We did pretty well out in the swamp this year. I ended up with most of the carcasses (6-8 of them). Normally I just throw a couple at a time in the outdoor burner but I was wondering if there was a better use for them. We can use cables the 26 of this month. I wasn't sure if feeding the yotes was a good idea or not. Not that I stand much of a chance at catching them anyway.

Maybe I could knock a hole in the pond and put them half in and let them freeze up and wait for the yotes to show up and shoot them.

I hang them as feeders for woodpeckers. By spring they are just bone...

Find tick cover and pile them up and check it until they hammer on it then set it up you will get yotes, if they are just skeletons tie them off so they don't drag them off.

Toss them out In the open about 30 yards from cover. Then once the coyotes start using them track the coyotes back In to cover and hang your CRs on those tracks.

If you are using them to entice yotes for trapping, just remember about the exposed bait law in PA and place your sets far enough away. It trips people up every now and again. I know of people that have gotten wacked for sets near gut piles and the like. I have forgotten about it in the past myself.

This is what I do. I get a lot of
Roadkill thru winter and I like placing them in thick spruce/pine stands with lots of young bushy trees. Mooching eagles and vultures don’t like the tight quarters while the wolves, yotes, cats etc leave great trails thru the area between trees. Snares are your friend and blind setting traps works well. If there are some old downed trees or
Logs in the area move them perpendicular to the bait 6 yards away or more where the obvious openings thru young trees are they will make great blind step overs for traps.

I mention 6 yards away or so because incoming visitors have their radar up and are trying to home in on the bait and who else might be there and not as much focused on where they step. Getting too close with stepover obstacles to where they can see the coast is clear and they are more likely to jump or leap towards the bait. The stepover about 6-8” works great any bigger and cats/fox will jump onto it then off and coyotes will circle it.

Osky

Fresh snow is your friend to see where the yotes/cats are coming and going from the draw stations. A guy can backtrack quite a ways to find set locations and not need to be too close to the pile that way. Most States have a exposed bait rule distance to avoid problems just never set on the pile that's a problem waiting to happen and most likely illegal along with being a waste of your time in the end.

I give all the bones to my dogs except the skull and lower legs. They also get the silver skin, cartilage and fat. My dogs turn it into chalk like poop and horrific farts, but they really enjoy it.

Keith

I only get one deer a year. Everything but the feet and head goes into the pot for soup stock. Clean the bones of meat and put the bones in the garbage.

Make scrapple out of them!

I either make stock out of them and then can it in pint jars or feed it to the chickens (if I have any at the time). They will clean a skeleton pretty quick and you'll notice the shells get thicker. After seeing Lugnut's posts for the last couple days, scrapple is on my list if I get stationed in PA next year. Bait stations are always an option but I can usually get enough roadkills, carcasses of unknown quality from local processors, and the remanants of beaver carcasses.

Thanks for the ideas. I already gave our two dogs (beagle and a basset) 3-4 sets of the leg bones, a pelvis or two and the beagle has one rib cage/back bone section. I think I will wait till after Christmas and see if we get any snow and try and get them in a thick spot. Gives me a chance to make some long cables to anchor them down.

The thing I have noticed In my area that the coyotes take forever to work carcasses In heavy cover. Sometimes they never work them.

But you put them out In the open they are on them right away. I always figured they were a bit skittish and shied away from that heavy cover.