Not much of a predator hunter or trapper but I am fairly knowledgeable about all critters. Always knew coyotes would eat most anything.

About a month ago I started baiting for deer. Big pear tree gave me nearly 300 pounds. Dumped a bucket in my spot. Have the camera out. First night couple deer. Next night coyotes. As many as three at a time eating the pears. About a week later I dumped more pears about ten gallons. I have coyotes in and out for nearly four hours and they ate every single pear. Never knew they had such a sweet tooth.

Have not had any deer pics since. I switched over to corn and got a picture of a dog pissing on my corn pile. So I moved my deer stand. Now to do something about the coyotes. Did some calling the other night and I had three large packs answering within a half mile. Four active den sites on the property I am hunting. Basturds need to go.

When I was a littler kid,I worked in the watermelon fields.Those dang coyotes would eat the heck out of watermelons,right down to the rind.

I first heard about their love of watermelons back in the Seventy's, when coyotes were not too thick around here. It blew my mind after a short denial period. For a while I could not make myself believe it, but the man that was telling me was someone that I trusted to tell the truth and he said that he saw them with his own eyes. miles

Sounds like them 'Yotes were raised by tree-huggers..

I've seen em eat deer corn too. The dried stuff crunches so loud you can hear it for a couple hundred yards. If your close enough to me I would be happy to take some coyotes off yoour hands.

Coyotes will eat anything that gives them nourishment. Up through the 60's cottonseed cake was fed to livestock during winter months due to its high protein value and relative low cost. Where coyotes were numerous and not shot at, they would come right in among the cattle as we fed it to get the cake. Same with dried corn cobs.
I have always figured after a nuclear holocaust 3 critters would survive, cockroaches, rats and coyotes.
Buck

They will pretty much eat anything that's available.
I grew up on a large farming/ranching operation and used to try to keep them thinned out for my Dad.
They used to love apples. I dusted alot of them while they were looking for apples that had fallen off the orchard trees.
They like avacados too, about any kind of melons, and were always after the rabbits who were after the alfalfa fields.
I've even seen them eat onions.

Ted

Most animals are just like us. When they're hungry enough, they will eat anything their digestive system can handle. My favorite coyote photo is of one standing in front of a cold meat display case in a deli in down town Chicago in broad daylight.

Coyotes will eat ANYTHING that doesn't kill them. And some things that will.

They used to come through the garden at night and take a bite out of every watermelon until they found a ripe one. They'd consume the ripe ones, but most of the rest would be ruined by the single bite they took testing it. We finally stopped it with electric fences.

My father in law had several pear trees in SE Kansas and often saw and shot coyotes under them in the fall.

No coyotes have eaten my wife's cooking! That would take them down where they stand.

B

Welcome to the Campfire Bassturd

that one was so funny i had to have my wife read it !

"No coyotes have eaten my EXwife's cooking! That would take them down where they stand.

B "

I fixed it for you....

All the coyote crap this time of year is pretty much blue with seeds from Zinfandel grapes. I shot a Jackrabbit a few weeks ago and visited the area 3 days later and found a "mark pile" a few feet from where the rabbit was, and all the bloody dirt and brain matter was gone. I guess sandy soil is good for flushing the pipes...lol

Damn things chew the heck out of our drip system during the summer, somebody needs to fix the problem better...ahem

Allen

[quote=PaleRider][quote=Bassturd]No coyotes have eaten my wife's cooking! That would take them down where they stand.

Waaaa hahaha... Hey, sweetie! Come over here and read this post.

My best private properties to hunt were farms that grew cantalopes, watermelons or tomatoes.

they are opportunistic eaters. seeds, etc are on their list. I suppose pears should be too. I say go fling some lead, you got a coyote problem

Trail cam took these last summer when I had an abundant crop of pears. They were actually pulling them right off the trees.


