Speaking of coyotes...

I would guess that if they put some serious study into it, they would find that bounties are not an effective use of funds. Hunting has little effect on coyote populations. While trapping is more effective than hutning, it too has little effect.
 
True, I remember the bounties on fox and great horned owls paid by the PAGC. This new proposal was from the state house last year. Maybe it just went away? Our GC is kind of weird. It is not government and it is not private either. Actually, the two fight each other frequently.
 
Last spring I attended a meeting with the MO Dept of Conservation about our dwindling deer population. I pointed out(maybe a little too aggressively) that one of the factors was the increased predator losses of fawns. The deer biologist looked at me like I'd grown horns. When I suggested a reinstatement of the $15 coyote bounty, the look changed to one of disdain and disapproval. He stated the bounty was ineffective and that furtakers would control the coyotes.
I finally walked away knowing my input was not making the short list.
I actively hunt coyotes year round. I look for them and shoot them when I see them anytime or place it's legal. One day during last spring's mating season I saw 7 coyotes at one time in a 40 acre field and a total of 13 in that one day in a single 640 acre section. Number killed that day= 0. Number killed in the 3 days prior and 3 days after=4. That leaves multiple pairs to raise litters in the immediate area.
Number of fawns seen in this area this summer=1. Number of dry does seen within the last 30 days=6. What does that tell anyone who is paying attention?
 
Failure of the state game department to consider and implement a hunting season when it will address a fair portion of the problem is breaking their public trust and approaches misfeasance.

Get your legislators involved and make their life difficult. They don't work for a few trappers, environmental organizations, or their personal beliefs. They work for the people of the state as a whole and have a legislated organic mission to manage game and provide for recreational hunting.

If you can't hunt, cut their budget.
 
Bounties are only ineffective in controlling populations when they are too low. 35 years ago when I was in college, I earned a lot of money from pelt hunting. A prime coyote pelt would draw between $75 and $130, and I shot a lot of them over the course of three years. When the price of pelts dropped to just about nothing, people stopped hunting them, and the sheep farmers started screaming bloody murder and paying the federal ADC hunters $500/day to shoot them. So, if pelt hunting controlled them enough that the ranchers noticed when we quit shooting them, bounties and the hunters they will draw will work for controlling them. See if you can get some politician to put a $100 bounty on them and see what happens. After the state budget office and the bunny huggers get done crying doom and destruction, of course.
 
Current Midwest coyote fur price is so low, the buyers leave them on the tailgate unless the fur is absolutely prime. I sold last winter for $5-12 unskinned and brought about 1/3 of my take home to dump. Trapping in areas with decent road systems(so you can drive the roads and set)is barely paying gas money and is totally a waste of time in the places w/o roads.
Bunny cops like their new pickups every 3 years and "research studies" on non-game critters/birds. They rode the coattails of a burgeoning deer herd for 20 years and now the citizens of the state are paying for the mess they made.
 
I agree, you need to keep after them. When I was a kid we had no coyotes where I lived, but plenty of fox. You could trap an area HARD and the next year catch more because they are "Movers".
 
Here in Texas, I see some coyote hunting contests that are pretty active. It's not unusual for a team to bring in 10 to 20 in a night. I don't know how that effects the overall picture, since I hear the coyotes singing about every night. I'm not a coyote hunter and in fact the guy that owns the lands that I use for deer and hog hunting likes having the coyotes around there...go figure....
 
The problem with a bounty is that for a person to hunt them for that reason, it would have to be significant to be worthwhile. Your cost per animal would suck the funds right out of your state wildlife agency.

Old Stoney hit on one idea I've been pushing in Ohio, and that is to promote it as sport, with contests and prizes just like they do with deer and turkeys. Cash prizes for the most and the biggest, and whatever. You could probably get sportman's clubs, farm bureaus, etc. to help in promoting it with prize donations or other ways. Definately a lot less costly than bounties, it it makes it a competition of fun, and not a "job".
 
Something not being an effective use of funds rarely affects decisions made by civil servants or politicians. snicker.
A coyote bounty would likely result in a lot of missing domestic dogs.
 
Around here, a bounty wouldn't make much difference, because there are plenty of us who hunt them for sport, and whatever money the pelts might bring. Also plenty of guys who are dedicated trappers who avidly trap even if the fur prices suck. Most of the "real trappers" actually prefer prices that aren't sky high, because it keeps most of the armatures from stringing steel. jd
 
The bounty on coyotes proposed in PA was not coming out of Game Commission funds, but I think it had to be approved by them. PA has a really weird system.
 
Bounties are only ineffective in controlling populations when they are too low
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Have to agree with that. Now the IDFG here will tell you the opposite. It's the same old mantra. We have the same problem with wolves here. Too many wolves. So IDFG answer is to sell tags for wolves and allow limited trapping. Hasn't worked. The reason it doesn't work is that wolves aren't prime during most of the hunting seasons. So if you don't want one for a taxidermy mount
it's a waste of time to fool with one, when you could be hunting elk or deer.
Why spend the money?

So the IDFG answer is to buy air time for IDFG personnel to shoot them from helicopters and create a wolf control board to manage the process ($400,000 was appropriated by the legislature to get them started)(go figure that) . Doesn't take long to burn up 400,000 dollars with air time, salaries, more state pensions and expense money. Where a 300.00 bounty x 300 wolves would be about 90,000 dollars. Gives everyone an incentive to get out and get the job done. And maybe that doesn't kill enough. But at least it does furnish a reward for the risk involved, rather than just paying more salaries for bureaucrats that aren't accomplishing anything either.
Idaho Gaiters
 
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Hmmmm...??? I wonder if the wolves might help control the coyotes??:rolleyes:

Over here in Oregon, we can hardly wait to start feeding our deer and elk to the wolves. jd
 
I can see IDAHO GAITERS point. It seems that the people in charge always need to twist money out of a situation. In PA years back anybody with a hunting license could shoot at a fox. Now you need a Furtakers license. So far, it is open season on coyotes. There are too many people wound up about the coyote situation to charge for a separate tag. Time will tell.
 
"A coyote bounty would likely result in a lot of missing domestic dogs."

How do you figure that?
When MO had a bounty, the animal had to be presented to a county official who clipped the ears.
When coyotes were worth $25-35, we hunted the heck out of them. Our group of 5-10 hunters and 10-15 dogs averaged 10 coyotes per week for 7-8 weeks in mid-winter. I paid my electric and grocery bills with coyote fur for several winters hunting on my own besides the group hunts. Course back then new 4x4 pickups were $4000, gas was under $1 a gallon, 22/250 ammo was $4/box, and a new Rem 700 was about $250.
 
Was actually one of those "unintended consequences" when wolves were introduced into Yellowstone.
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Around here, the nights you don't hear the coyotes yippin' you can figure the wolves are close. The mornings after I don't hear them yipping is generally when I find 'yote tracks in the backyard. I figure they come close to the house on those nights the wolves are close because the wolves don't like getting too close to humans.
 
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