Shoot or don't shoot?

Something strange around here. The farmers don't really want us to shoot their yotes. They claim they eat the over abundance of mice they have right now and a new pest has shown up. They live underground like mole. They eat the plants from the roots up. I wish I could remember the name of them. But the yotes love them. The farmers claim; they will live with the holes in the ground from the digging to get them. It is far cheaper than the lost grain..........Bob
 
Natural processes take more predators off the landscape than hunter can today. Yotes have problems with mange and when it runs through the population they about disappear. Their population ebs and flows with the disease.

That said, I'll take that critter every day if given the chance. The few we eliminate helps the pheasant population. But skunks are the worst. Ditch Tigers second and I add them to my list. Coyotes and foxes do their share.

I've read studies that prove a strong predator population has more impact on a prey population than habitat. However, in the pheasant's case I think drought has the largest impact overall. In dry years farmers are forced to mow everything in site to feed their cattle and you can't blame them. That mowing happens during nesting time and they destroy a lot of nests. Combine that with a second nesting during a dry period, with no insects to feed the chicks and the population plummets.
 
bobeyerite said:
Something strange around here. The farmers don't really want us to shoot their yotes. They claim they eat the over abundance of mice they have right now and a new pest has shown up. They live underground like mole. They eat the plants from the roots up. I wish I could remember the name of them. But the yotes love them. The farmers claim; they will live with the holes in the ground from the digging to get them. It is far cheaper than the lost grain..........Bob
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Sounds like a vole. A little bigger than a mouse with a short tail.

I run across a few farmers that don't want yotes shot, but the majority say shoot 'em all. Once in a while I run across a farmer that offers to pay me to have them shot.
The biggest problem for our local quail is habitat loss. Places that I used to hunt that had many quail now have none, and it's because all the fence rows and trees are now gone. Bean or corn stubble from one side to the other.

What's a ditch tiger?
 
Ditch Tigers

Ditch Tiger also known as feral cat, and also one of the biggest predators of birds. A professor at UW published an article on the impacts of cats on the tweety bird populations that caused a national stir. About that time we had a thread, maybe on the old PC site concerning the felines that went on for quite a while. I've always been of mind that a ditch tiger, far away from any home, isn't keeping down the mice population around a farm's outbuildings, but preying on pheasant chicks and other birds and so is fair game.

My dad always tells of when he was a teenager on the farm and they had some prolific cats that overpopulated the farm with littler upon litter, all to the delight of his sister, but to the point of being a problem. On my grandfather's instructions, dad would take one kitty after another out back somewhere and dispatch it with a 22 short. To this day my aunt still doesn't know why the litters lost one after another.
 
Right on Kansas, I watched a rooster flying low over the milo, when all of the sudden something knocked it out of the air. I went over to wear I saw it last and to my disbelief it was a ferrel cat. I promptly trained that cat on 12 gauge.:eek:
 
I have never come across a rancher or farmer that either has livestock or being a hunter himself that will not encourage the killing of coyotes.
Passing a chance to kill a yote by a hunting guest would probably limit future hunting opportunities.
Feral cats, skunks or coons aren't much liked either.
 
I have lots of barn cats at my farm house.. none of them bother the pheasants.. they do hunt the rabbits. few times a month, my brother goes out and shoots raccoons... then january, the county has a coyote contest... every year up north of my area gets over 30 kills in a one day contest.
 
It's always interesting to see the "anti" tag come out whenever information that doesn't meet some long accepted local wisdom comes along.

Studies--by game biologists who are hunters, funded by hunting and fishing fees and taxes on sporting arms and ammo--have demonstrated the value of coyotes a number of times.

In some ways it's simple, in others a bit more complex.

Coyotes are primarily mousers and bunny chasers in most of pheasant country. They will take other game as the opportunity comes along, but unlike fox, skunks, and coons, they are not particularly focused on nests and birds on nests.

Fox--which have been studied heavily-are very adapt at searching for and finding birds on nests. At night they will kill the hen and eat the eggs as well.

Coyotes are hard on some other predators, particularly fox. Their home range is larger than fox--take a given large farm with habitat here and there--it can support more fox than coyotes.

So--if you set out to kill all the coyotes, the fox that come in will kill more game birds than when you weren't killing anything!

Of course, it's really hard to kill off all coyotes.

But wait there, here comes another problem. Established pairs or packs of any predator tend to limit others of their same species in that area. As you kill them off, you open the door for more travelers to come in, and all of you sudden you have more predators there than when you started killing some.

If your head is spinning, there is one incredibly simple solution--habitat! You do it right once and it's effects last a long time with only occasional maintenance.
 
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Sounds like pocket gophers Bob. Or maybe mountain beaver, but don't think there would be many of them out in farm country.

bobeyerite said:
Something strange around here. The farmers don't really want us to shoot their yotes. They claim they eat the over abundance of mice they have right now and a new pest has shown up. They live underground like mole. They eat the plants from the roots up. I wish I could remember the name of them. But the yotes love them. The farmers claim; they will live with the holes in the ground from the digging to get them. It is far cheaper than the lost grain..........Bob
Click to expand...
 
Coyotes are top of the list as far as adaptable, cunning survivors. Coyotes learn at a young age to hunt whats available and most reward for the least amount of effort. In pheasant country no question it's hunting roosting pheasants at night. For instance a pair will move into heavy cover such as a cattail marsh stick around until the hunting gets tough, then simply move on to another marsh. Leaving behind maybe a few surviving pheasants. I'm talking mostly the snow cover months.

Really! what else would a yote be dining on?
 
Not gonna get into what effect they have on the pheasants but coyotes sure are fun to chase when there isn't much else to do!

Matt D
 
Coyotes here chase after injured geese. they run across the frozen river to where most geese are..

a day a few of my friends will sit out on the north side of the river in Pierre, and shoot coyotes that come across the river to scavange injured birds. on a good day, we could get roughly 10 or more.
 
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