I had as many as 5 in the yard at one time, but this is a view of 4 at once. All of them went to the big pear pile in the sky.

they eat watermelons and strawberries also

I had an experience similar to yours about 15 years ago. Extremely dry year and the pears were only golf ball to baseball size.

I gathered up two five gallon buckets of them and took them to the deer lease and dumped them out. Couple of weeks later took another five gallon bucket of them to the same spot. Nearly all the previous dump was gone. Ground was hard so there were no tracks. Dumped the buckets full and as I drove away looked in the rearview mirror to see eight yots eating those pears.

I thought since all the creeks were dry they were eating them for the moisture.

Omnivores.

Put a 50gr V-Max through one last year in the pumpkin field out back. Saw him eating on something & fully expected to find a half eaten bunny when I walked up but nothing there but punkins. Made me wonder if that's what he was eating. Now I'm even more curious... neat piece of info here.

They love persimmons once they are ripe and fall.

Mike7mm08: Along these same lines I have personally observed (in my own yard here in SW Montana) Foxes eating Crabapples both on the ground (fallen) and in the lower branches of my old tree!
Also this, I have underground lawn watering and in summers run the heads twice per day (once in the morning and once at sunset) then the Fox will come to the yard (usually just at and after dark) and they will quietly stalk nightcrawler sized worms in the wet grass!
When a creature is hungry I guess they will eat what has calories in it?
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Mike, why don't just stay in the stand a couple evenings and shoot a couple coyotes...??? To me that would be good for everyone, but maybe the coyotes..

And I thought my wife's cookin was ....not so good.

So will deer eat melons ?

dh1.......yes, sir....they do.

I'm sure that down around Carlsbad you have those desert gourd patches. I popped a little female standing among the vines chomping away.

Grasshoppers too.

Years ago i sat and glassed for an hour or so four coyotes eating something on the ground with cattle all around watching the coyotes. Finally the coyotes padded off and i walked down the draw to find out what the heck the story was.

The coyotes were eating fresh cow pies! There were several newborn calves in the herd and mama's milk was present in the cow pies.
Now i didn't figure that out......an old greyhound breeder told me.

This thread.....2,450 hits!.....with only 28 replies.
Indicates lots of interest in coyote behavior.

They even eat each other.
Every coyote I shoot & leave on a ranchers dead cow pile is eaten by other coyotes.
The dead pile is a great place to shoot em over also.
Ive taken 5 off the pile so far this month having a feast.
I had 6 at it this morning, but only got one as they all hit splitsville.
The neighboring rancher said they eat all his apples that drop/ or hang low on his trees and Im to shot them also when I get there.

They eat lead to but it usually kills them.

Just this morning as I was driving in to work several yotes were in fields down the road that just had chicken litter spread on it. Don't know if it's chicken feed, chicken parts, or just the crap, but they chow down on something that's in the spread litter.

Been busy and have not gotten back to this thread

We have some real goofy laws in Wisconsin as far as night hunting goes. I cannot use a light to see if the coyotes are there. But once they are there I can turn the light on to shoot them. So other than a bright full moon I have no chance of seeing them before I light them up to shoot them. All the full moons of late have been cloudy. Also baiting coyotes is illegal.

I can legally hunt over a gut pile. But during the gun deer season I am hunting in a shotgun zone. So for those nine days I cannot hunt with a rifle even though it is legal the rest of the year. And I cannot hunt with or even possess shot shells loaded with shot larger than BB or any size buckshot until after December 9th. So unless I shoot an archery deer during late season no gutpile and legal bait.

We also have a Barney Fife of a warden roaming the neighborhood on a regular basis. He claims he has gotten a lot of reports of shining deer and night shooting. So me sitting with a spotlight and a 22-250 over a illegal bait pile is just asking for a whole bunch of hassle and tickets. Neighbors really really don't like me so I am sure they got the warden on speed dial just waiting to call on me.

I don't miss the days of night hunting yotes in Wi. I much prefer hunting them in daylight here in Neb. Much easier to spot in the more open terrain too.