Yeah, ultimately, that's true. I just like the idea of a deterrent, not as the major line of defense, but that I would honestly rather the wild predators go their way, not MAKE me have to kill them, if that makes sense. The more we might deter or discourage somehow, the less we have to deal with, and the less we have to kill. Good for us, good for them.
There is a terrible over-population of some types of predators here right now, I think out local eco-system is seriously out of balance right now. Just broad sweep taking out a good many of those over populated would be better not only for us, but the eco-system...we have virtually no wild rabbits left, rarely see deer anymore,cattle raisers are suffering extrme losses, not only of calves, but entire 1200 lb Momma cows laying down to calve are nothing but a bare skelton with scraps of hair laying around on a totally bare beaten 10 ft radius of ground! And now in last several years, both domestic and feral house cats have virtually gone extinct in this area.
I know coyotes and bobcats are extemely over populated, and these coyotes seem to be starting to stay packed up, a dozen or more, pretty much year round which is a shift from normal coyote habits. We do also have in this particular area, have had as long as I've lived here, something of what I can only call a "secret" predator....in that its as if we are all in conspiracy,lol, to keep the "wrong" people from noticing, realizing. Check officially, Texas has no wolves. Hmmmm....that one threw me a bit of a loop when I first encountered them, big bad and ugly ones, that will give you nightmares...these are NOT the 'pretty' wolves moslty seen in pictures elsewhere....these suckers will send chills up your spine and make your hair stand on end to come into close face to face encounter! Very ;'primitive' looking..in hushed tones, you might hear 'those are the true old time east Texas Timber wolves'. But officially, we don't have wolves here. Those old East Texas Timber wolves are a myth, a rural legence. When I tried to report these monsters years ago to local ag and game officials, I couldn't believe they kept laughing me off with, Lady, we don;t have no wolves here, we just got some BIG coyotes around here!" Coyotes, my @%$!!! I've since seen a number of them, once a half dozen of them piled into the bed of a pick-up by a"Yote" hunter, and I'm no more convinced they are 'big' coyotes than I was in my couple personal close encounters. why the "collusion?" Best I can figure, this being a tradtional agricultural/ranching area, you want to be able to shoot your llvestock predators. Coyotes aren't protected. But, I've never known them much to come up much bold around houses, people, like coyotes do, they seem to stay deeper in the thickets and river bottoms, nor involved much taking things like chickens. But they are rough on cattle and deer. But then, I guess that's what you'd expect from 'big' coyotes.
