Yikes Dawn! How scary. What a lucky cat! I think I'd opt for the gun as well. I'm all for live and let live until my animals are in danger then it becomes me or them! I've never seen a healthy looking coyote here. I'm on the outskirts of Edmond on a street of acreages that back up to more acreages. There's a pack around here that are bald with mange. It's sad, they really should be put down. Mange is a very slow, painful way to die.

A neighbor sent me a picture a while ago that asked what kind of dog was in her backyard, as her young daughter was trying to feed it! It was a hairless coyote! I'm sure glad it wasn't starving enough to approach her daughter!

Scary!

I haven't heard the coyotes in the past few days. There is a hawk that is hanging out across the street now. He flew right over me last week as I quickly counted the chickens. I saw him again today. Not scary compared to a coyote though!

It was scary, and Casper is our lone cat that roams fearlessly everywhere, though Pumpkin is always as much of a wanderer. About 3 weeks ago, Casper gave up his endless roaming and started sticking very close to home and I suspected then (and still do now) that he had a close encounter with a wild thing and it scared him.

You know, I've been thinking that, had I opened the door 3 or 4 seconds later, I probably would have had that coyote right there at the doorway, so I'm grateful I got to the door when I did.

That is very frightening about the coyote being that close to that little girl. I am glad he didn't hurt her.

I had been hearing coyotes a great deal, but is has tapered off lately. I don't know why.

My last hawk encounter was last week when one swooped down low to the ground to try to grab a chicken. I do not like hawks. It is scary to have them come after your birds, and they certainly are capable of grabbing one and flying away with it. Tim snatched a guinea right out of a hawk's talons once. I think the hawk was essentially holding on to air/feathers and didn't really have a good grip.

I like living surrounded by wildlife, but I'd be a bit happier if they weren't spending so much of their time trying to get our animals.

Dawn I'm not sure why the coyotes seem to be so bad in some areas this year. I know of a rancher about a mile from Judy's SE place. We saw a coyote hanging out with her grandson's cattle across the road from hers this winter but didn't have a gun. Since have carried one and never seen him. The rancher was having trouble with them getting his newborn calves. He let some hunters come in and a federal trapper. In two months they have got 42 in a two mile area. Can't figure out why so many. The hunters and trappers have each got 20 plus. At least his issues with his calves has ceased. Said when he used to pull up to feed of a morning there would be coyotes standing looking. And none I've seen have been poor. I used to never hear of coyotes causing much trouble with calves. As many quail as there is I would think they would eat them.

We've seen/heard an increase too, Dawn. We don't have any critters except the Momma Cat and her son, Runt....but Momma Cat has been especially skiddish lately. I've even seen coyotes in the morning on my way to work. Like more in the last 6 months than the last 10 years. I'm thinking something's up that relates to our warmer winters.

Crikey! What the heck. So wondering about seeing more coyotes. . . Oh so glad you managed to get there in time to let Casper in, Dawn! Dang. Yep, I'd be carrying the rifle. You, and all the rest of you who live in THE country certainly have your challenges! I love being in the "country," and had wished we were more IN the country; because although we're 10 miles from town, we're in a rather heavily populated area. Frankly, our 1.5-plus acre is a larger property than most around us. And I guess I must admit that it suits us well. Not to say we don't have occurrences of coyotes and bobcats, plenty of other critters, but I'm sure not to the extent that you all have them. Well. I'm glad all turned out well today, and I hope you can discourage that particular one--even if it's with a gun.

Jay, Oh wow, that's a whole lot of coyotes. I know their population cycles up and down, but it is ridiculous this year. You know how it is--here where we live, the cottontail population cycles up while the coyote population is down, and then as the coyote population cycles up, the cottontail population falls. That is normal. So, then since there's not enough rabbits left to eat, the coyote population falls. The problem that I see is that after the last cycle of cottontail rabbit population dropping, the coyote population doesn't seem like it has cycled down yet, and there's nothing to eat. So, they're feasting on calves, piglets, poultry, dogs, cats, etc. Maybe they are adapting better to feeding off our domestic animals? I'm also seeing tons less coons, foxes, possums, etc. than usual. I wonder if the coyotes have been eating them. We do seem to have plenty of bobcats as well.

I wonder what happens now in your region after the fire. Will the coyotes get even worse because of all the blackened land where I think it is safe to assume much of the wildlife couldn't outrun the wind-driven fires? You'll have to let us know when y'all start hearing some assessments on the state of the surviving wildlife.

Paula, Maybe that's what it is. In that case we're in trouble because the winters keep getting warmer. We always have coyote trouble, but we've never, ever had nearly as much trouble with them as we've had for the last 12-15 months. I've been trying to figure out if the multiple Red River floods of 2015 and 2016 have played a role in this here in our location. Maybe it washed away a lot of the smaller wildlife they would have eaten, so they're increasingly coming up out of the bottomlands to hunt for food.

Hmmm. The feral piglets are coming up out of the bottom lands as well. So, maybe I need to remember that horrible year, maybe it was 2008, when we had worse problems than coyotes, because that year, the beasts roaming the bottom lands drove everything up into our neighborhood as well. We don't need a repeat of that again. I usually don't worry until the coyotes disapper though, because when that happens, it means a larger predator has driven them away when it comes up out of the bottom lands to hunt on the upland. Now I have a headache just thinking about this.

