Calling a truce
Source: Casper StarTribune.net, by Brodie Farquhar
May 30, 2007
Most every Wyoming rancher has a common set of tools used in the business of raising livestock.
A ranch pickup is likely to hold pliers, a hammer, wire for repairing fences, syringes for calf inoculations, a can of nails, rope and chains, a salt block, maybe a bale or two of hay, and a rifle in a window rack for shooting coyotes and other "varmints."
It is this last “tool” that you simply won’t find in vehicles used by Stacey Scott, a Natrona County rancher. It isn’t because he doesn’t have predators; he does, and they include coyotes, foxes, mountain lions, bobcats, badgers, mink and various raptors.
The most numerous, big mammalian predator in the area is the coyote, but Scott doesn’t shoot coyotes. He hasn’t lost more than one or two calves to coyote predation in 30 years.
“We don’t have any (predator losses),” he said.
Without the stress of being hunted and trapped, coyotes will develop stable territories and populations without much movement in and out of their home areas, Scott said.
The rancher said there is a direct correlation, a “cause and effect,” between pressures put on coyotes by ranchers, and how coyotes respond. Scott said most of his neighboring ranchers try “to shoot every coyote they see.”
Scott said he believes the coyote population central Wyoming “is the highest I’ve ever seen.”
If a coyote population is regularly and systematically shot, trapped, gased or blown up by ranchers and government trappers, the survivors respond with large litters of six to eight pups, he said.
“Our litter sizes are one, two, three,” because they aren’t getting hammered by Scott or government trappers, he said.
Coyotes with large litters face an urgent demand for food for their hungry pups. “A coyote that has to feed six or eight pups, he’s got to do something really risky to feed its young,” seeking a large food reward like a calf, despite the hazards of tangling with a mother cow.
“I know my neighbors are losing calves to coyotes. We don’t (lose calves). We don’t shoot (coyotes) -- we have the small litters. We have very stable populations where they know where to hunt,” Scott said.
Coyotes with smaller litters have an easier time feeding fewer mouths -- especially this year, Scott said, when the country seems to be overrun with rabbits.
“In 50 years, I’ve never seen a peak of the rabbit cycle anywhere like it is now,” he said. The rabbit explosion is great for coyotes and other predators, and it isn’t something Scott can readily explain -- not after seven years of severe drought.
Scott said he has seen a coyote stroll right through a calving area, with zero response from the cattle. Other times, cows seem to know that the coyote is on the hunt, and the cows chase the coyote away. He has seen evidence of coyotes feeding on dead calves, but in every case the calf was already dead, he said.
Mountain lions will take an occasional cow in the region, Scott said. The lions like to jump on or chase down prey including deer and horses, but don’t much like to deal with prey animals that will charge them, such as cows. “Cows don’t fit the food profile for mountain lions very well,” he said.
Losses to predation just aren’t a factor for Scott, he said. Cattle losses can be attributed to lightning strikes, disease and the stresses associated with drought, but not predators.
Scott said unskilled hunters or people seeking “free” meat are a bigger worry to him than predators, as he doesn’t have to worry about wolves. But he fully expects wolves will show up eventually.
“Hopefully they won’t be too bad on us, but yeah, wolves are a whole different story because the cow is way too much like the elk, except slower?," Scott said. "Wolves and cows just shouldn’t mix.”
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