6626 - They need their numbers heavily reduced. The deer, turkey, rabbits and other tasty critters are getting wiped out. I don't know if you guys ever do much hunting, but the old rule of thumb when it comes to coyotes is "They're out there, make no mistake about that. You may hear them, you may see their tracks from time to time, but rarely will you ever see one. They're so elusive, you may only ever see 1 in 20 that live in the area. Once you've started seeing them, there are already far too many."
That said, consider the family of 5 that ran past my buddy's deer stand last winter. You read that right...5 at once. Don't worry, he was appropriately berated for failing to knock down at least one of them. But I guess, in his defense, they were running through brush and he was hunting with a muzzleloader.
Very near the same area last year, as I was sitting in a stand, the weather got reallllllly bad...to the point that visibility was down under 50 yards. Lots of vehicles started going in the ditch on the highway about a mile away and soon the firetrucks started heading to the crash sites with their sirens going. The sirens of course, get the coyotes all stirred up and the woods went from virtually silent to howls coming from literally every direction. Between myself and another hunting buddy, we think we were able to identify at least 7, but maybe 8, individuals howling.
Spooky. Armed or not, I'm glad it was daylight.
That same area is where I shot that 31 lb. female coyote two years ago in February. She ran up on me so fast that I didn't get an opportunity to shoot until she was 14 yards away. Talk about a close call.
eelout:
