No, coyotes mostly ( also sometimes bobcats ). Livestock guarding dogs are all Old World breeds bred to deal with wolves primarily, but in the lower 48 states wolves are only rarely a problem ( as they are themselves pretty rare outside of a few select areas ). Herd dogs don’t herd and can be a deterrent, but guard dogs do nothing but guard full-time. Herd dogs are usually present with a handler, who is often enough in of him/herself to act as a deterrent - guard dogs can be left alone with a flock all day and night and ideally perform independently.
Also not all coyotes are so unaggressive - some are quite persistent predators when they realize how inviting a lamb is ( especially if other prey is scarce ).
Hey, I’m on your side on this one.
Get yourself one of those Acme Coyote Dummies and let them blast away. They’ll eventually go away, then you can come out and eat a few mice. And play with your buddies.
Coyotes are getting quite bold around here. Generally we hear them off at a distance but recently they have come within a couple of hundred yards of the house. It drives the dogs wild.
Anyway one of our neighbors has a Llama. They are supposed to keep coyotes away.
With the coming of snow the local coyote hunters jump in their nice warm 4X4 s and chase after their coyote dogs who have been turned loose on a coyote track.The dogs chase the coyote for miles often being replaced with fresh dogs. Sometimes greyhounds are used.
When the coyote is cornered the hunter jumps out of his pickup and shoots the coyote.
Yeah man thats sport.
Long ago, our forefathers and foremothers wiped out the local wolves and cougars. They killed a lot of coyotes, too, but those are coming back to pest status. When man alters the predator balance like that, we have a responsiblity to act as predators ourselves. When wolves and cougars roamed the land, they kept the rabbits, mice, and deer down to a reasonable number. Our great great great grandfathers left us with a surplus of groundhogs (sorry, whistlepig,) and deer. I don’t hunt, and I feel sorta guilty about that. If I were more responsible, I’d go out and kill my share of the bunnies and Bambis that rightly belonged to the wolves.
I went on a hiking trip a few months ago. It was supposed to be a squirrel hunting trip. We didn’t kill anything, though, so we had to call it a hiking trip. If I had ever claimed to be a hunter, I would have been embarrassed. I’m a city feller, though, and everything I know about hunting could be stuffed into a briar pipe.
First, I think that any help for the ranchers in killed coyotes is largely cosmetic. Frankly, the US gov’t has been at war with the coyote since about 1948, and the population and range of the animals has only grown. A good, if pro-coyote, book on the subject is Hope Ryden’s God’s Dog.
But, coyotes are incredibly clever, paranoid, and brave. They don’t often pack up to go after larger prey, but will on occaision. Coydogs are far more likely to be the cause of any rancher’s canine inflicted losses, since they lack, among other things, the instinctive fear of humans true wild animals have. (Well, except for polar bears, but, hey, they’ve only recently started sharing habitat with humans…) I can accept your friend’s assertation that coyotes are more of a challenge than most critters - I just don’t buy that he was doing it for any real reason than to have a challenge. Hell, he should have at least taken an ear for the frigging bounty. :dubious:
By that logic, we should go murder people because man has altered the “criminal balance” by putting murderers in jail. Just because man has altered the ecosystem over hundreds of years doesn’t follow that we should just shoot coyotes to fix it. It’s not that simple. This is just a convenient excuse to kill for sport.
slight hijack
I hate it when people try to romanticize hunting deer. I mean, yes I know that they get into gardens and trashcans and when there are too many they pose a danger to drivers, and yes, many people actually eat them, but don’t try to act like this is some noble pursuit. You are not some child of the earth re-connecting with mother nature. You do not appreciate the beauty and spirit of the wilderness. You are there because it is simple maintenance, or because you can’t get an erection unless you’ve killed something that day. No one is impressed that you sat on some damp log for several hours until a deer wandered by and you shot it. Oh, and pick up your beer cans.
I guess a lot of that could be said about people shooting coyotes, too.
So why shouldn’t they think of it as a noble pursuit? Hey its actually older than the oldest profession. Why shouldn’t a hunter feel a certain kinship with the ancients while attempting to secure meat for the table?
BTW if you have ever sat on a damp log for several hours hopeing that a deer wanders by when its 10 degrees out you’d better have something romantic to think about.
You forgot to mention the beer drinking part :smack: That must be to make it more challenging for them :rolleyes:
Since the pelts aren’t worth much - a lot of the time they will let the dogs kill them and not even have to waste their bullets.
They were always close to our house though… right out in the corn field outside the bedroom windows. That was kind of annoying when trying to sleep on a summer night. Had to watch our little house dog when we let her out too so they didn’t bug her.
