A couple weeks ago my neighbor happened upon a coyote den with pups while looking for morels on my property. He was startled by the bark of a coyote, and as he stood looking around for the source of the bark he saw a bunch of young coyotes huddled on the ground below a large, downed, hollow tree. He surmised the adult was inside.
He came and got me and I took the photos you see. There are seven pups if you're wondering. I guessed they were four or five weeks old.
I was sorely tempted to shoot them, but my wife said "no" and my daughter said, "Can you bring one home?"
By the following day the pups had been moved. So, my neighbor and I decided to see if we could find where they had been moved to. It took us a couple walks until we found them again. They were about 300 yds from the original den sight, in another large, downed, hollow tree.
No pics from the second find. In the interim I had thought about it and came to regret not having shot them the first time, so the second discovery was all business. I took no pleasure in it, but felt it was the right thing to do both for my pets and the local deer population. I had learned at a presentation by a wildlife specialist that the average survival rate of a doe's two fawns in a coyote free area is 1.4 and in a coyote endemic region it is 0.4.
He came and got me and I took the photos you see. There are seven pups if you're wondering. I guessed they were four or five weeks old.
I was sorely tempted to shoot them, but my wife said "no" and my daughter said, "Can you bring one home?"
By the following day the pups had been moved. So, my neighbor and I decided to see if we could find where they had been moved to. It took us a couple walks until we found them again. They were about 300 yds from the original den sight, in another large, downed, hollow tree.
No pics from the second find. In the interim I had thought about it and came to regret not having shot them the first time, so the second discovery was all business. I took no pleasure in it, but felt it was the right thing to do both for my pets and the local deer population. I had learned at a presentation by a wildlife specialist that the average survival rate of a doe's two fawns in a coyote free area is 1.4 and in a coyote endemic region it is 0.4.