Coyote problem

[Greg]

I think I have a Coyote skulking around in my yard... we have a couple acres and our property backs up to the Colorado River with a lot of trees and cover nearby. We have had some pretty neat animals in our yard, always lots of deer (including some big bucks), turkey, raccoons and the occasional bear and mountain lion, usually about once a year. Our next door neighbor is a crazy-cat lady, with 15+ feral cats that she feeds and provides shelter for. On Sunday morning we found one of her cats that had been killed and mostly eaten on our property. The head was left.... some entrails and fur, but everything else is gone.

I've never heard a coyote calling from my place, but I've seen them a couple times in surrounding neighborhoods... saw one on a dead-run after robbing a neighbors chicken coop. I'm thinking the cat was a coyote kill.

We do have a couple of cats that live outdoors in a enclosure, which has an outdoor area. It's fenced in with chicken wire and the cats haven't ever gotten out, but chicken wire isn't incredibly strong. The cat that was killed was about 100' away from the enclosure and that is freaking my wife out.

So how do I proceed? I was thinking of setting a live enclosure trap.... I can't put out poison with all the other cats and dogs roaming around. If I catch it, should I take care of it myself? I live in the county, but my yard backs up to 4-5 other homes and it wouldn't be hard for them to see me putting it down.

 

[Greg]

Oh, I have a game camera I've had setup for the last year.... since the last mountain lion sighting. I have now moved it to a tree pointing right towards where the cat was killed on Sunday. No pics revealing what killed the cat since yesterday.

 

[Kiel]

Bury the chicken wire a couple feet and dont worry about it. Buy a silencer

 

[Noahfecks]

Go pee all around the perimeter of your property

 

[TRD270]

I think you need to have Dave pay you a visit, he'll eradicate them in no time.

 

[BCGPER]

Are you or crazy cat lady leaving food out for your animals? I have this problem in Az, food out is what usually attracts them and it’s illegal there to put them down.

 

[Greg]

Bury the chicken wire a couple feet and dont worry about it. Buy a silencer

It's buried about 6" down with an oak 2"× 6" in the ground, if I see any digging I'll change it up. I like the silencer idea, was looking earlier.

Go pee all around the perimeter of your property

My neighbors might not appreciate that show....

I think you need to have Dave pay you a visit, he'll eradicate them in no time.

No kidding! I think I can handle it though.

Are you or crazy cat lady leaving food out for your animals? I have this problem in Az, food out is what usually attracts them and it’s illegal there to put them down.

We don't, but I'm sure the crazy cat lady does.... she leaves her garage door cracked open and there are cats in and out all day and night. Come to think of it, I have seen food bowls sitting outside of the garage.

 

[Noahfecks]

My neighbors might not appreciate that show....

Don't assume, crazy cat lady may get a thrill

 

[Greg]

Don't assume, crazy cat lady may get a thrill

 

[Kevin B.]

Is crazy cat lady neighbor violating any ordinances with her passel of feline coyote snacks? I'm not one for siccing the regulators on a neighbor just because, but if the neighbor's actions are causing trouble for me and mine, it might be worth a nudge from animal control or whatever?

 

[Greg]

Is crazy cat lady neighbor violating any ordinances with her passel of feline coyote snacks? I'm not one for siccing the regulators on a neighbor just because, but if the neighbor's actions are causing trouble for me and mine, it might be worth a nudge from animal control or whatever?

I feel the same way, being in the County things are a little more relaxed... I'll see what I can find out.

 

[Hickey]

We had a neighbor that was leaving a large cookie sheet filled with cat food out for all of the feral cats in the neighborhood. It caused a lot of problems for us, and our local animal control said they were unable to really do anything about it. They recommended I trap and relocate the cats. That's what I did.

Thankfully, that neighbor moved away.

 

[DAA]

There really isn't an easy answer or solution to your situation. But, as far as that goes, even saying what "your situation" even actually is, from here, is impossible.

If you haven't heard them howling around your place, you most likely don't have any coyote or at least not many in permanent residence and raising pups in the immediate vicinity. But, maybe you have multiple family groups visiting. Or maybe it's just a lone transient passing through. The river being in close proximity opens up every which kind of possible scenario. It's a natural travel corridor and life sustaining habitat zone. My sense from what you've said, it's probably not a family group.

But as long as the habitat and food are there to support coyote, and coyote is utilizing it, coyote can remain if coyote wishes.

