sport hunting each year in AZ and coyote densities are still higher in urban areas where they are not hunted.

http://www.arizonadailyindependent.com/2013/08/25/the-urban-coyote/

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1059&context=icwdm_wdmconfproc

http://www.azgfd.gov/h_f/game_coyote.shtml

 
FurSniper and everyone else thank you very much for taking time to talk to me and answer give me answers to that question. It is something that bothered me and I'm glad that it was a farce.

Orneryolfart357 it's no problem man, those project coyote people were a bunch of turds and I don't blame you for taking exception of you thought I was one. From here on out were good, thank you for being passionate about what you stand for.
 
I think you may need to just understand that we as a group are harrassed and berated on a regular basis. WE are cautious and weary of new people and questions and comments like you raise are valid, but make us wonder who is actually asking the question.

The AZ Game and Fish Biologist, I read the article, you can search for it.

Anyways, what they found is that of the groups that have an impact on numbers of wildlife, Hunting is very low.. Actaully if you have driven up and down the freeways, you will see more impact along the side of the road than hunters killing has.
Most puppies don't make it the first year, and that has nothing to do with hunters, there just isn't enough hunting going on.
It was explained that a hunter is the lowest impact, then foot hold trappers, and then long line snare trappers have the most imapact as far as humans hunting impact, and even that isn't that much..

What anti's don't understand is that Federal Wildlife agents do a lot more to the population than hunters do.. They use things that we can't and do things that hunters are just not allowed to.
The AZ Game and Fish flies around in a plan and shoots them flat out right from the plane with a shotgun.

As was said before, if there is plenty of food, they will breed more (meaning have more pups because food is abundant) if no food, they move and look for it, and will have less. That is independant of hunters. As i said, there are many things that kill Pups, and hunters are not even close to the top of that list.

It has also been studied that to reduce a population of Coyotes in an area you have to kill 70% of the population in that area for 5 years to have an impact.. That just doesn't happen without a lot of effort. And you have to continue to keep up that effort to maintain a reduction.

We hunt, I do it because i enjoy it, it's a challenge, and i harvest the fur and sell that for the ones that are worth it. But, i know that in the grand scheme of things i don't make an impact. Anti's have a need to feel as though they are "trying" to do something and haven't come to terms with the fact that they are insignificant and don't make a differnce. They also have never seen what happens and how Mother nature manages a population. Usually disease, starvation, or worse (IMO) mange.. Perosnally I would much rather have been shot vs freeze to death slowly because of Mange.

What is a better question to the Anti's is why are they trying to tell me what to do, and what qualifies them as being more moral or eithical about what they are doing?
I saw on facebook how nasty and lying they were. Threatening to shoot or kill people. The bottom line is that there are a lot of studies and care going into maintaining ballance for all of the animals. Managing predators, especially at certain times of year, gives thier pray animals a chance for them to reproduce. I would ask them what they are doing to protect the Antelope so they don't have a 70% mortality rate for the new Fawns this year? Are they standing around with a sign? More hashtag activism that in the end makes them feel good, but doesn't actually do anything. Like it or not the coyotes are out there killing and do so effectively on lots of other animals is what Coyotes are doing to them, it's not just mice and bunnies... What about those animals? If they want to claim they are protecting the animals they have to understand there is more to is than just the ones that are being killed that they support or want to defend.
 
Tbone, well stated. I live and hunt in Southern Idaho. We have vast areas of farm land that is now mostly off limits to hunters. The coyotes are everywhere in these fields. But we also have huge tracks of sagebrush land and we hunt these. My hunting pardner works for Idaho Fish and Game. We work areas that have high mortality rates on fawns and upland game. We hardly make a dent in the predator population. But we take some and encourage others to try those areas. Keep up the good work of letting other know the truth about predator control.
 
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Did not mean to offend you. I have never heard of any one doing "predator management". I was just saying you should not worry about shooting to many and having less to hunt, or a lower quality of predators, like with deer management. The other gentlemen provided good info.

Good luck
 
not that it matters, but a coyote killed my cat. It did not eat him for food. It just ripped his throat out and left him for my mother and I to see. I got the call that horrible morning June 21, 2013 as soon as I was about to walk into work. It was my grandmother who called crying her heart out. My mother couldn't even talk. I left work and I went and got him and buried him at my house. My mother and I loved him as a family member. My mother fell into deep depression and killed herself 7 months later. She was only 54. Our yard was fenced and he was being supervised. My mother went inside for just a moment to get the phone and when she came back out he was dead.

to this day, packs of coyote roam my town coming as close as my bedroom window howling away at the moon or yipping at the recent kill of someones beloved pet. At least once a week I hear about a resident or snowbird losing one of their loved ones to a coyote, whether it be taken from a yard or attacked during a walk.

Humane society wants to stop the hunting of coyotes in AZ. I assume so the populations increase and more pets are taken and then replaced by Humane Society pets. Sounds pretty stupid right. So does the thought that they think they should have a say in who hunts what. I am still waiting for wolf tags/permit/season.

I will defend my loved ones by any means necessary. Coyotes continue to have a lasting negative effect on my life and the lives of the people around me.

 
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Our State biologists says that you would have to kill 70% of the coyotes in a given area several years in a row and not allow any to move in from adjacent territories to keep the population low (not going to happen). It is true as you take more yotes out they will produce more as long as the food supplies are good. You would not be able to eliminate a yotes food supply seeing how they will eat insects, rodents, pets, livestock, birds, lizards and some farm produce (yes I said veggies, In GA they do massive amounts of damage to watermelons)to name just a few food sources. If the area has lots of food the yotes territory may be much smaller if he has to travel further then the territories patrolled and protected will be much larger. You see no matter what you do in the end it will be roaches and yotes surviving and not much more so go ahead shoot every yote you want you and I will not put a permanent dent in the population no matter how good of a trapper/caller we think we are.
 
