Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Predator Control....

We don't usually have problems with coyotes here during calving. But, for some reason this year they seemed awfully thick. We've had a few calves like maybe a month old dead. A few with tails or ears missing. Poor mama's having to fight them off! So, we got in touch with neighboring ranchers and we all went in on having the USDA come out and hunt coyotes from a plane. Very interesting. They have a ground crew that come out before sunup and call them. They then get in touch with the plane and they come to the locations and boom. They "gunner" hangs out of the plane with a shot gun. They plane idles way way down and they 'swoop' and boom. It didn't seem to bother the cows much. I am sure they knew they were there to help them out.



4 comments:

  1. Did they give you a tally? Sure hope it was effective. We have a den of coyotes near here, and I do worry a little about the (soon to be)new foals but I keep them close in at night and I think their mommas would make short work of them.

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  2. They got about 35 they say. I'm sure some mama's put the whooping on some to!

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  3. All right...35!!! Whoooohooooo! The USDA was supposed to be doing fly by shooting last year around our, but I'm not sure they were nearly as successful as your guys up there. There wasn't a cost to us, but we had to sign an agreement that they could shoot on our private property.

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  4. What a way to hunt coyotes!

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Thanks for visiting. Hope you enjoyed the ranch.