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Again, NVplumber, thanks for sharing your story. Sounds like the coyotes have met their match with you and your son. I wonder if they will eventually come to the realization (instinctually or otherwise) that they are just better off hunting in some other neck of the woods.
My experience with coyotes here in rural southern NE is listening to what sounds like a chorus of hundreds (which may be a trick of theirs, to make themselves sound more threatening?) in the overgrown and wooded pastureland across from us. And occasionally in the winter, we will see footprints in the snow of a single coyote trotting along the road going somewhere the easy way. To my knowledge, no one around here has lost a pet to coyotes, but I confess to a "let the buyer -pet owner- beware" mindset in that regard.
In general, my thinking is that the coyotes may be helpful around here in controlling the white tail deer population which definitely needs a predator in this area, but I'm not sure about that.
Coyotes can and do prey on deer but they really won't do much in the population control arena. I have to ponder what the yotes in your area are like. They do pack up, but unlike wolves they do not keep close social ties. They don't have the true pack mentality with an established hierarchy with an alpha pair at the top.
Bearing in mind with the latter that I'm talking about NV/Western animals. When they pack up it's a loose
association that they do in order to be more efficient when they take a notion to go after livestock. Our strategy in taking the scout down will usually(but not always) see a pack split up. They aren't stupid critters and they can reason it out that , as you said, life will be better elsewhere and/or sticking with normal prey like rabbits and gophers. The latter they don't get shot for eating.
Our neighbor that runs the sheep has a bigger issue than we have with the yotes. I suppose that could be seen as a marketing tactic. "Eat Lamb. 50,000 Coyotes can't be wrong." Sheep are just easy pickings. Our apex predators here have a taste for lamb/mutton. Mountain lions, coyotes and eagles will dine on sheep regularly given opportunity.
I have heard, but not seen personally, that the Great Horned Owl males can and do take lambs. Male owls get huge. The females are much smaller and I have seen a female owl take chickens. The yotes and cats can be actively discouraged from taking stock, but the raptors have to be left alone. They don't become a serious issue in terms of how much loss goes to them anyway.
The last time I actually saw an owl take something was at another friends place and he has chickens. I was staying at his place helping with his horses and I was woke up by a ruckus in the chicken coop which was right outside the bedroom I was using. We went out on the porch to look and this gorgeous female GH had a rooster pinned to the ground.
We spooked her and she pushed off and flew over our heads so close we could have touched her. The rooster lived, but we would have been ok with it if she had finished him off. Rotten nasty dirty flogger he was. He was slated for the stew pot anyway. Still, the next morning I was helping him stretch wire over the coop.
At the end of the day our relationship with the wildlife is more a matter of coexistence. With the predators we know full well that we will lose stock and we accept a certain amount of loss. It's when a habit gets made of picking off calves, lambs, foals etc. The aforementioned owl was more than welcome to that particular rooster and I rather lamented that she was spooked off her groceries. Would have saved me having to deal with him come butchering time. My buddy has a knack of pulling a Tom Sawyer with me when he does his chickens up for the freezer.
After she flew away the rooster got up after a few minutes, and oh my! lol...He was in a bit of a state and started running around the pen smashing into things. Yea, I know. Finding that to be funny takes a....different...sense of humor. But I really can't impart all of the factors that go into that. Ya kinda have to be on the inside of things to truly appreciate the humor.
Would love to have seen a GHO up close in attack mode. Cool.
And I get what you say about roosters. Having seen what our big RI red put our hens through, way too frequently, it's high time for a comeuppance in my book.
Re: Coyotes in this area- From what I've seen, they behave similarly to those we saw a lot of in AZ and NM when we camped out there several trips when our kids were young. We only see solitary coyotes here, but what I was trying to explain in earlier post was that when we hear them yipping at dusk or late at night, it sounds like there are absolutely dozens of them. But we never see more than one at a time. Got us to thinking that maybe they somehow make themselves sound like there is more of them than there really is, as a protective behavior or something. Doesn't really make sense though, bc there isn't anything they need to protect themselves from around here, except humans.
May I add to this post that after I made turkey soup with the Thanksgiving bird, we took the carcass, with a fair amount of meat still on it (I didn't scrape it clean) and smeared all the turkey fat onto it and put it out deep in the over grown pasture. It was gone the next day. Don't see any reason why we can't share some hearty grub to give em a treat once in a while. Just imagine, a full belly and a nap in the afternoon sun. Don't get much better than that.
Would love to have seen a GHO up close in attack mode. Cool.
And I get what you say about roosters. Having seen what our big RI red put our hens through, way too frequently, it's high time for a comeuppance in my book.
Re: Coyotes in this area- From what I've seen, they behave similarly to those we saw a lot of in AZ and NM when we camped out there several trips when our kids were young. We only see solitary coyotes here, but what I was trying to explain in earlier post was that when we hear them yipping at dusk or late at night, it sounds like there are absolutely dozens of them. But we never see more than one at a time. Got us to thinking that maybe they somehow make themselves sound like there is more of them than there really is, as a protective behavior or something. Doesn't really make sense though, bc there isn't anything they need to protect themselves from around here, except humans.
May I add to this post that after I made turkey soup with the Thanksgiving bird, we took the carcass, with a fair amount of meat still on it (I didn't scrape it clean) and smeared all the turkey fat onto it and put it out deep in the over grown pasture. It was gone the next day. Don't see any reason why we can't share some hearty grub to give em a treat once in a while. Just imagine, a full belly and a nap in the afternoon sun. Don't get much better than that.
Coyotes can certainly raise a ruckus. Two of them does sound like a dozen when the get to calling. Pairs use the yipping to push rabbits. They start out a ways apart. Then they start yipping (hunting calls are different than territorial calls) and work toward each other pushing the rabbits as they go.
