According to a neighbor, who has a son doing predation flights in helicopters, paid for by some govment department, 23 coyotes on a recent nearby all day hunt penciled out to $234.00 per dog. They had planned to base the fuel truck at the end of my driveway, but high winds changed that. The chopper was 700 plus per hour!

The government of Saskatchewan, Canada issued a bounty of $20 per coyote in Nov of 2009. By March of 2010 there were 71,000 bounties collected. Give the people a little bonus to go do what they enjoy and you'll see results!

You mean Canadians have guns? But you still don't have gun shops next to liquor stores, that still a US thing right? Also I heard a rumor once that you were going to invade South Dakota, is that true? I think it was leaked by the wife of one of your ambassadors.

Seriously, the bounty is the way to go but the state likes flying and shooting and getting paid for it too. It's everyones dream job.

It's typically not the state doing the hunting, but rather APHIS, the federal Dept of Agriculture agency responsible for animal damage control.

And, yes, it is expensive.

I'm guessing the coyotes don't like it either.

And, with all that, there are thought to be more coyotes, ranging over more country than there ever have been.

You gotta give the coyote credit: Nobody seems to get their undies in a knot over some government agency killing the little buggers, and a lot of em get killed each year, yet they seem to be thriving.

Not trying to start another rant and rave. I've hunted coyotes, from the ground and the air. But, they are good at what they do.

MTV

But, they are good at what they do.

I am always a bit surprised when I see a coyote trotting down the sidewalk in a city. Both coyotes and raccoons have adapted very well to any environment we seem to throw at them. Smart and adaptable seems to be the survival formula.

CBC "Nature of Things" had a great program on the city raccoon this week.

In the PNW, I need to add crows to that list.

TD

Interesting subject. $234 per dog. Can you imagine how may would be killed if they offered a $100 bounty on the buggers. Just another example of how much more expensive it is to let the governemt do it. (or anything for that manner)

Tim

TomD wrote:

But, they are good at what they do.

I am always a bit surprised when I see a coyote trotting down the sidewalk in a city. Both coyotes and raccoons have adapted very well to any environment we seem to throw at them. Smart and adaptable seems to be the survival formula.

CBC "Nature of Things" had a great program on the city raccoon this week.

In the PNW, I need to add crows to that list.

TD

I too was also very surprised to hear and see that coyotes were still in a major metropolitan area like Los Angeles/Orange County. I know they are in the hills around Fullerton, Brea, Santa Ana Mts, and many other city's that have some open space near the hills and mountains. But I was surprised to hear that they are still living well in the south western part of Orange County in city's like Garden Grove, Cypress, Westminster, and Huntington Beach to name a few. No wonder why you see so many "Lost/Missing Pet" signs all over the place down here

Here in northern MN we have a great coyote control program. They are called timberwolves. Not real compatible in our parts, and wolves are pretty good at killing them. As a result we have very few coyotes, and those that are around basically live right in town and raid garbage cans, dog food bowls, and pet cats. If they get too far out of town the big wolves get em. Maybe we could export some big wolves over your way to help you out with your coyote problem

Since the wolves are protected and the 'yotes are not, maybe the government could pay itself every time a wolf kills a coyote...or maybe the other way around...and the program could just sustain itself?..and no wasted avgas!!
Oh hell I would shoot the little buggars for half the price and have fun doing it!

A couple of years ago a couple of local powered parachute pilots were hunting coyotes, from the air, right across the valley from my place. The local rancher claimed they were shooting at his cattle (known to be a jerk, he was hoping to collect on some dead cattle, and they for sure were not anywhere close to his cattle). Fish and Game, or maybe a fed outfit, got involved, next thing they knew they were hauled into court (federal) and both got their aircraft seized!! Never got them back, one had a 912S Rotax almost new, there's 18K plus right there.

I didn't even know this coyote was there until he ran out in front of me, one of the very few times I've seen one do something stupid, wily indeed!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYvKmm6ppTI

58Skylane wrote:

TomD wrote:

But, they are good at what they do.

I am always a bit surprised when I see a coyote trotting down the sidewalk in a city. Both coyotes and raccoons have adapted very well to any environment we seem to throw at them. Smart and adaptable seems to be the survival formula.

