Coyotes: Are they always fair game?

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Guys, CleanCut doesn't really come across as other than maybe-young and definitely new to the hunting world.

I started out around age 5-1/2, following my grandfather around his farm/ranch. I learned about doctoring screw-worms in cattle and other doctoring--like the calf whose eye was kicked out by a plow horse. (My first reaction was (Ugh!"; I almost threw up.)

A Saturday stop on the weekly in-town shopping trip was my grandmother going into the drugstore and buying strychnine (came in a tube, like toothpaste) to put on bread to kill possums, skunks and raccoons which came around the hen-house at night.

Sunday dinner was the chicken I caught and killed that morning. Bacon and ham came from the occasional hog we slaughtered, not the grocery store.

There are better ways to go through life than plowing behind a horse, although it's an aid to one's notions of self-importance at age 8, since plowing a straight row is not all that easy.

And a tractor with a self-starter is better than one with a hand-crank, when you're 11 years old and skinny. I can tell you that picking cotton by hand at two cents per pound just really, really sucks!

I won't argue it's not cruel to gut-shoot a coyote with a .22 rimfire and leave him to die in a day or two...But ol' Wily is hell on quail and rabbits and housecats and housedogs and anything else he can catch and eat. That's why God put him here--he's part of the cycles of nature. And so I'll shoot such coyotes as their numbers lead me to believe that my notion of a proper "Balance of Nature" is better for me than "Natural".

I'm going to live in my own version of "Natural"--with a house and a car and all that. Any fool can live under a mesquite bush with a woven-thatch sorta-roof and eat grubs and roots...And I ain't no fool.

:), Art
 
Boy, I sure learned alot about coyotes! As for me, I don't find justification in going out to a barren desert (original question) and picking on coyotes. Maybe, others feel OK about it. Everyone has a right to their opinion. Before you go, though, just take a look at the photo that started it all. I think a picture says a thousand words.
www.varminter.com/pics/picdetail.cfm?counter=37
 
CleanCut, "barren" is a relative term. I live in Terlingua, on the west edge of Big Bend National Park. Definitely desert. Average annual rainfall of around 7" to 9", and you oughta be there the day it hits!

I've been in the desert area southwest of Las Vegas, as well as the Black Rock Desert northwest of Winnemucca. Lots of wildlife, lots of coyotes. "been" as in stomped around on foot, not just driving through...

I've also spent a good bit of time around Blountstown and Tallahassee in Florida. And, Thomasville, GA. Definitely not barren. Fewer coyotes in this part of the world than in Terlingua...

If you're not in Muleshoe's situation, you can afford to think in terms of "fair chase" and "hunter's ethic". I can, and do. He is in a totally different milieu, and for there he is absolutely morally correct.

Nobody was born an expert anything. Expertise is nothing more than overcoming ignorance. "Ignorance is curable; stupidity is forever." You don't at all sound stupid; you just have a way to go for expertise. Don't sweat it, you'll get there; we all had to start somewhere.

Thanx for the pix; I'll bookmark them.

:), Art
 
Clean Cut...

As Art said earlier:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>As long as species survival
is ensured, all else is personal beliefs and morality--and not germane
to what other people do.[/quote]

This quote sums up and encompasses the total ethical range of hunting.
All hunters have their biases and limits...just like all humans have on every single activity we are capable of.
I've killed coyotes...killed one 3 days ago on my farm...about 60 feet from my house. I wouldn't go out of my way to hunt puma or bear or any other predator, however I won't condemn nor think ill of those who do. Likewise, I won't hunt for trophies..but again I don't judge those who do.
Unless you hunt strictly and solely for food, not a single one of us has the right nor moral imperative to judge any other competent and ethical hunter. Once you have decided to take a life for reasons other than food or defense, you have abrogated the moral imperative to judge others.

You state you are a prospective varmint hunter...you used the perjorative term pests. Have you hunted before? Do you use the term pest as a rationalization to kill? Do you sincerely want to hunt? If so, why? Can you be satisfied by target shooting?

These are questions you must ask yourself.



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"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!
 
One more time. Cleancut, yes I am concerned about profit. Aren't you? I've got kids to feed, do you? Am I obsessed with money? Maybe so. If someone took $500 out of your pocket would you do nothing? Maybe you would take a picture and think of how cute he looks?

Yes I'm aware that this forum is called the hunt. I'm willing to bet I've called in and killed more coyotes while hunting than you've probably ever seen.

Why don't you be honest and clear up the purpose for your original post here. You say you are a prospective varmint hunter, then launch into how they could be someones dog. Oh my, how terrible!! While your out there hugging bunnies make sure "Ole Wiley" doesn't slip up and bite you in the butt. I think it's becoming quite clear what you are doing here.

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bullet placement is gun control

[This message has been edited by muleshoe (edited February 13, 2000).]
 
Well, I might as well step in it. In my neck of the woods it is socially acceptable to kill critters for sport, and I do just that. I call in and kill dozens of predators a year. In the off season I shoot gophers and prarie dogs for fun. I don't promote it, and I don't condemn those who disagree.

