Having to do something I hate doing but know I am going to have to go along with anyway.
Like...I came home Monday after being gone "for a while" and my eight-year-old son just matter-of-factly told me a chilling pre-bedtime story of walking into our woods here one evening in December, with our two half-grown puppies, maybe ten minutes into the woods from home, and he said he heard a sound and looked up and first one, then two, then "other" fully-grown coyotes came out and stood on a hilltop looking down at him from maybe fifty yards away.
All right, that scares me. A pack of coyotes scoping out my child? Yes, I know coyote attacks on humans are rare, yes, I know that, I do, but it still scares me.
When I was growing up there basically were no coyotes in my part of the country, and had not been for....maybe 150 years? Then in the last twenty-five years they made a comeback, first here and there, and now they are as common as crows, and in the absence of wolves, bears, cougars, have actually become our apex predators.
They're smart, they're tough, they're pragmatic.
Around 2005 I started hearing coyotes in my woods and I thought it was charming, this once extirpated species coming back, then one night about a decade ago (as I wrote about in here) two coyotes followed me in the woods, and that I did not like too much, but I read up and that behavior was not aggression, just a safety measure on the part of the coyotes, making sure I was not bothering their den area. Everything I read said an entire pack of coyotes would absolutely run from even one person, and people had little to fear.
Huh. That was good.
I asked my college roommate's brother, Trey, about the coyotes, and to my surprise, he, this nature-loving sort who used to work at Yellowstone and Big Bend, said, "El, they're worse than raccoons and rats combined. They cause trouble after trouble and will wipe out the deer and rabbits, dig up your garden, tip over your trash cans, and live under your sheds. They'll be near your house every night, watching you, whether you see them or not. You should get rid of them now while you can."
But I didn't want to do that. Sure, I have my share of guns and like shooting them but I hate killing anything, even house spiders and flies, and I like leaving nature alone.
Well, not long after my talk with Trey, a pushy jerk from the local police station (cops here are called "rangers" if you can believe it) came to my house and told me some neighbors had complained about coyotes in the woods coming onto their property, and he was there to eliminate them with poison, with snare traps, and by setting up a shooting tent above baited food, using a silenced rifle.
I was like uh, no you're not, and he actually argued with me that it was his right to come onto our land and hunt the coyotes! I said no, it's definitely not your right to do any such thing without my permission, and if I see you here or think you've been here, I'll sue you good an proper, sir. And trust me, I told him, my property has enough cameras and heat and motion sensors on it that you will be caught if you sneak back here.
"I'll take you to court, ma'am, we do have the right, I refer you to village charter, blahblahblah, and homeowners static agrement clause number blahblahblah..."
But as far as I know he went away after running his mouth and the coyotes lived on and never really bothered me.
They also bred and increased in numbers, and it got to be a rare night their calls did not sound across the landscape.
But....we'd also find a lot killed deer.... my daughter's cat Miss Sparkly Feet (she named her that when she was about seven, give her a break), vanished, as did our beagle, Ernie. By summer 2016 we started seeing coyote tracks off our patio and in the garden. We'd never see the actual coyotes, just signs of them.
They never challenged us or were too overt, they never made me think twice about going into the woods alone at night, but this thing with them gathering and watching my son (or to be honest more likely watching the pups) finally got to me.
And I am afraid I have to give in and....they've got to go away. (Bang.)
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the new age leave nature alone inner goddess in my head is right, maybe all the police and hunters and conservation workers were wrong all along about how bad coyotes get, but you know, I'd condemn a thousands coyotes---all coyotes o this planet---to that great roadrunner chase in the sky if it saved my son's life. Even the chance that next time something bad might happen out there in the woods is enough to make me reach this decision.
But that doesn't mean I like this forthcoming horrible thing, and it is going to screw up my mind to know I am sentencing a bunch of wild animals to a possibly undeserved death.
I'm trying to think of it as a bunch more deer in the future, but I still hate this.
You do what you gotta do!
You do not surprise me. I know you have character. Nonetheless I agree with Indy.
When we lived in back of Welch's and near the woods on the edge of town, coyotes came on our back stoop and stole food I would set out for the feral cats that lived under the shed. I would only see them about dawn, but that's it.
And yeah- before the 90's we never had coyotes in lower Michigan.
Never heard of them killing deer- or any other large animal- and we had feral cats all over the place. They seemed to be scavengers.
"Coyotes kill deer. This fact is undisputed. The real question is:
Do coyotes cause deer populations to decline?
This question has led to years of research. While there are still strong advocates on both sides, enough science has been done that there is an evidence based answer to this question.
Coyotes will scavenge deer carcasses any time of the year (1) and usually have deer hair in their scat, but they primarily hunt deer during the spring and the winter in areas with snow. There is some evidence of coyotes hunting adult deer in areas without snow, but this is not well documented. Studies from northern areas show during mild winters coyotes kill less deer and switch to other prey like snowshoe hare(2), and it is hard for coyotes to kill adult deer without snow to slow and exhaust deer. It is mainly the alpha male and female of territorial breeding pairs that kill deer and livestock, and younger and transient animals stick to smaller prey and scavenging (3). In fact the presence of the alpha pair is just as important for deer hunting success as the coyote pack size(4).
In the spring coyotes focus on hunting deer fawns, and in areas without wolves or bears coyotes are usually the largest source of fawn mortality. In various studies coyotes have caused fawn mortality as high as 50% and as low as 9% (5, 6).
