Utah Coyote Bounty

[Darius]

Hi,
I don't know how many of y'all heard about this but I came across it while planning a month-long walkabout in some wilderness area or another accessible from SE WY. Apparently, the critters are killing off the mule deer population so bad, the Utah DNR is offering $50 a head for 'em. I know I can live out there, np, but was wondering about trapping coyotes in particular. I heard it was very difficult due to their intelligence (read: wilyness)...I'm planning to use #3 foot holds. i was just wondering if any of y'all have experience with these guys and would like to know how many traps need be maintained to catch even one a day...Also, places to get quality gear at prices lower than Amazon would be helpful...lol. Thanks!
Dar

[Rick]

You'll have to have a non-resident furbearer license and register all your traps. Here's a good place to start.

https://wildlife.utah.gov/utah-furbearer-guidebook.html

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

Trapping coyotes is an art. Calling them is easy. They'll run right in on a call, but any faint notion that man has been around and a trap will just sit there. My grandfather told me trapping stories about coyotes. He said that when they would catch a male coyote, they would tie him up and tie a string tight around his yang to keep him from being able to urinate. The next day they would kill the coyote and very carefully remove his bladder and drain it into a bottle. They would use that to spread around more coyote traps to cover their scent. I have never tried this method. I'd imagine that everything after catching the coyote and right up to killing the coyote the next day was quite an intense operation.

Alan

[WolfVanZandt]

Y'know what happens when you start killing off coyotes? Their fertility increases and you end up with more coyotes than ever. They also migrate to surrounding states like Colorado.

Wildlife management in Alabama managed wildlife so well that you couldn't drive there without hitting a deer. God save us from wildlife management.

[Darius]

Oh, so the coyote urine they sell as "lure" is actually to mask human and other unwanted scents? ...Speaking of lure, an old trapper told me fish offal left uncovered for a few weeks draws them for miles and is Very nasty to remove from ones-self. I was wondering if this would be good enough to both draw them in and mask my own scent...? Thanks, Alan!

[Darius]

Thanks for the link, Rick. I checked thoroughly though and for coyotes and only them, no license is required because of the wildlife predator control program. I did email the forest service in the town nearest where I want to trap just to be sure and expect a reply tomorrow. Anyhow, if a furbearer license is required, $50 a head is worth the 100 or so bucks for a NR... I'll need to get one anyhow, I guess, and a fishing one, so I can eat out there for a month... MREs are Expensive! lol. I am bringing potatoes though...love those things.

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

Month old fish offal will likely mask a lot of other scents....

I don't know what the bottled urine is supposed to do, but somebody probably started selling pee on a drunken bet. "I'll bet you fie dahlla I can sell my pee", "Yer on!"

Back when I was going to the Agricultural and Industrial College, I read about a study that was done to decrease the coyote population in an area (somewhere). They made areal drops of peat pellets containing birth control (birth control pills for coyotes). The plan worked great for a year, and when they stopped it the population boomed. All the females had gotten really healthy for a year and produced record litters.

Alan

[WolfVanZandt]

You don't control nature by "scientific" means. Push nature and she pushes back. They're not trying to protect deer. Coyote may cull deer populations....rarely. Deer are too much trouble for coyote to bring down and fawns are really hard to track. They eat much smaller prey. I suspect, if you track the money, you will find that killing coyotes is the wish of farmers, ranchers, and hunters who have no idea what they're doing. They just think that killing predators is the thing to do.

I learned a long time ago that environmental protection agencies hire some of the most undereducated people around, they're not interested in protecting the environment, and they are interested in protecting big money.

I file outfits with "environmental", "land management", and "wildlife management" in their titles with organizations with abbreviations starting and ending with "A". (apologies to some state AAA's. I've dealt with some good people there.)

[Darius]

Well, nature is scientific and needs to be controlled using science--a lot of study notwithstanding. But I agree with the rest of what you said. It probably is big money behind it. Oh well, it all is...I'm just going with the flow. I need the bounty. I live in a depressed area and haven't had a job since December--and was fired from that due to someone else's mistake. Working for the Man is too unstable...might as well work for another "Thing" ...

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

Well, I know from my own experience that calving time brought out the worst in coyotes. They seemed to like the heifer pasture the best. The cow gets down having the calf and that's it. Not a whole lot she can do. I've seen two of them harry a mamma cow with a newborn calf. As she chased one away, the other would come in a bite the calf. The guy I was working for didn't want me to carry a gun or shoot the coyotes, they weren't doing any harm, right? I told him he was losing calves and started hanging the dead remains on the corral fence. He changed his mind, but not before he lost a bunch of money. When I was a bit more into QDM I would go out in the spring and blow a fawn bleat. Anything that came in got shot. Anything that spooked got shot at. Anything that was remotely coyotish got shot at. It started not being fun to come to a fawn bleat. Coyotes will learn very fast where they are welcome and where not.

Alan

[Darius]

Yes, anything we do will have its disadvantages. But historically, agencies like the Parks Service et al have done pretty well--besides the ESA...oh boy what a mess that is...but...there is more forested land in the US now than in the early 20th century...and other good things. I am looking at it simplistically until there's real evidence to the contrary: I just applied for a job that is basically changing diapers all day (don't get me wrong, I love children and all...) but I can't start until June due to beaurocracy--some of it warranted, yes,but the facts are, I need the $50 per head, coyotes are nowhere near being slightly endangered, and the science-based government decision in Utah at this point is to pay people like me to go get 'em. If they do start bothering other states, I will certainly go there and get them as well. And living in the wild for a month or so will do me good, methinks...

