More information on Eastern Coyotes--kinda long

[woodmort]

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Actually, as I understand it, the loss of the passenger pigeon was as much environmentally caused as hunting. The population exploded then the birds ran out of stuff to eat.

 

[joebryant]

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I just posted another thread on coyotes with a link to the latest newspaper article about them. Go to it and read the third page of the article. Frankly, it would be easier to eliminate humans than coyotes, the human diet is more restrictive.

Who's talking about starving them. I'm for giving them a full diet of lead.

 

[woodmort]

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First you have to be sure they aren't protected, then you have to see them and then you have to be a good shot. Finally, you'll have to be persistent since they outnumber you. All easier said than done. I have friends that actively hunt them that feel lucky if they can get one or two in the course of a 6 month season and it is not because they are rare. Find that NYTimes' article I posted a week or so ago and read about the people trying to locate them just for research.

These aren't passenger pigeons or dodos that you can find in large numbers and beat to death with a stick. Nor are they buffalo that are in large herds that will mill around when one is shot until you drop them all. These are very smart animals that have a healthy respect for danger and can melt away very quickly--in short they are smarter than the hunters.

 

[joebryant]

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First you have to be sure they aren't protected, then you have to see them and then you have to be a good shot. Finally, you'll have to be persistent since they outnumber you. All easier said than done. I have friends that actively hunt them that feel lucky if they can get one or two in the course of a 6 month season and it is not because they are rare. Find that NYTimes' article I posted a week or so ago and read about the people trying to locate them just for research.

These aren't passenger pigeons or dodos that you can find in large numbers and beat to death with a stick. Nor are they buffalo that are in large herds that will mill around when one is shot until you drop them all. These are very smart animals that have a healthy respect for danger and can melt away very quickly--in short they are smarter than the hunters.

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L&LOL Well said.
You're starting to convince me, especially when I consider how seldom that I actually see them and knowing all the while that they're all about.

 

[deerman]

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Actually, as I understand it, the loss of the passenger pigeon was as much environmentally caused as hunting. The population exploded then the birds ran out of stuff to eat.

No they were kill off for their meat, and sport. Plus they only produce one chick per nest, these nest were robs, million were kill every spring and pack in ice and sent east, Squab.... Adults were trapped and released to be shot as sport, now replaced by clay pigeon.(They flew faster than the morning doves) They nest in northern states in the spring, one chick per pair ,then flew south. Join by the chicks later.

They gather in very large flock , so large that a hunter would kill 20 or more with one shot as they flew over. My grandfather talk of them doing so.

Plus they only bred in those huge flocks. The zoo here in Ohio had the last few of them. Flock so small they didn't breed, very last one die in the Cincinnati Ohio, you still can see a stuff one. Last one know in the wild was killed by a boy with a bb gun, it is also at the Cincinnati Zoo.

So yes if people had a reason for the fur or other reason ,sure the coyote could be killed off, just like the wolve was.

 

[WillieBoy]

I agree with the following members comments here...33yardbirds, Joebryant,7LFarm and deerman....Don't need them around, glad its open season 24/7 365 days a yr,shoot 'em....
In Calf. coyotes have been jumping peoples fences for yrs killing and eating their pet cats and smaller dogs.
Only a fool would wait and leave them alone until the coyote killed their chickens/livestock.I don't say go out and shoot every coyote in the country side. I do say if you see the critter on your land and you have livestock, kill it, when you get the chance.
Leave it alone..? I bet you wouldn't say that if it attacked someones child...Some apparently don't fear a full grown human. A child likely looks mighty fine to a hungry wildpack animal...! The DEC's laws...? SSS....SSS....SSS...only a fool would wait for something bad to happen...
If i just left the raccoons around here alone, i wouldn't have a bloody chicken left for goodness sake...!!

 

[joebryant]

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LOL Too well said to respond or try to refute.

 

[ellieroo]

http://www.wbu.com/chipperwoods/photos/passpigeon.htm more reading on the whys and hows

 

[deerman]

Thanks for the link, so sad these great birds are now gone forever. Even alot of thing today come from those times, like stool pigeon. came from when they place a pigeon on a stool , untill the flock flew over, they would pull the stool out (bird was tied by leg) then flock would land birds were then netted by the hundreds. for the sport of trap shooting. Now they use clay ones.

 

[deerman]

More info i found on the net , why we no longer have the passenger pigeon.





One reason why the passenger pigeon existed in such prodigious numbers was the lack of natural predators apart from hawks and eagles. It was, however, surprisingly vulnerable to human intervention. Each female laid only one egg a year, which made it difficult to replace any losses quickly. Only a flimsy nest was made and its habit of nesting in vast colonies and migrating in huge flocks made it very easy to attack. The birds fed mainly on acorns, chestnuts and beech nuts in the extensive woodlands of North America and so when these were steadily cut down their habitat and food supplies were reduced. Human intervention was at first relatively restrained, largely because of the limited numbers living in North America. The Indians captured the pigeons in large nets and by the 1630s the settlers of New England were doing the same. The young squabs were regarded as a great delicacy and the adults were sought after for their feathers as well as their meat. In the first couple of centuries of European settlement it is doubtful whether the number of pigeons declined very much given the relatively small number of humans in the area. After 1830 the practice of releasing live pigeons from traps for shooting practice began, but this in itself would not have proved fatal to the existence of the species even though about 250,000 a year were being killed in this way in the 1870s.

The population had certainly been reduced by the middle of the nineteenth century but was still several billion strong. The real onslaught began with the onset of large-scale commercial hunting carried out by well-organised trappers and shippers in order to supply the developing cities on the east coast of the United States with a cheap source of meat. It began once railways linking the Great Lakes area with New York opened in the early 1850s. By 1855 300,000 pigeons a year were being sent to New York alone. The worst of the mass slaughter took place in the 1800s and 1870s. The scale of the operation can be judged by figures that seem almost incredible but which were carefully recorded as part of a perfectly legal and highly profitable commerce. On just one day in 1860 (23 July) 235,200 birds were sent east from Grand Rapids in Michigan. During 1874 Oceana County in Michigan sent over 1,000,000 birds to the markets in the east and two years later was sending 400,000 a week at the height of the season and a total of 1,600,000 in the year. In 1869, Van Buren County, also in Michigan, sent 7,500,000 birds to the east. Even in 1880, when numbers had already been severely reduced, 527,000 birds were shipped east from Michigan.

Not surprisingly, even the vast flocks of pigeons could not withstand slaughter on this scale. Numbers fell rapidly and by the late 1880s large flocks, which had once been so common, had become a matter for comment and investigation, and most were no more than a few hundred strong. The last known specimens were seen in most states of the eastern United States, in the 1890s, and the passenger pigeon died out in the wild in Ohio about 1900. The last survivor of a species that had once numbered 5 billion died in captivity in 1914.