While riding snowmobiles several years ago I chased a coyote down and mashed him into the snow. While parked on top of him I got a .22 pistol out of my tank bag. I drove off of the critter and shot him as he struggled to his feet. At the time, a mountain pelt like that fetched about $120.00.

My snowmobiling partner rode over and immediately told me what a dispicable ass I was for doing such a terrible thing. He lectured me on how the poor old coyote was just trying to "earn a living" out in the mountains and wasn't hurting a thing. Interestingly enough, my riding partner is a hunter, having killed a deer and an elk that fall. Heck, I took him deer hunting. It just so happened that I crossed the moral and ethical line as far as he was concerned.

Maybe Clean Cut is just trying to define where that line is as far as his own hunting practices. Who knows...?
 
That's right. It's my right to define where I draw that line. It's called free speech. This isn't the Soviet Union. It's also my right to criticize anyone else who crosses that line. To me, the argument's about SPORTSMANSHIP. It has nothing to do with 'expertise', experience with guns (and WRITING ABOUT IT!), etc. As I said before and I'll say it again, it's OK to get rid of coyotes to protect farm and livestock. My view isn't threatening anybody's livelihood. I just made a point about people who go out in the desert and take pot shots at coyotes.
See: www.varminter.com/pics/picdetail.cfm?counter=37.
 
The pictures are worth a thousand words, but should we put them in the wrong mouth? Okay, so you twice posted a link to the same picture. A cute little coyote looks like it is asleep at the feet of some leering guy.

Just because the caption says something about the SoCal desert doesn't mean this guy drove his Land Rover 100 miles into the desert, put on snowshoes and hiked 20 miles over a mountain range, rappeled down a 150-foot cliff with his rifle between his teeth, then pot-shot this hapless coyote that was too far away from civilization to "bother" anyone.

The terrain reminds me very much of that surrounding my friend's house in Vista, CA. His house was (he moved to Carlsbad two years ago) also surrounded by about 500 houses on little quarter-acre lots. If you jumped the 7' solid wood fence in his back yard, you were in some of the meanest snake and coyote infested country between L.A. and Mexico, otherwise known as THE SOCAL DESERT.

Remember also that coyotes will cover anywhere from 2-5 miles per day to hunt, and the territory range of a single pack may be up to ten times that amount in square miles. In short, very few of them don't somehow butt up against human habitat.

I wouldn't suggest that you hunt ANYTHING if a picture brings you to conclusions that something excessive is going on with predator control. Wait 'till you start field dressing what you have killed, either for it's pelt or meat.

And there's nothing wrong with that approach, either. I took fifteen years off between deer hunts, just shooting at paper targets for fun, because I could not bring myself to shoot a deer the first couple of times I went. I helped my friends field dress and butcher theirs, but I just could not pull the trigger myself. This year I got one, and I'm writing this message with a bellyfull of wonderful venison steaks from earlier in the evening.

Bergie: Good to hear the mountain lion is expanding its range, also. This is another predator I would have a hard time shooting, though the cats tend to stay in the same areas, and the problem ones are easier to identify for elimination as a hazard. Sometimes it just has to be done...
 
It's a little known fact that crows are Federally protected. Some states have extremely generous seasons on them but they are protected nonethe less. Years ago in TX(I don't know how it is now), the lwa said something to the effect that you were not to kill crows unless they were damaging crops or somehow hurting something. The game wardens that I talked to said that they never saw a crow that wasn't doing something wrong or his way to do it so they didn't care how many or when you we shot them.

This brings us to coyotes. I have never seen one that wasn't on his way to do something he wasn't supposed to do and I kill most everyone that I see.

We sell guided varmint hunts here and coyotes are a big part of our living in the off season. We live in the middle of 30,000 acres of private land and there are also a lot of cattle on the land. So, that being the case, yes, coyotes are considered dangerous to the calves and to our domestic pets and farm animals but because they are so numerous, we also kill them for sport and profit. I just had two hunters here on the 12th and 13th for a coyote hunt. In the summer we add prairie dogs to the list.
I routinely shoot them right out my back door. If a cow dies, I drag it over within a couple hundred yards of the house and shoot coyotes off it when I don't have anything else to do.
Muleshoe, I agree with you about an ulterior motive here.
www.cia-g.com/~lzysbarc


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Desertscout
desertscout@hotmail.com

"The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference -- they deserve a place of honor with all that is good."
--George Washington
 
Desertscount, sounds like a great vacation. :cool: Never been to Texas, but I know I would thoroughly enjoy the hunting. :eek: Coyotes? Oh, why not. I never was one of those bleeding heart types. Really. I just kind of felt sorry for that one picture of the animal on that rock. :( Next time I'm in the desert, I'll take one out for you'all so you feel better. ;)
CleanCut
 
I live in the city and have had 3 (5+ possible) pets taken by Coyotes. I'll shoot them whenever I can, but since I can't shoot in the city, that means shooting them in the desert. I see it as keeping the populations low in their natural habitat so that they don't intrude on my natural habitat.
 
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