CBC "Nature of Things" had a great program on the city raccoon this week.

In the PNW, I need to add crows to that list.

TD

I too was also very surprised to hear and see that coyotes were still in a major metropolitan area like Los Angeles/Orange County. I know they are in the hills around Fullerton, Brea, Santa Ana Mts, and many other city's that have some open space near the hills and mountains. But I was surprised to hear that they are still living well in the south western part of Orange County in city's like Garden Grove, Cypress, Westminster, and Huntington Beach to name a few. No wonder why you see so many "Lost/Missing Pet" signs all over the place down here

Are you sure the coyotes are responsible for those missing pets? One of my favorite Garden Grove restaurants was the subject of a newspaper article many years ago. The topic was 'missing neighborhood pets'. It seemed the local immigrants had become 'ranchers' of the missing pets and were serving them to their customers. I always wondered if I had enjoyed one of my friends dogs or cats.

rfinkle wrote:

58Skylane wrote:
I too was also very surprised to hear and see that coyotes were still in a major metropolitan area like Los Angeles/Orange County. I know they are in the hills around Fullerton, Brea, Santa Ana Mts, and many other city's that have some open space near the hills and mountains. But I was surprised to hear that they are still living well in the south western part of Orange County in city's like Garden Grove, Cypress, Westminster, and Huntington Beach to name a few. No wonder why you see so many "Lost/Missing Pet" signs all over the place down here

Are you sure the coyotes are responsible for those missing pets? One of my favorite Garden Grove restaurants was the subject of a newspaper article many years ago. The topic was 'missing neighborhood pets'. It seemed the local immigrants had become 'ranchers' of the missing pets and were serving them to their customers. I always wondered if I had enjoyed one of my friends dogs or cats.

Maybe 50/50?? Got me on that one. That's why I'm careful where I eat in that area I'll stick with Whole "Pay Check" Foods, In N Out, and Chic fil A

Missing a dog or 2 up here in Riverside. Went looking for it in Little Saigon couldn't find him, about dark 30 almost every night we hear the coyotes howling and rat packing up in the hills behind the house. See them frequently walking through the hood looking for dinners, they are not disturbed buy us much. I'm sure if I shot 1 I'd be some kind of felon.

Glidergeek wrote:Missing a dog or 2 up here in Riverside. Went looking for it in Little Saigon couldn't find him, about dark 30 almost every night we hear the coyotes howling and rat packing up in the hills behind the house. See them frequently walking through the hood looking for dinners, they are not disturbed buy us much. I'm sure if I shot 1 I'd be some kind of felon.

Russ, same over here in Brea. We can hear the "Yoties" about every other night. My sisters house is about 200 yards from the hills between Brea and L.A. County.

Is it too late to order one of those air rifles online from the Lewis and Clark expedition? Hope the price hasn't gone up.

