Quote Originally Posted by Averageman View Post
I was invited to run a trap line on a local ranch while I was in high school.
I had an experienced Trapper show me the ropes and at one point I might have had as many as 40 sets out over a weekend and maybe a dozen during the weekdays.
For the most part and because this was Arizona, we caught Coyotes. Probably 100-150 Coyotes over four months. Now that's a lot of Coyotes, but it barely put a dent in the population as far as I could tell.Toward the end you could tell it had just moved the population out and toward the BLM property nearby. You could go ten miles away and call Coyotes very, very successfully.
It's easy to assume this is cruel and a viscous way to treat an animal, but to balance those thoughts you have to understand that there simply wouldn't be the large numbers of Coyotes if they weren't killing a large number of calves. You could tell by simply seeing the numbers of calves with bobbed tails and the Coyote scat in the same range with hair fibers.
I don't know a thing about Wolves, but I would imagine that they can kill a lot more and with greater efficiency.
Coyotes are fascinating animals, they are an animal that humans have tried to systematically eliminate and yet they have only expanded their range. I heard that one issue with hunting them is that it can actually increase their numbers. When they do their howl it acts as a roll call and when one is missing the alpha female kicks into her reproductive cycle and had a little of pups. Dan Flores is the one who I heard that from, he wrote the book Coyote America and was a guest on the Meateater podcast with Steve Rinalla, the most interesting hunting podcast I have found.