Bounty on coyotes?

[Lil' Dog]

The Star Tribune had a short article in todays paper 2/15/2011 about the state offering a bounty on coyotes. What do you think? I think that it will screw up the hunting for us guys that go after them already, without having a bounty on them. You will probably have every guy that thinks it is easy money knocking on farmers doors asking for permission. It will make it more difficult for you or I to get permission from that same farmer, or landowner. IMO

http://www.startribune.com/politics/sta ... 03724.html

[JJ]

Doubt you will have to many actually knocking on doors. What you will have is a lot more road hunters trying to pay for the next six-pack.

[miked]

There are plenty to go around. And a few less will make the hunt that much more fun.

[Dick Unger]

The folks that stand to benefit from bounty money use tactics that do not make folks enamored of hunters. One has a picture of a hunter stealthily calling in a wary coyote. You'll usually get nothing.

What you REALLY do is get a few pickups, a few cell phones a few AR rifles, and a boatload of military ammo. Fire rounds in every slough or woodlot you come to, to get animals up and running. They'll run and run. You'll kind of be able to predict the path, so get set to cover ahead of the animals. Then cut loose with the AR's. It really pisses people offf, and the call the CO.

However, it turns out that there are few hunting laws on coyotes, (unprotected animals) so it's difficult to stop. You don't need a hunting license for coyotes, because they are unprotected, you can shoot from the road (not the car, but the hunters can see the CO's truck a mile away). It's hard to charge trespass when they shoot from the road. One guy bragged that he fired 300 rounds last Saturday and Sunday, getting them up and shooting at them.

The request for "bounties" is just to provide more money for gas, ammo and beer, IMHO. It won't reduce the coyote population. In fact it splits the packs so more animal will breed. And the coyote is a friend to pheasants. Coyotes eat skunks and racoons and possums and weasels, and ferral cats all of which eat pheasnt chicks and eggs. (Coyotes will too, but there are probably 1000 small predators for each coyote.)

The DNR opposes this, they see it as a waste of money and a generator of complainst about hunters who they do not catch breaking the law. Why subsidize this? Because these hunters, (farmers who have the whole winter to play) get their county commissioners to requst bounties for them.