Killing lots of fawns means that coyotes are bad for deer right? Unfortunately it is not that simple. There are two main kinds of predation, compensatory and additive predation. Compensatory predation describes a situation where a predator kills prey that would have died from other causes later in the year (i.e. starved to death) while additive predation are predator kills that add to the total mortality rate (i.e. predators kill healthy deer that would have survived the winter). The real question is whether coyote deer kills are additive or compensatory. If predation is additive than coyotes are lowering the deer population, but if most predation is compensatory than coyotes are only killing deer that would die from something else.
One way to figure out which kind of predation is happening is to shoot a bunch of coyotes in one place and not shoot them in another place and look at the difference in fawn survival (some researchers build a fence and then shoot the coyotes). Many early coyote removal studies removed coyotes in the spring and then counted the ratio of fawns to does in the fall (7). These studies showed that coyote removals increased the number of fawns that survive to the fall, BUT they did not follow fawn survival through the winter and we don't know if those fawns survived to become adult deer.
Researchers saw the problem with these studies and conducted some very large and intensivecoyote deer research throughout the United States. A 9 year study in Idaho removed both mountain lions and coyotes(8) and several large studies in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado removed coyotes from areas ranging from 40 to 300 square miles(9–11). None of these studies found any evidence that coyote removal caused an increase in the deer population. The study in Idaho actually found that fawn predation was more affected by the abundance of other prey than coyote removal. The two best coyote removal studies with white-tailed deer populations also show that coyote removal does not affect overall population growth. The first study in southeast Texas showed that coyote removal increased fawn survival but did not change the population density(12). Another long term study of a deer population in a predator free fenced area in Texas found that deer density increased for a few years and then sharply declined to match the populations outside the predator exclosure (13) and the deer in the predator free area had a much poorer diet (14). The researchers concluded that coyotes actually had a stabilizing effect on the deer herd.
The fact that coyotes are not causing deer populations to decline can also be seen in the effect white-tailed deer are having on forest ecosystems throughout the eastern United States. Overabundant white-tailed deer have been shown to decrease tree regeneration (15), changed the composition of the entire plant community within reach of a feeding deer (16), and changed shrubs enough to decrease survival and abundance of nesting songbirds (17).
Do coyotes cause deer declines?
The evidence says no. There is no evidence that coyotes are the factor that keeps deer populations from growing and actually evidence that some predation may keep the deer herd from overshooting the food supply. "
If you don't want to kill them is there something you can do to scare them off?
Did a quick search and came up with this.
QuoteThere are some benefits to having coyotes in the suburbs and cities. As natural predators of rodents, they do a bang-up job controlling rat and mouse populations at certain times of the year. Another benefit is having them around as a subject for photos and observation (a bit weak when it comes to defining benefits, I know).
In general, coyotes are disdained due to the fact that they become aggressive toward human beings once they've acclimatized to human-dense environments. Though they do help to control rodents at certain times of the year, coyotes have also reduced the populations of native species like the Red Fox. They also do considerable damage to the productivity of American goat and sheep ranches.
Avoid Attracting Coyotes
The first line of defense against coyotes is to avoid attracting them. Coyotes can adapt to any environment that provides food, water, shade, and space.
1. Keeping food sources, especially garbage, scarce is your top priority.The California Department of Fish and Wildlife recommends putting garbage into cans that cannot be opened by coyotes or tipped over. The Boulder County municipality advocates removing as many rodents (AKA potential coyote food) as possible from your yard and garden. Denver animal control experts suggest picking up fruit that falls in your yard, as the coyote diet is about 20% fruit.
This should go without saying: Never feed coyotes, no matter how cute they look.
2. Pets and pet food are also attractive to coyotes. Clean up spilled pet food outdoors. Pest control experts in Denver recommend that you bring all pets inside at night and refrain from letting cats and dogs roam free during the day.
3. If you happen to come face to face with a coyote, do your best to scare it away. Remember, if coyotes become comfortable around humans, they eventually grow aggressive. The worst thing you can do if you see a coyote in your neighborhood is do nothing, or to turn your back to it. Scream, yell, wave your arms, and throw rocks toward it. (Animal rights people: I am not saying to hit it with rocks, I am saying throw rocks to scare it. There is a difference.)
4. Fencing is another way to keep coyotes off of your property, but it is not quite as effective as removing food sources. Wire mesh at least five feet high is the best fencing to protect against coyotes. Coyotes will burrow under fences, so find a fencing contractor to install a line of barbed wire. Adding rollers at the top of the fence will prevent the coyotes from getting the foothold necessary to clear the fence.
5. Lights are yet another method to repel coyotes. Coyotes don't like loud noises and flashing lights. Installing motion-sensor lights, or like, launching a night club, in your yard will help to discourage coyotes from prowling there. Your neighbors will prefer the motion-sensor lights to the raging bass and colored strobes. You've been warned.
In Texas we shoot them and nail their hides to a fence or tree. That seems to keep their cronies away.
Well today I walked all through the woods with my pups, from the house to the hillside where my son saw the coyotes, all the way to this cliff we call the overlook, and I saw neither hide nor hair of them, though this was in the afternoon and they're more active at night here, I think. I wish they'd just keep to themselves and avoid us entirely, since having animals killed is absolutely not what I'm about.
Oh, hey, 3/4ths of the way to kraken!