Читать книгу Wolf and Coyote Trapping: An Up-to-Date Wolf Hunter's Guide - A. R. Harding - Страница 11

Coyotes live in natural dens in the rocks, also in dens of badgers, in the prairie country. In the "Bad Lands" of the West and the foot hills of the mountain ranges, wind worn holes in the rim-rock and buttes are quite common and the animals have no trouble in securing a good den. Naturally, they select the most secluded and inaccessible places for their dens. The food of the coyote consists of small game, such as hares and grouse, prairie dogs and any other small animals that they can capture. In the sheep raising districts of the Western States they are very destructive to sheep and in those parts it is probable that their food consists mostly of mutton. They feed on carrion and have a particular liking for horse flesh. They also kill badgers and when conditions are very favorable may kill an occasional deer or antelope. They also sometimes kill calves and hogs.

Speaking of conditions in Oregon and other parts of the Northwest, one of our friends writes:

"The prairie wolf or coyote in the Western states are becoming so numerous that it looks as though the sheep industry in Idaho and Eastern Oregon would soon be a thing of the past, if something it not done to lesson the number of the destructive coyotes.

"Twenty years ago there were a great many coyotes in Oregon, but the black tail rabbits were so numerous then that the coyote contented himself with them and did not molest the sheep to any great extent. Idaho and Oregon both put a bounty on rabbits, which soon caused them to become scarce, then the coyotes began their depredations among the sheep. The wool growers supplied themselves with plenty of strychnine and kept the coyote reduced to quite an extent. Of late years it seems that poison will not kill a coyote. As soon as he feels the effect of the poison he throws up the bait he has just eaten, and in a few minutes he is all right.

The only way to kill coyotes these days is with the gun, the trap or with dogs. They are so thick here now that hounds would not be much good, as the coyotes would change at any time and run them down. I don't think there was a band of sheep anywhere in this country but what suffered more or less from coyotes last winter. I trapped some last winter for the Munz Brothers, and I saw where 48 sheep had been killed at one camp. They had been camped there about ten days. This is about an average killing if the weather is stormy.

"In Southeastern Oregon there is a desert about one hundred miles square, and thirty or forty bands of sheep feed there every winter. They run from two to three thousand sheep in a band. The sheep men on this desert last winter, 1904-'05, paid $40.00 per month and board for trappers to trap coyotes, and the trappers were allowed to keep the furs they caught. Some of them made very large wages."

It is said that when hunting rabbits, two coyotes will join forces and in this way one animal will drive the game to within reach of the other, thus avoiding the fatigue caused by running down game. Naturalists also claim that the adult animals will sometimes drive the game close to the den, so that the young coyotes may have the opportunity of killing it. They frequently pick up scraps about the camps, and if undisturbed, will in a short time, lose much of their timidity. Old camping places are always inspected in the hopes of finding some morsel of food, and one can always find coyote tracks in the ashes of the campfire.

Though the coyote belongs to the flesh-eating class of animals, it is not strictly carnivorous. In late summer when the wild rose tips are red and sweet and berries are plentiful, its flesh eating propensities forsake it in part and it adds fruit to its "bill of fare". Whether this is caused by hunger or a change of appetite, or whether the fruit acts as a tonic and the animal, instinctively, realizes that it must tone up its system in preparation for the long winter, is not known.