I too see this but usually just a day before or if it's a late day or overnight storm front it may just be that day that things move more. We don't have much of a winter here anymore so unless its ice the food sources don't usually get covered too deep that they can't get to it like I'm sure it does for you western guys. I've also noticed if it's a REALLY cold one with a lot of high wind that things will lay up longer after it passes.
Ramblings and Such From Hunting Coyote
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Knock on wood we haven't had the long cold spells that we used to have , for a while now . At one time we would see from one to two weeks of below zero and in 1981 we were below zero for the whole month of December and got to 40 below for a couple of days . It seemed like all the animals were on the move for at least 2 days before that event . I had 54 acers at that time and when the spring thaw came I counted 125 dead antelope on it . We got over a foot of snow the day after Thanks Giving that stayed till the April thaw . The south facing hill sides got above freezing only because the sun shown on them and then only where they were protected from the wind . It's pretty common now to be good calling a couple of days before a hard storm and then as Reemty and others have said after it has dumped it's moisture even if it isn't very deep snow but is still cold they will be on the move . At this time we are running about 15 degrees above what we normally do this time of the year and the grass we got here is starting to burn up . Two nights ago we had wind gusts of over 70 mph , good thing it wasn't during the heat of the day but we are having winds of 20 - 40 mph during the day . With it getting so dry I have to be very mindful of the fire danger when driving and shooting ect. .
Well you bunch of sissy's in Wy-Dam-O-Ming, we get a few weeks every year of 20 below and I have seen it -45 and the next day +55, up here below the artic circle it's a little more rugged than your southern Florida weather Dave
. Cold weather makes for good hunting some of the best bucks and bulls are killed in a week of sub zero weather, it makes coyotes hungry and they may " slip up and get ka-powed " our weather is so rugged up here, some men are like Louis Lamoure says, " they have bark on them" tougher than Whale manure, no one knows how tough that is because it's at the bottom of the ocean………. Keep in mind people from Mon-Dam-tana do not exaggerate. 
. Cold weather makes for good hunting some of the best bucks and bulls are killed in a week of sub zero weather, it makes coyotes hungry and they may " slip up and get ka-powed " our weather is so rugged up here, some men are like Louis Lamoure says, " they have bark on them" tougher than Whale manure, no one knows how tough that is because it's at the bottom of the ocean………. Keep in mind people from Mon-Dam-tana do not exaggerate. I had that saying wrong all these years I thought it was lower then whale manure . And I am spoiled by the nicer winters we have been getting I don't mind admitting it either . It takes something to make some of the educated coyote mess up and get killed for it .
I do love it when a chinook wind comes in and pushes the cold front back across the border . It's pretty to see the clear sky on one side and the clouds on the other side of the front in an ark . But the ground blizzard isn't so fun when you can't see 5 feet in front of your truck but if you were just up three feet higher it would be clear . It's kind of like being in the eye of the storm when you look up and it's clear but you look out to the sides and can't see anything lol . When you go to bed at night with freezing cold weather and get up the next morning with water running from the snow drifts is something to behold for sure Reemty . You gotta be tough as nails or harder then hammered H34L to put up with the winters up your way for sure . Those people that homesteaded up there and in NODAK land sure were .
When you are a little slow, you don't mind the cold weather, lots of good hunting things happen then
I don't mind the cold it's the wind that bothers me when it's cold and full of snow . Our cold isn't the damp penetrating cold they have in some of the humid areas . A dry cold or heat feels so much different then a damp cold or heat . A few years ago I had taken the old female and pups but hadn't gotten the old male it was late July and hot in the mid 90's by mid morning . He was living in some badlands type stuff that had some deep draws and some bare ground that has a lot of bintnite so when it's wet it sticks to every thing and when it's dry it crumbles and is hard to get any footing on any type of a slope . I knew where there was a spring with a couple of willow trees in this rough stuff and figured that was where he was getting his water from so I slipped in there checked it out and found his tracks in some dust and a sandy bottomed draws . I got in while it was still cool in the morning found me a nice juniper to shade me and waited for him . Around 9:00 I saw him moving in the direction of the spring . He wasn't in any hurry and didn't notice anything out of the ordinary . He wouldn't talk , didn't come to calls and had evaded the plane so he was well trained . I watched him come in to the spring and get him a drink then he did something I had never seen a coyote do before he laid down in some shallow water and just seemed to cool off . He got up after a few minutes and walked over to the small trail he had came in on then stopped looked in my direction as if to tell me he knew I was there . I took the shot at 250 yards and that hard to get smart coyote's carrier was over . I felt relief but at the same time a little remorse he was a worthy opponent .