The Cayote

From Mark Twain’s Roughing It chapter five


"Along about an hour after breakfast we say the first prairie-dog villages, the first antelope, and the first wolf. If I remember rightly, this latter was the regular cayote (pronounced ky-o-te) of the farther deserts. And if it was, he was not a pretty creature or respectable either, for I got well acquainted with his race afterward, and can speak with confidence. The cayote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a general slinking expression all over. The cayote is a living breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is so spiritless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he is so homely!- so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful. When he sees you he lifts is lip and lets a flash of his teeth out, and then turns a little out of the course he was pursuing, depresses his head a bit, and strikes a long, soft-footed trot through the sagebrush, glancing over his shoulder at you, from time to time, till he is about out of easy pistol range, and then he stops and takes a deliberate survey of you; he will trot fifty yards and stop again-another fifty and stop again; and finally the gray of the sage-brush, and he disappears. All this is when you make no demonstration against him; but if you do, he develops a livelier interest in his journey, and instantly electrifies his heels and puts such a deal of real estate between himself and your wagon, that by the time you have raised the hammer you see that you need a minie rifled cannon, and by the time you have “drawn a bead” on him you see well enough that nothing could reach him were he is now. But if you start with a swift-footed dog after him, you will enjoy it ever so much-especially if it is a dog that has a fond opinion of himself, and has been brought up to think he knows something about speed. The cayote will go swinging gently off on that deceitful trot of his, and every little while he will smile a fraudful smile over his shoulder that will fill that dog entirely full of encouragement and worldly ambition, and make him lay his head still lower to the ground, and stretch his neck further to the front, and pant more fiercely, and stick his tail out straighter behind and move his furious legs with yet a wilder frenzy, and leave broader and broader, and higher and denser cloud of desert sand smoking behind, and marking his long wake across the level plain! And all this time the dog is only a short twenty feet behind the cayote, and to save the soul of him he cannot understand why it is that he cannot get perceptually closer; and he begins to get aggravated, and it makes him madder and madder to see how gently the cayote glides along and never pants or sweats or ceases to smile; and he grows still more incensed to see how shamefully he has been taken in by an entire stranger, and what an ignoble swindle that long, calm, soft-footed trot is; and next he notices that he is getting fagged, and that the cayote actually has to slacken speed a little to keep from running away from
him-and then that town-dog is mad in earnest, and he begins to strain and weep and swear, and paw the sand higher than ever, and reach for the cayote with con-centrated and desperate energy. This spur finds him six feet behind the gliding enemy, and two mile from his friends. And then, in the instant that a wild new hope is lighting up his face, the cayote turns and smiles blandly upon him once more, and with something about which seems to say; “Well, I shall have to tear myself away from you, bub- business is business, and it will not do for me to be fooling along this way all day”- forthwith there is a rushing sound, and the sudden splitting of a long crack through the atmosphere, and behold the dog is solitary and alone in the midst of a vast solitude!

It makes his head swim. He stops, and looks all around; climbs the nearest sand-mound, and gazes into the distance; shakes his head reflectively, and then, without a word, he turns and jogs along back to his train, and takes up a humble position under the hindmost wagon, and feels unspeakably mean, and looks ashamed, and hangs his tail at half-mast for a week. And for as much as a year after that, whenever there is a great hue and cry after a cayote, that dog will merely glance in that direction without emotion, and apparently observe to himself, “I believe I do not wish any of that pie.”

The cayote lives chiefly in the most desolate and forbidding deserts, along with the lizard, the jackass rabbit and the raven, and gets an uncertain and precarious living, and earns it. He seems to subsist almost wholly on the carcasses of oxen, mules, and horses that have dropped out of the emigrant trains and died, and upon wind-falls of carrion, and occasional legacies of offal bequeathed to him by white men who have been opulent enough to have something better to butcher than condemned army bacon. He will eat anything in the world that his first cousins, the desert-frequenting tribes of Indians will, and they will eat anything they can bite. It is a curious fact that these latter are the only creatures know to history who will eat nitro-glycerin and ask for more if they survive.

The cayote of the deserts beyond the Rocky Mountains has a peculiarly hard time of it, owing to the fact that his first relatives, the Indians, are just as apt to be the first to detect a seductive sent on the desert breeze, and follow the fragrance to the late ox it emanated from, as he is himself; and when this occurs he has to content himself with sitting, off at a little distance watching those people strip off and dig out every-thing edible, and walk off with it. Then he and the waiting ravens explore the skeleton and polish the bones. It is considered that the cayote, the obscene bird, and the Indian of the desert, testify their blood kinship with each other in that they live together in the waste places of the earth on terms of perfect confidence and friendship, while hating all other creatures and yearning to assist at their funerals. He does not mind going a hundred miles to breakfast, and a hundred fifty for dinner, because he is sure to have three or four days between meals, and he can just as well be traveling and looking at the scenery as lying around doing nothing and adding to the burden of his parents.

We soon learned to recognize the sharp, vicious bark of the cayote as it came across the murky plain at night to disturb our dreams among the mail-sacks; and remembering his forlorn aspect and his hard fortune, made shift to wish him the blessed novelty of a long day’s good luck and a limitless larder the morrow."

GumpAir wrote:

Nice pic Gump, I have it hanging downstairs,Along with most of his other work. Sandy J is a family friend. Awesome artist.

I love his artwork.

Gump

GumpAir wrote:I love his artwork.

Gump

Sandy's artwork is great.

His sense of humor is even better.

And, he's a nice guy to boot.

MTV