Mark. Looks like I am done for the rest of year. Home now working on cabin. Meet with power company yesterday day. Will need LOTS of poles to get power to cabin. Starting to think = was bad idea to put cabin in middle of 37 acres I will head back to West Texas about the = 29 th Hope to get power and 3 loads of gravel in to cabin in that time. I need 2 weeks off any way. After the coyote in the pasture the otherday that makes = 503 coyotes for me this year. Central/West Texas was mainly snare work. I know exactly what you mean about riding all day and seeing only 1 set of tracks. One day in November = since water holes can be key in West Central Texas. I walked and checked about 8 water tanks and a dry lake bed. Walked 5.8 miles according to Iphone. NEVER saw a track

Had a heifer die a week ago that I personally treated with antibiotics about 2 weeks. She died within 200 yds of the dead cow that wasn't treated that I moved there and the coyotes didn't touch. The heifer I treated got hit by coyotes immediately.

I’ve had lots of cows passed over.

I’ve never had a deer passed over. Ever.

If a deer ain’t getting slicked up, they just haven’t found it yet!


As for coyotes not emptying out of big chunks of country to come to a good food source (yes, even leaving their “territory”) come up North in a average to bad winter about January! Not uncommon for every coyote (or the lions share of them) within 10-20 miles to be stacked up where the food is!

I put a pile of bones from the deer processor out last Friday. Today is Wednesday and the coyotes have been pounding it. 100 yards away is road killed deer I dragged up a month ago. Fox have hit it but no coyotes. Go figure?

And we wonder why they will walk past a set with a spoonful of bait down a hole and a ton of human scent there sometimes

IF my back quits hurting after 18 hr drive yesterday. I may go check a dead cow or 2 LOL!!

That's a long way to haul dead cows... lol

I bet bobcats like dead cows

X2

Seth, you had the wrong teaspoon of bait down the hole! lol. When you get it figured out, ol hoss, let me know! Course by then, the yotes will have changed the rules again!

I have no answers. I'm trapping a farm now that has two calf dead piles. Only one calf out of both piles has been touched along with some deer carcasses with a little meat on them after butchering. One deer was taken with a hip bone sticking out of the hide and infection had set in, the coyotes haven't touched that one. It just seems odd that only one calf has been eaten out of 20 or so carcasses.

Maybe they are too froze

Definitely not frozen. It's been unseasonably warm here lately. I put in a couple dirt hole sets today, usually can't even think about that this time of year.

I also think that weather is a huge factor. When we have a couple of feet of snow on the ground for long periods combined with very cold temps then the coyotes will absolutely stay on dead piles until completely gone. They are also much easier to catch even with leaving human disturbances in the snow. The last few winters have been incredibly mild and snow free and the coyotes are way more finicky about what they will and will not eat and definitely more wary of sets.

Wanna be I don’t know if I will have any answers for you , but I’m getting ready to go on a trapping trip with a buddy of mine just south of you. He mostly uses wild hog meat for bait . I’m very curious as to why hogs go untouched in your area. It may be apples and oranges but hogs in a dead pit around here are as good a draw as any. Dead cows are rare in these parts , but when I find out about one it’s usually already cleaned up . I think it’s funny how deer and deer parts ( liver, lungs ) make up some of my best baits and yet a deer carcass can sometimes lay for weeks untouched.
Yup , never say never, never say always!
Thanks, Slim

There's a dead cow on a farm I know of and a dead calf probably 70 yards away from it. Yotes seem to like the calf more than the adult. I haven't noticed any bobcat tracks at it yet

Ttt

Years ago when I was a young teenager, my family I were in the Texas panhandle for a couple weeks of deer hunting over Christmas break. Which gave me plenty of time to run a decent line on our place. A horse had died earlier that winter pretty close to a water trough but was just about eatin up. In my eyes the coyotes didn’t have much left to chew on other than some bones and rawhide. After a couple days a younger cow in good flesh died roughly 75 yards from the horse. Boy was I pumped. I knew the coyotes had been making rounds by the horse just by looking at tracks on the ground. But to my disappointment the coyotes never touched that cow. I caught 4 coyotes over the length of our trip right around the horse carcass in flat sets within an eyes view of the dead cow that was never touched in 10 days. The weather was very harsh also. It hovered right around freezing for the high for most of the trip. I never could wrap my mind around why the cow wasn’t messed with.

We had a dead buck floating in the pond in September. The biologist and I drug it and removed the head for testing. I carried the whole carcass to my dumping grounds and it’s just now about gone. Nothing touched it including buzzards.
Had another deer die naturally and nothing has touched it. That was late October and it still smells of death in that area.

First spot was an open brush field. Second area was in a drain so buzzards couldn’t get to that one if they wanted.

30+ hogs had been dumped in the field as well. Buzzards ate 75% of them, the others rotted away. We just have weird finicky coyotes I guess.

Here we go. Beating a dead horse again!! Or in this case a dead cow !!! Just kidding Yes Sir. It’s a fine topic. I am waiting to get on some dead cows when = deer hunters leave. Jan 7 th is last day. So on the 8 th O will set some traps around some dead cows. Set 3 traps round a dead deer. Hung in fence. No coyotes yet. Set up a = dead pile today. 3 elk carcasses and 4 mule deer Got 6 traps. Hope to have 1 in the morning. I have to head back to = Sheep Country tomorrow