Trapping coyote is not easy and you are highly unlikely to succeed with it as a noob on your own. Especially live box trap. Cats aren't so hard to get in those but getting coyote in one is exceedingly hard to accomplish even for the very best coyote trappers in the country. Snares are the easiest but it doesn't sound like an option for you.

The thing is though, we just don't know what the situation really is. It is entirely possible if not downright likely that you could take a coyote or two out every month and not change a thing. They could just keep backfilling the void out of that river corridor forever.

Just do what you can to keep your animals safe, and not worry about the coyotes, is the only long term way to go. You'll never beat the coyotes. Never. Better to adjust to living with them.

- DAA

 

[N-Smooth]

I think as long as your animals are safe I’d let the coyote take care of the extra cats nearby and not worry about it.

 

[Corban_White]

It sounds like you don't have a coyote problem, you have a neighborhood cat problem. The coyote is the solution.

Best way to dispose of animals caught in traps - put a bag around the whole trap and then put it around your tailpipe. Quick, easy and clean.

 

[Homefryy]

Best way to dispose of animals caught in traps - put a bag around the whole trap and then put it around your tailpipe. Quick, easy and clean.

I knew a lady when I was growing up that had a lot of feral cats around her house. She had what she called her "cat box" which was a box with a flexible hose coming out of it so she could put the cats in the box and connect the hose to her car's tailpipe. It was kinda like the Auschwitz for cats.

On a different note I find this fascinating. I haven't actually read the book "Coyote America" but according the to the author, Dan Flores, killing coyotes is not an effective method of population control because when there population decreases they increase their litter size to make up for it.

"One of the other adaptations they have is that, whenever their populations are pressured, their litter sizes go up. The normal size is five to six pups. When their populations are suppressed, their litters get up as high as 12 to 16 pups. You can reduce the numbers of coyotes in a given area by 70 percent but the next summer their population will be back to the original number. They use their howls and yipping to create a kind of census of coyote populations. If their howls are not answered by other packs, it triggers an autogenic response that produces large litters."

 

[DAA]

That whole compensatory natality thing with coyotes is classic publish or perish junk science, in my opinion. Only the tiniest scraps of data have ever been collected to support the structure of the theory built upon that data. And I've talked to one of the men who actually collected that data and he has a COMPLETELY different but WAY more simple explanation for it.

Anytime you have to ignore the simple explanation to build an elaborate but far more interesting explanation that purports to show a fascinating "new" discovery, I smell bullshit.

The fact that several very prominent and successful careers were built off those studies only making it more suspicious, in my mind.

You do have to kill a large majority of them several years in a row to actually curb the population though. That, is a fact. One which has tons of data to support it and has been modeled over and over again. But which does not require the slightest bit of compensatory natality.

- DAA

 

[Jesser04]

Could it be a raccoon? my old man had one at his place slaughting the Chickens and rabbits. Caught it with a trap and disposed of it. He catches a feral cat about once a month I’m convinced they are mini mountain lions.

 

[Homefryy]

That whole compensatory natality thing with coyotes is classic publish or perish junk science, in my opinion. Only the tiniest scraps of data have ever been collected to support the structure of the theory built upon that data. And I've talked to one of the men who actually collected that data and he has a COMPLETELY different but WAY more simple explanation for it.

Anytime you have to ignore the simple explanation to build an elaborate but far more interesting explanation that purports to show a fascinating "new" discovery, I smell bullshit.

The fact that several very prominent and successful careers were built off those studies only making it more suspicious, in my mind.

You do have to kill a large majority of them several years in a row to actually curb the population though. That, is a fact. One which has tons of data to support it and has been modeled over and over again. But which does not require the slightest bit of compensatory natality.

- DAA

Thanks for the info. I know nothing about Coyotes and just heard Dan Flores on a Podcast talking about it then found an interview with him from National Geographic where I took the quote from. Doing a Google search for compensatory reproduction the one study I looked at found no statistically significant increase in litter size.

 

[xjtony]

A live trap may work, but you will be dealing with a whole bunch of angry cats before you ever see the 'yote. The only reliable way I know of to deal with coyotes is to call and dispatch them. If you have dogs, let them go all around the property and mark. If there has been a canine intruder they should smell it and mark a boundary. We have a similar situation, but with a fox and skunks. I don't know if you have chickens, but roosters help. My two roosters are pansies, but they do enough to keep stuff like skunks and raccoons out of the coop.