Oldtimer":wddw8ihi said:
I am thouroughly convinced that when all other animals go extinct- the last surviving animal will be a coyote. They are extremely smart and can adapt to about anywhere-can eat about anything- will live on fresh kill, carrion, or garbage. Some researchers claim that when the coyote population is down, but food is plentiful they have larger litters- then when populations increase and food is scarce they have smaller litters.
Last year we were overrun up here with them- than with all the snow and good coyote prices last winter the snowmobilers were able to hunt down thousands- I saw very few this spring- but lately more and more are showing up and I'm starting to hear their songs nightly again.
Back in the mid-seventies I spent a lot of time in the desert west of El Paso. The state ( N. Mex.) did a coyote control study over a couple of years. First, they took a coyote census in a big ole area they'd mapped out. Then, they encouraged private varmint hunters and trappers to "work" in the area, and also employed a professional group that used leg traps, wire snares and even aircraft. A Supercub would fly very low, slow, lazy loops across a flat. The coyotes would just walk around a greasewood hump, keeping it between them and the plane, watching it as it left. The kicker was the helicopter with the "shooter" working back behind the plane. When they got sight of a coyote, they buzzed in and never lost a contest. They had another team member come in behind them in a truck and retreive the carcass. This was highly efficient coyote busting, and I was amazed at the number they killed. After a year of this the wildlife boys and girls called off the hunt and counted the coyotes. The private varminters had all just about quit anyway since it was scarce pickings for normal hunting. A year later, they counted noses for the final time and determined that at most the coyote population could only be influenced by extreme hunting pressure, that it was largly self-regulated and depended more on the available food and water supply than being hunted or not. Of course, a few years later I had occasion to observe what cyanide traps could do to a healthy coyote population, and love 'em or hate 'em, those things put a serious dent in the coyote numbers in a hurry. But that's another story, and maybe best not told.