Question for Coyote Hunters!!

It would take an army of hunters to have any major effect.
How many can an individual hunter take in a year is probably not going to have much effect on total numbers of yotes in Maine.

I think you would have a few who would take a "bounty" as motivation but in the long run, MOST people today have higher priorities! Families, work, deer hunting, etc...

Ten per month sounds like a decent number but hunting within your set perameters, a true number can't be calculated until it is actually tried in several WMD's. Some guys can shoot ten per day on good days.


I believe the best way to reduce the coyote population is to have hunts or tournaments with prizes for teams and tuen it into something like bassmasters. They do it out west and it is very effective. But are the coyote numbers really "too high" in Maine? I don't think so for MOST of Maine.
Some years ago, some 'entity' did a study on yotes and they figured something out. Coyotes have the ability to "abort" all or part of their unborn pups depending on the current food supply. This essentially is supposed to keep populations within the carrying capacity of an area. Some people would disagree but until newer/better/updated information or studies comes out, that's all we have to go by.


Yeah Tom, I know....long winded and off topic again! Oh well.

No not really! AB, I was a math major in college so I can add, subtract, multiply and divide. :lol2:
Let me be more specific now that I got a couple of bites.
If there was a bounty on coyotes of let's say $30 a critter and you could sell the pelt for whatever the going market was, would that be incentive enough for some guys to become "professional" yote killers?

In theory, I understand what some claim to be coyote self population controllers. I also have listened to the naysayers who say that no difference could be made if a bounty was instituted.

Now my math comes in along with the fact that I love to oversimplify things. Maine and many other places may not reduce the numbers of coyotes by is there was more incentives to go after a few, we could better control the growth. Don't you think?

I didn't just grab these dollar numbers out my Yahoo!. One county in Virginia is proposing a $25.00 per coyote bounty and a few trappers, etc. are finding that attractive.

Once again AB, I'll do some math. If AB went out and trapped or hunted coyotes 6 days a week and was successful in averaging 2 coyotes per day. Let's see.......er.......uh......that's 12 yotes, times $25.00 is er......uh......um......ah......let's see......oh yeah, $300.00 per week.

Granted there are expenses involved in this but that's more that some guys make at regular jobs PLUS if there was any market at all for the pelt then that would be gravy.

Is this not doable??

I agree with the biologist to a point. There is truth to the statement that if you kill off some of a pack, they will just reproduce more (nature, not by choice) to replace the ones taken.

If all things remain relative, in other words, habitat remains the same, etc., there becomes a break even point where a culling reaches neutral - not net gain, no net loss. Should that culling become greater than the ability of the animal to reproduce, then you have a reduction is population.

If there is great enough habitat that includes cover and feed, with few weather related mortalities on young or disease, it's hard to put a dent on em that's for sure.

Thus the basis for the original question. If there are not enough people culling the numbers, it's essentially a "let Mother Nature take its course" form of wildlife management - which is not good mixed in with billions of dollars spent on managing our game populations.

An example of this is in Alaska they are trying to reduce wolf populations in order to restore moose and caribou. Biologists there have a pretty good idea how many wolves need to be killed in order to actually start making a dent in the numbers.

Because of the drop in pelt prices for wolves, now down to $200-$300, it's not sufficient enough to prompt hunters to go out - consider the only viable way of getting back into the remote places where this is taking place, is by plane or helicopter. The governor just added a $150 bounty per wolf hoping that would help.

Without the necessary motivation, usually money, enough wolves will not be taken to make a dent.

I agree with the biologist to a point. There is truth to the statement that if you kill off some of a pack, they will just reproduce more (nature, not by choice) to replace the ones taken.

Click to expand...

I've spent alot of time in the last several years listening to biologists that dispute the findings about the coyotes ability to reproduce in higher numbers. Some of these were around when the studies were done. Seems that coyotes had been hunted and trapped "thinned" to very few in this study area.
The older smarter adults were the only ones left. Food was abundant from less competion now that most of the other coyotes were gone. Being older and well fed they just normally had bigger heather litters. Biologists didn't take this into account when doing their study and to this day biologists are taught this flawed theory.
I copied one of these conversations and have it someplace. There is a wilderness thread on trapperman.com. Mostly Alaskans and Canadian trappers and other wildlife people. They've archived a wolf predator thread that tells good info about whats going on.
The most effective way to take coyotes by any large numbers is snaring. With the lynx being protected you'll never see it brought back. But they may be bringing cable restraint. A snare that will not choke and releases tension as the animal lets up. These are not as effective, and have to be checked daily. The last year we snared trappers in the north like Don Duddly had to use this devise. I'm sure to get the feds blessing the program will be ineffective right from the start.
Another effective way is to set foot hold traps in deer trails. Place a pole over the trap so the deer step over and the coyote ducks under. Some Canadians catch coyotes by the hundreds like this. State won't allow it because of the frozen foot problem.
Wally Jacubus {SP} told me that with the snaring program it was hard to get trappers dedicated enough to make it effective. Trouble actually was they changed the rules to satisfy every Tom Dick and Harry with a complaint. Made it near impossible for a trapper to be effective.
Snaring you can take the old wise ones quite easy. Weather like rain "crust" and ice didn't stop them like it does dogs and shooting ability. They'd be there 24/7. A big snow storm was about the only problem.