Regarding "management" of predators, IMHO, there are only a few methods that actually help, if the need arises.
Another opinion I have formed is, we as callers are actually helping the coyote population thrive, especially with the influx of new and uneducated callers our there. We all know some of the "best" callers mess up and in the end educate a few, just think of the newbies that keep the coyotes from coming in, not doing what needs to be done to follow through with the kills. More coyotes are becoming smarter, living longer, and thriving, because of us...
We've just got to stay a step ahead of the curve.
 
I think the truth is in the middle. It is true that coyotes are density dependent breeders. If a large enough percentage of a population is eliminated, it does increase prey sources for the remaining population, increasing their health, and thus reproductive efficiency, and litter sizes. Also if an alpha female is killed, it could increase the number of females bearing litters...but this is in response to a significant population reduction, so factoring in normal mortality rates for a pup from birth to maturity, it's just a mechanism to replace the removed portion of the population, and likely doesn't lead to a boom, or a larger population. The thing that matters most to us, is that it would be difficult for even the best of us to kill enough coyotes, just by calling, to trigger this mechanism. Don't misunderstand, I know there are some very talented callers here, much more so than me, but you would have to whack a lot of yotes in the same place over an extended time. The biggest impact we can have is by targeting specific individuals who are habitually causing issues.

For me, I'm honest about it. I don't hunt coyotes to try and effect some great ecological change. I don't eat them, and while I skin most I shoot, hides from around here don't bring a bunch. I hunt them because they are about the most challenging opponent I've come across, and I enjoy it. I respect coyote, and admire his intelligence and adaptability.

I don't begrudge the sandal wearing crowd how high they have driven the price of soybeans, and I'd thank them to mind their business where my pastimes are concerned. I don't go on and on about the damage being done to the environment so they can have batteries for their hybrids after all. I go out of my way to avoid the things they like, and I would appreciate it if they would show me the same courtesy.
 
DomesticCatAvenger....Seeing that you are in AZ, I doubt that you have experienced the 'Wasting Disease' that is prevalent in White Tail Deer in the Mid West (and similar in other species) that occurs when the population is too high for the food source available...Probably much the same reason that Mange, and other conditions, hits some Coyote populations...It's the cycle of life that has been upset somewhere along the way...Conservation is an effort in maintaining the Balance of Nature...Unfortunately, man is not as smart as Mother Nature, but we try to learn as we go..

It's just my humble opinion, as when I retired 20+ years ago and moved back to my home town in Central Missouri, I couldn't find the Rabbit and Quail populations that used to exist when I hunted the area as a teenager...Locals blamed it on the Coyote and Turkey populations in the area, as well as loss of habitat due to human encroachment...Hence my involvement in Coyote hunting...

I'm not a 'Great Hunter" by any means, but following the "Flood of '93" where we experienced 12' high water of the MO river being 9 miles wide along the river bottoms, we were plagued by packs of wild dogs, Coyotes, and snakes for a varying length of time, depending on the control efforts being applied..Normal food sources had disappeared due to the flood, so they were looking for other prey and most farmers and workers trying to reclaim the land for agricultural use were under attack, as their prey...

Twenty years later, things are just starting to return to normal...While I understand your question, and I don't have many answers, a little thought process prior to starting a question as you posed, will curb some of the negative responses...Sometimes it not what you say, as much as how you say it...

As to thinking about taking an animal's life,,,If it's for food and I know someone that is hungry, not a problem...If is is an animal that is causing an immediate problem, it's elimination is not a problem...It's a solution...
 
Nothing wrong with getting answers to sincere questions.

Many years ago I heard a wildlife biologist give a speech at a trapper training seminar. He said, in reference to coyotes, that the more pressure is put on them, ie killing them, the more they reproduce. He went on to say that in order to control the population, that a fairly large number (can't remember the percentage exactly) would have to be taken out annually for something like 20 years running, hypothetical of course. If in any of those years the percentage was not taken, the game was lost. His words, not mine and I don't know how accurate those statements are.

I do know that the population here (my local area) is down to nothing, from a combination of hunters and the game commission killing a rather substantial number of them not long ago via bait bombs.

Speaking of questions, I do have one out of curiosity. Maybe I missed the answer, and if so I apologize.

My question is, Adam, are you a predator hunter, specifically a coyote hunter?

 
Quote:I see what you are saying by hunting Coyotes you save other animals. My question is do you believe coyote hunting causes a increase in population.

It is difficult to drastically reduce a coyote population simply by hunting. Now if you add in trapping, poisoning, denning, snaring then you can make coyotes scarce.

If you have 100 coyotes out there, and you kill 25 then you did not increase the population. They will reproduce back to the carrying capacity (in this example 100 coyotes). So they had to produce 25 coyotes to get back to where they were.

If you went out and shot 25, trapped another 25 and then snared another 10 (total 60) and then stop, the population will again go to carrying capacity (by producing 60).

So, by more intensely removing coyotes you may increase coyote productivity, but you did not increase the population.

This is a oversimplified example I know, that assumes that carrying capacity is constant from year to year (which it is not).

If there were 100 coyotes and you killed 25 and the next year there were 150 then no it would make much sense would it?

As stated before, the population is dependent on the carrying capacity, environmental factors and a few other variables.

Just to say that if you kill coyotes there will be more next year does not mean much. More than what? What there was when you started, or more than what you had after you killed what you killed?
 
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