Sniped him, there are so many ways to be successful other than calling,, truly a worthy challenge getting those smart ones. Just East of town a mile an adult male was hit by a car in the night, how the heck does a 2-4 year old male get hit b6 a car on the highway?..makes no sense other than it was windy….that female would have been waiting a long time this morning for him to come back, their den was only a mile northeast of there….same denning area I killed the female and male at last year, they prefer certain areas over and over again. I think our population here is a lot higher than your Dave not uncommon to have dens 1-3 miles apart
Some of them sniping is about the only way to get them . I have found that it helps to know your area and the coyote when it becomes necessary to snip them . Yes you guys have a lot denser population up there then we do . We sometimes will have two or three dens in a twenty to thirty mile radius . They will fill in the areas that you clear out year after year and a good denning area is a good denning area year after year . I have taken some pups out of good rocky den holes a few years apart . There was a place called geo mapping that I gave G P S coordinates to and they made me a large satellite map with x's on the den sites for one of the ranches I worked a lot and even marked the fence lines of it . I gave it to the rancher as a gift when I retired so who ever replaced me would have a starting place for denning with the G P S marked for them . I have the way points of all the dens I've taken since getting G P S and even went back and got them from some of the past dens . It meant that much to know where the den sites were for control work . Often the den sites aren't the same as the wintering sites as the prey base changes from season to season but the lambing grounds tend to be the same year after year . Sheep are a noisy smelly lot and tend to draw coyote due in large part to that then when you have docking time roll around you have the smell of a lot of blood from that and it gets busy . It is docking time now for most of the bigger sheep people as they lamb starting May 12th for the most part and will dock a month latter as most of the lambs are born by then and it's normally good weather and about time to move to summer pasture from the lambing grounds . I have hit a couple of coyote on the high way it's usually that they are distracted by chasing a deer or another coyote that they get hit . I think some of them just get old and think it's time to give it all up and then mess up as that's what it seems like because they have been smart all their lives and lived a long time but then just do something that appears so dumb and die because of it .
Straight Shooter
Well-Known Member
Dave, last year when I met you on the way to John Graham's coyote days, he told the crowd that they take about 1200 coyotes out of Niabrara county every year doing control work. I would think you would have a commensurate population?
We don't quite have the same number per sq mile of coyote that they have In Niabrara county they have more black hills type country then we do and a different food base . Both counties are large Converse county is 4265 sq. miles and Niabrara county is 2628 sq. miles . Some of our county does have similar numbers and if I weren't killing them and not letting them den in my work area there may be similar numbers as Niabrara county in my area . The coyote numbers in a given area is governed by the food base , more food more coyote less food fewer coyote . I kept records of the number of pups per den and correlated it with the average number of rabbits , antelope fawns , deer fawns and mice , in given years . Years with larger numbers of rabbit , fawns ect. we would have litters of pups of 8-13 . In years when we didn't have numbers of prey we would have litters of 5-8 pups and even some down to 3 pups at times . When you do control of the dens you take out the numbers of pups early on and you aren't concerned with the fur . The goal is to save livestock not skin coyote for sale . Studies done in Texas and California in the 60's and 70's say that to stay at even numbers of coyote you have to kill 70% of the years pups so that was the way I did control as most times the stock killers had pups to feed and that is why they were killing lambs ect. in the first place . I didn't have to worry about not having coyote to kill as they are in constant motion you kill a pair and new ones come in from other areas to fill the void you made . It may be fall before they fill in the void and for me that was a good thing . My whole goal was to have an increase in lambs docked and then shipped . On some ranches I started working they were shipping around 70-75 % lamb crop when I started . You figure that you will have around 120% lambs born so if you are shipping 75% the number of lambs vers. the number of ewes you are being hit hard some where around 40-45 % loss of lambs . That's a lot of money and hard to stay in business that way . I got paid per coyote it didn't make any difference what it's age was plus at the end of the year a bonus based on the number of lambs shipped . I'm not sure how many coyote are killed each year in Converse County but it's a bunch . I do know that the plane took over 600 in March alone . I never really paid much attention to how many coyote others took as I'm not very competitive and didn't do the calling contest thing . Mostly if the producer was happy with the results I gave then I felt good about it . For me it was about self satisfaction in a job well done by me .
I have also noticed that the number of fox , both red and kit fox , has some bearing on coyote numbers . When you have larger numbers of fox they tend to hunt more then coyote do . A coyote will fill it's belly then lay down till it's hungry fox tend to eat then go hunting again . The fox will eat a lot of lambs when they are young as well as birds , eggs , mice and rabbits . You will notice when you have fox around lambs as when the lambs get bigger the fox will grab them by the tail and you will see a lot of lambs with part of the tail missing . When you find fox dens they are nearly always a stinking mess of all kinds of animals and parts of animals and you can often smell them before you see them . Coyote dens tend to be cleaner then fox dens . It is about the time that the coyote will be taking their pups out of the den holes and camping out around here , 6-8 week old pups .
Is
Just curious, D - have you seen those big eared Kinnec foxes up your way? We have quite a number of the around us in North West Cheyenne.
Ran across a wolf pair while 'Lope hunting last season, too. Bummed - they knew they were busted - took off so fast I couldn't get a shot off.