The rabbits spaz out and will run right smack dab into the coyotes embrace. Yep, two coyotes can sound like 50.
Over the past 25 years I've seen a significant increase in the number of Coyotes here in NC (near Raleigh). Unlike the skinny/scrawny things you see out west, they are pretty good size .... 40-50 lbs is not unusual. Generally I only see a single yote but hear multiples at night. Just put up a game camera a few days ago to observe.
Location: Approximately 50 miles from Missoula MT/38 yrs full time after 4 yrs part time
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LilyMae521
Would love to have seen a GHO up close in attack mode. Cool.
Where I've lived for the past approx 39 years, (out in the boonies) in western Montana, I have seen and experienced some unusual occurrences involving various types and species of wildlife, raptors, predators and bigame.
I bought 14 acres on a large creek, on contract, approx 14 miles outside of a small (3900 pop) town in far western Montana back in 1976. By early 1980 we had moved here from the foothills of the Rockies in CO, built our retirement home and I went back to work for another 13 years until retirement at 62.....wife also went back to work in the medical field.
We had visited, vacationed and camped on our property approx18 times berween 1976 & 1980 and got to know the "local wildlife" up close and personal:...[deer, elk, moose, black bear, coyote, fox, porcupine, badger, river otter, skunk, marmot, chipmunk, squirrel, ruffled grouse, pheasant, bald eagle, golden eagle, osprey, great grey owl and great horned owl and at least 50 different specie of birds.] Having a flowing stream on the property obviously attracted many of the "wildlife", as well as lots of trees, bushes, brush and wild grasses.
Now to specific encounters:....
...We were in our completed house not more than 6 weeks and our house cat that we had brought from CO, became dinner for a golden eagle-----snatched not more than 100 feet from our front door!
Our first garden became the local cafeteria for white tail and Mule deer as well as black bear and an occasional moose------we gave up on trying to have a garden after the third year!
I've also have had both deer and black bear up on the deck helping themselves to the flowers in the planters EVERY year after my wonderful daughter plants 6 Whiskey Barrel planters on Memorial Day.
Have had a bear and a fox in the garage; a badger chase my daughter up on to the front porch: several years ago (when we had a couple of horses), a bull moose came at my late wife when she was throwing out some hay for the horses.....she got up on to the deck just about 30 feet in front of the moose!!!!!!
Yeah, there have been some interesting situations that have occurred (many more than described above) in the many years sinced 1976 on this property.
One more I've got to mention:............about 7 or 8 years ago in the fall, I was walking back toward the house with my Brittany from the creek location with my 28ga O&U. I had been walking through several Aspen along the creek bank hoping to jump a ruffled grouse........When out of nowhere, a Grouse came flying full speed from my right/rear side and flew right into my neck area just below my ear!!!!! It was a hell of a blow and the grouse fell to the ground..........He was stunned and I was trying to figure out what had just happened!!!!!! I was OK and just stood there looking at him lying on the ground. After about a minute or two, he got up on his feet and exploded into flight!!!!!!.......................KARMA?, maybe!!!!!!
..............At this age, being in my 86th year,... I still "Love living in the boonies in Montana"..........no "town livin' for me!"
The owl that pinned the rooster was a female GH. They are a lot smaller than the males which is different from most raptors. The females are the big ones with most birds of prey, the Perigrine falcon being the most famous. Female falcons are where the "sport of kings" moniker comes from. The rooster was pretty equal in size to the owl, but she had the advantage of airiel attack.
She had him pinned with one set of talons on his neck and the other holding down his body. It was pretty cool. She had her wings spread open in classic raptor fashion covering her prey so she was in full display. If I had only known that she had that particular chicken pinned down I wouldn't have even gone out and looked. She was more than welcome to that hen beating, rotten, flogging bird.
Well, at least he got a taste of what it's like to get his azz kicked. I was pretty surprised he didn't die of a heart attack. It took him about 10 or 15 minutes to get up and then he ran around like his head wa cut off smashing into the wire and the walls on the roost. Bingetty, Bammity, Boom!! It was hilarious.
The owl was a gorgeous bird. Had it been a male the rooster would have been dead on the spot and carried of lickety split like. A neighbor had recently seen his wife's Chihuaua carried off by a big male GH. Probably the mate of the one who hit the rooster. I've seen male GHs with wingspans better than 5 foot. They are huge.
I'm with MT Grizz , gimme this country livin' any day. Folks can have their cities. On that line of thought I remember backin the late 80s NYC did an experiment introducing Perigrines in the city as a pigeon control measure. And it worked. The birds thrived. There was some whining form "animal rights" groups that this was just horrible and how could the city target pigeons this way.
LMAO, I guess that looking out the window in their 30 story building and seeing a falcon nab a poor , helpless pigeon was just to much to take. Personally, I think it's way cool junior. It's a win win. Falcons are (or were) endangered but they thrive in the high rises. Pigeons are a favorite food and they have lots of nesting options. Life couldn't be better.
Got the initial results of my game camera. Haven't seen any "Yotes" yet, but there is a grey fox that seems to make an appearance just about every night around 8. I have him on film with a squirrel in his mouth. Have also seen several good sized bucks that never show themselves during the day.
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They do pack up, but unlike wolves they do not keep close social ties. They don't have the true pack mentality with an established hierarchy with an alpha pair at the top. 
But I really can't impart all of the factors that go into that. Ya kinda have to be on the inside of things to truly appreciate the humor. 
I was pretty surprised he didn't die of a heart attack. It took him about 10 or 15 minutes to get up and then he ran around like his head wa cut off smashing into the wire and the walls on the roost. Bingetty, Bammity, Boom!! It was hilarious. 