Ramblings and Such From Hunting Coyote
- Thread starter DSheetz
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We even have branches off of cricks, not trees! LOL
I'm interested in other's experiences with my situation. I bought a 70 acre ranch outside Laramie. Estate sale, property disaster. While roaming around I notice a pair of cats, obviously feral, living in one of the outbuildings. This is at the start of our nasty 2022/23 cold winter. I figure the cats were the deceased owner's cats that no one cared or knew about. Softy me decides to feed the 'two' cats. All goes pretty well, except that by the growing end of winter, my food consumption has tripled or so. Now I'm curious. Out comes the trail cam. I find out that I'm feeding at least 3 cats, 1 racoon, and at least 1 skunk. Not happy, so I stop feeding. I figure if the big boy cats can't police their space, they can hunt on their own. Plus - it's spring. They don't need my food.
OK - so what's weird is that as I looked more closely at the trail cam pix, I see that the racoon and the skunk are actually interacting, moving, hunting and eating together. I was blown away! Have any of you seen such a thing before?
OK - so what's weird is that as I looked more closely at the trail cam pix, I see that the racoon and the skunk are actually interacting, moving, hunting and eating together. I was blown away! Have any of you seen such a thing before?
Yes, I have seen wildlife of varying species interact with each other. I had heard of coyotes and badger hunting together and thought it was a bs story till I watched it happen in the mountains on a meadow where the badger would start digging out a ground squirrel and the coyote would catch it as it ran out the back way, after a few the coyote dropped one at the badger's feet. I have noticed several times where animals would eat at the same carcass or the same food trough, raccoon, skunks, cows and deer. When flying one morning we watched a female coyote leading a red fox kit back toward her den of pups. I don't know if she would have raised it or not, we were there to kill predators and they didn't survive, but normally she would have killed the fox kit. When I was younger, I saw a female dog nursing kittens. Nature often appears cruel to us and as we believe it is, but to the others in the world it isn't it's just the way life turns out. At times the animals and humans work together and at other times they are at odds.
An example of why I like a 3/32 8 foot long snare, she had room and the length of cable to jump the fence but not enough to get her front feet back on the ground. She was a good neck catch and didn't last very long. She was old enough that she didn't have many teeth left, a good one to get rid of.
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This is an example of why I am not a fan of the shorter 5- and 6-foot snares in the 5/64th cable diameter that so many people tend to like these days. I didn't lose this coyote but if she hadn't died from a good neck catch, she would have been gone with a snare cutting into her. She didn't have enough cable to jump over the fence and get hung, fast.
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Being mid-September this year's pup crop should be starting to get out on their own some now. With the day light hours getting shorter they will have started putting on their winter coats, and they should have most of their adult teeth now. They will be close to full sized by now with their growth being complete by the age of around ten months so in probably January or February they will stop growing here. Now is the time when it's getting hard to tell an older and younger coyote apart, the teeth and ears are the way I tell the difference between them. The teeth will be clean and have sharp points on the pups from this year. The ears will be thinner on them as well, the adults will have more rounded teeth with some build up on the back teeth and their ears will have begun to get thickened up.
I love calling into this pine ridge and its canyons. I've taken several dens from them and the rough country below where I was standing when I took this picture. I was standing about 100 feet back from the edge of the top of the ridge where it drops off nearly 300 feet down to the northeast. I've called everything from antelope to elk from this pine ridge by slipping over the top and down the side to a juniper along the side of the slope to set up and call. It was in this area that I was set up below some rocks and had two adult bobcats setting above me growling at the coyote that was howling. It was at a juniper on this ridge that I called a pair of coyotes into the rancher and had them do a run by of him at maybe five feet. We did get them shot when I barked them to a stop out at 100 yards. His remark was wow that was almost better than sex.
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WOW what a view!! Isn't it cool when centain spots just have those ties to us. Good spots have more ties lol. I too have a few of those that have lots of memories. We're in harvest mode here now. Still not much coyote sign around here but if there's anything around they'll have to show themselves when they lose all thier cover in the next few weeks.
It is for sure. I was set up with my old southern black mouth cur calling into the canyon here when I had about six coyote pups howl back at me, Buckwheat came back to me stopped and looked at me then went and got in the truck. He retired that day he was over twelve at that time he had earned it and lived to be right at 16 years old.
When anyone of us spends a large amount of their lives doing anything we will have some very memorable times I have been blessed to have been able to spend so much time out and doing things that I have enjoyed so much, and now I am blessed to be able to share some of mine with others!
I am sure that most of us know that the pronghorn shed their horns, and this is what happens to them after a few years laying out on the prairie. This one is about ten inches long he is still running around and is now around 13 inches long and you can see a picture of him standing in the creek bottom that had the spring feeding it close off due to an earthquake. It was a beautiful day out today in the mid-seventies, partly cloudy and just a breeze.