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

After a month of living raw and hunting coyotes, they may not let you near children...

Alan

[Darius]

lol...Maybe not...
But hopefully by then my loans will have come through for my business. I'm into cleaner power generation and am applying around like mad just to get by for a few months--and to raise the capital required for gear and such...I have a WY LLC and an investor willing to put in 6 figures to build a plant in WA, but he requires I have some "skin in the game"...5k will suffice. Just not that kind of money/savings in Laramie, WY.

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

You should look around and find the oil booms, follow them around for 5 years, live like you're a pauper, and in that time you'll have lots of your own money to waste on cleaner power generation.

You're going to have to get 100 coyotes just to get to the $5K mark and that's if you eat the coyotes and wear their skins.

Alan

[Darius]

Nah, I'm too old to do that. I've decided to do the bounty thing. Even as a child I always wanted to live off the land...just not possible back home--nothing to live off of, lol. I've done the math and given it a lot of thought. I can survive with $10 a day...that's only one coyote a "work week". Then in Pase 2 I will set up moveable shelter and power generation and a garden/animal pens--all moveable when the FS tells me to move on. I'll eventually save up enough to buy acreage and set up a satellite connection and I can do my writing in peace without any stress to make money from it. When the bounty ends, I'll already be set up to live off my homestead. But first things first...gonna work that dishwashing job for three weeks to buy all the gear I need--or, and I'm waiting on a call for this today, bounty for a cattle rancher I know to raise "into the wild capital". Then I make my move. BTW, WY just introduced a coyote bounty as well...just $20 and limited kills...SC has a bill in the works...looks like I'm getting in on this on the ground floor ...... I'd still appreciate advice from y'all that aremore experienced at this than me. Your tips and tricks will likely save my @$$...

[WolfVanZandt]

Oh great. Now Colorado will be surrounded by states overpopulated with coyotes, animals that are smart enough to move to areas where they won't get shot at...Colorado. And when they get tired of shoveling money at something that doesn't work they'll drop the programs and the people who are making money on them. After a while, coyotes will stop having mega-litters and things will get back to normal and then a wildlife management group will forget and mess things up again (like they do).

The funny thing is, the study that found that killing coyotes doesn't get rid of coyotes compared Utah and Arkansas. Utah killed coyotes - along with just about everything else including a couple of kids (who got into the poisoned bait) - and ended up with a population explosion of coyotes, whereas Arkansas just left them alone, paid farmers for the small amount of predation, and came out much better.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...ivestock-safer

Pardon me if I am rather disgruntled at the geniuses that are managing land in the United States. I would expect McDaniel's method - to make particular areas unacceptable to predators - to work out better than widespread insanity.

[Darius]

In fact, I agree with you, WolfV. The thing is, the entire world operates in an insane manner and most of us have to get with the (insane) program or die ourselves. Back home, I was a journalist and rebel that tried to fix my insanest of countries. I ended up "gone" for 18 months, give or take, that was the best estimate friends could give me--most of that time spent being beaten or having 12V battery cables attached to my g'nads. I lost. I left as soon as I could. I gave up. What I'm saying is: There are Tons of way crazier things that are bigger and more important than the coyote population of any place. If I can get paid to kill them here--where no one will hire me, not even to sell $h!t at Murdoch's Ranch supply, even if I have a master's degree and decades of sales experience in farm supplies--what's a guy like me supposed to do? I will not lie down. You said something to the effect above that "nature finds a way". It is my nature to find a way. I won't hurt anyone and, if the coyote population moves camp to CO and bothers y'all, hell, I'll move there and kill 'em. There are good facts on both sides of the argument, sir. For me, it is a way to make money legally, and like I said, if the problem does spread, there are Plenty of us who need the money and want to make a living out of the way of the general population that goes to meet friends at a bar and never looks up from their damn cell phones (might as well drink alone at home imho)...and are more than happy making the few bucks a day to buy whatever we can't grow or hunt. Coyotes and all things concerning them are really the least of our worries in our world that is almost all wrong. The DNRs and FSs of states aren't the most evil sectors of government. Focus needs to be on the parts that do real damage.

[WolfVanZandt]

Actually, coyotes are part of the environment that supports us and is part of what is right. Colorado protects coyotes so you could have some problems if you move to Colorado to kill them.

Instead of buying into the insanity, I look for alternatives. You're problem will be when the government decides that what they are doing isn't working or just get's tired of doing it and pulls the rug out from under you. If you're "too old" for the oil booms, then you're old enough to see it happen again and again. Insanity backfires and I see all kinds of problems with your plans. For instance, I could easily live off the land in the east but I've been in Colorado for 5 years and have seen Utah. You better be dang good at it if you decide to live off the land in these mountains.

Back East, if you trip over a log, you're falling on something you can eat. Out here, there's plenty to eat if you can catch it and there's plenty of stuff that looks like the stuff that you can eat that will teach you different.

Sounds like your convinced. Have fun.

[Desert Rat!]

I don't know about coyotes learning that they where being hunted, every coyote I have shot didn't have a chance to go tell the other coyotes he was being shot

[WolfVanZandt]

he crows tell em'....after laughing at them for getting shot.