Nancy, I hate killing things. I want to be all kumbaya and just live peacefully together. Unfortunately, wild animals don't think that way and sometimes it takes a collision with a piece of flying lead to keep our animals safe. Around here our shorthand for that is "lead poisoning". So, if I tell y'all someday that some pesky varmint died of lead poisoning, you'll know we did what we had to do.

Usually, a coyote isn't happy to see a person and does the classic slinking away, head down and tail between its legs. I'm used to that. You don't even have to yell at them. Just show yourself to them and they flee as quickly as they can. This one did not do that at all. Not. At. All. That worries me. He's too bold. He won't last long here in this neighborhood if he stays that bold. There's too many newborn horses, cows and goats in the fields right now, and the ranchers will be quicker to shoot than I would be, and rightfully so. I will try to chase off a varmint several times before resorting to shooting. If we kill all the coyotes and bobcats, then who's going to eat all the voles, moles, gophers, etc? We kill off all the predator wildlife at our own peril, so my goal is peaceful coexistence to the extent that it is possible. (Obviously a coyote trying to grab our pets has crossed that line, though.) The exception is skunks out in the daylight hours, which are bound to be rabid and don't deserve a second chance as they are too dangerous.

When you hear gunshots around here at this time of year, if it is during daylight hours, my first thought is that someone just shot a skunk. My second thought is coyote or bobcat. It is what it is. There's plentiful wildlife here and sometimes the population of one given kind outstrips its available food supply, and then the trouble begins. I think that is the point many of us are at right now----more coyotes around this year than their natural food supply can support. This is going to be a tough spring and summer then.

Dawn

Totally agree, Dawn. Need the balance of critters. And I also hate killing animals. . . I don't even like killing the squirrels. Just WISH they weren't so destructive! Voles? Mice? Hmmmmmmmmmm. Rabbits, fine with me. . . because I like fried rabbit just fine. (However, I haven't seen more than two rabbits since living here. Besides the little dead one Daffy dragged over to us 2 years ago.)

One morning a friend had a coyote run up on their porch and grab a cat while she was standing there feeding the cat. She said it grabbed the cat and never slowed down.

Oh that is brutal. . . that'd break my heart.

That would break my heart too. Tim and I both have had nightmares of seeing a coyote grab our little orange cat Pumpkin and running off with it, likely because Pumpkin is such a wild thing and runs crazily everywhere. Considering how many coyotes we have, we haven't lost many to the coyotes as far as we know. I'm pretty sure one got our Maine Coon Cat, Fluffy. after he went out one day and just never came in. One had been stalking him and I was trying to keep him in day after day and it just drove him nuts. I let him out one day against my better judgement and he never came home. If anything, Casper roams more than Fluffy ever did, but he had been sticking close to home volunarily lately, so I think his encounter with the coyote yesterday was not his first. I hope his luck isn't running out.

I think I might've had a heart attack, Dawn. Then, I'd have grabbed my gun and fired a couple of warning shots into the woods (where he surely would have run.) Oy vey.

It all just happened so fast. As I passed the bay window and got a glimpse of the cat running for his life, I knew I had to get that front door open. To grab a gun would have involved walking across the room to a closet and back to the front door, and it would have been 20-40 seconds that Casper didn't have. The second I opened that door, the coyote turned and was streaking off into the woods, but not like a scared coyote loping away, just moving along at a happy little trot, tail held high and waving behind him. THAT did irritate me. He could have at least acted a little scared. I've never wanted to be one of those people who has a loaded rifle sitting right by the front door, but maybe it is time. I did think about coming back inside and grabbing my handgun and firing a couple of shots into the ground, but then I didn't do it. Casper was already so traumatized and he hates gunfire. Our old mama cat, Ranger, was sitting up on the porch railing watching it all and seemed totally unaffected by it. I had to pick her up and carry her inside because she did not want to come in. I guess she was more confident than I was that the coyote would not come back again that afternoon.

Dawn I forgot to mention that there is a series of small corrals just north of the house and a large pen north of that that used to be an old arena and it has an open front shed on the north end. We use these pens to calve the heifers that are calving. About a month ago her daughter was filling the water tank under the shed and saw a coyote come right out in the old arena and just wandered around in the arena like he wasn't scared of her or anything. She didn't have a gun and when she got one he was gone. If he has been back we haven't seen him. The ones we've seen seem like they have no fear of a human. They would of been eash to shoot. And you mentioned the bobcat.Judy and I were north of her house around sundown in late summer/early fall and was in the ranger. We were out just waiting for the sun to come down. We watched a doe and two fawns just playing around in the road just north of us. They moved on and 1-2 minutes later I saw something coming down the road from the same area. It was a bobcat. He walked up to within around 20-25 yards of us and stood there and watched us for several minutes. Then wandered back up the road. He would stop every little bit and look back at us. Judy was scared. Since a local rancher has killed 4 of them causing problems with his calves. I've been around coyotes and bobcats my whole life and have never seen them so unafraid of humans and the old ranchers are saying the same thing.

I have a feeling my hands would be shaking so bad I couldn't load the bullets.

Dawn, you can come live next to me. No wildlife here! Well, I think there is a fox roaming around, but I have never seen a snake, no coyotes, no bobcats, no cougars. Really, it might be close to heaven. And you could live next door to ME :)

Any coyotes you can kill in the next month will directly reduce the numbers you have the rest of the year. get them before the babies are born. Even if you kill all of them, a new pack will likely form or move back into the area by next February when they breed. I think March and April are the times for coyote killing!