You are aware that the US National Parks program is a legacy of those hunters you’re deriding, right? They wanted to set aside lands that would be left where game would be able to live unconcerned by human interference. Well, except for being hunted.
Many of the original environmental laws were lobbied for by hunters, as I understand it. Several of the large conservation groups were founded and still are largely supported by hunters. Ducks Unlimited is just the first one I happened to think of.
Not all hunters are that concerned about the environment, of course. But to claim that everyone who’s out hunting doesn’t really enjoy or appreciate nature, and is doing it only to get sick thrills is more than a bit unfair.
I kill cats. Here in NZ, where the only mammalian predators are introduced {fortunately, we never got the big ones, although in the 19th century some nut proposed introducing mountain lions, to kill the introduced deer which were wreaking havoc on sheep stations…}, feral cats {and domestic ones, to a lesser extent} play merry hell with native birds, and have driven many to the verge of extinction.
Unfortunately, people sick of their cats just release them into the wild, where they swiftly establish feral colonies: we live in the suburbs, but there’s a large park adjoining us which is swarming with the buggers - dead frozen kittens regularly turn up in the winter, but the ones that survive kill any birdlife they can lay their claws on.
So yeah, I kill cats: catch 'em in possum traps, put the trap in a sack, tie the sack over the car exhaust and run the engine for a few minutes. Before you decry me as a barbarian, I’ve tried the SPCA: they won’t take them anymore, since you can’t train a cat out of being feral, and most of them are so rotten with worms and disease that they’d only put them down anyway, since nobody will take them.
I am sure that many hunters are indeed out there enjoying nature, and as carnivore I am okay with this.
But it weirds me out that someone who is not a rancher would want to go out with a gun in pursuit of coyotes. Is this really the same thing as setting a mousetrap?
There are nonlethal means of predator control.
I live right smack in the middle of Denver, in a green but urban area, and in recent years we seen a few coyotes. I saw one with a squirrel in his mouth, which was fine by me.
So far I haven’t heard of any coyote hunts. We have long co-existed with foxes, and they are still around, but people who let their cats out might want to reconsider.
A friend recently adopted a Great Pyrenees and is learning about the breed.
A Colorado sheep rancher told her that he had a tough time with coyote predation until he got some livestock guardian dogs.
There are different breeds with different instincts, but it seems to me that someone who is taking the time to raise livestock would happily take the time to figure out a lasting solution.
Your murderer analogy is poppycock, unless you can show that murderers serve some useful purpose in the ecosystem. Predators do serve a valuable purpose, and without them, we are overrun with rabbits, mice, and deer. Some areas in Indiana are so over-deered that you can’t find any wildflowers. Everything edible, including the buds and bark of young trees, is eaten, up to as high as a deer can reach.
The rest of your post is apparently aimed at someone else. I don’t advocate the killing of predators. I said it’s our duty to do the grisly work of the predators we humans wiped out.
To Justwannano and Otakuloki, yeah, my post was making some gross generalizations that I didn’t really intend. What I was trying to get at, is that I tire of people bragging about shooting a deer as if they had outwitted and killed Bigfoot. With deer being dumb, not having the threat of constant wild predation to keep them on their toes, and their reasonable comfort with man; IMHO, in terms of sportsmanship, it’s about one degree of seperation from pegging the fat kid in PE dodgeball. But the people I’m talking about are just another type of jerk that you’ll find in any hobby or profession, a subset of hunters which does not include them all.
wolf in second hand clothing, don’t worry about it. Posting at that hour does odd things to one’s mind and one’s posts. I know.
I’m not about to claim that all hunters subscribe to the ethics that I talked about earlier. I’ve met and seen the aftermath of the sort you’re talking about too often for me to forget it. I just wanted to make sure you knew they weren’t the whole spectrum of hunters. Sorry if I jumped a bit harder than you deserved.
I like your style, Mr. Roboto - will join on the ice - can we fire at will? I am definitely in.
We have a problem similar here…Canada geese…although I’m not sure that the population is actually increasing…I believe, through observation, that the standing water (ponds, streams, etc.) that we are blocking off at a mile a minute is resulting in many geese at fewer ponds rather than an increase in the population.
Also the spring bear hunt - that’s something to be awefully proud of, isn’t it? You bait the site for weeks in the fall then again in the spring…then you sit up a tree and fire at mom and the new cubs when they come out of hibernation. Of course,you can’t fire at the cubs and jeez, we know you’re only supposed to fire at sows but who knows? Jesus, am I glad they banned that!
Now, people are complaining about bears in their garbage! Of course, these are the same people who leave garbage bags around DESPITE BEING WARNED AGAIN AND AGAIN and restaurants leaving their grease pits unprotected.
