What Killed This Horse

Good friend lost his buddy last night. The horse hase been recovering from a serious injury and was still pretty weak - probably attacked while lying down.
The DNR denied we have cougars around, but now they have them listed as an "endangered" species. (They will be "in-danger" when they kill any livestock!!)
That said, This same guy who owns the horse thought he saw two extremely large coyotes a few months ago - went and looked up what he saw and says they were red wolves.
(I'm sure the DNR doesn't know anything about them - just like the cougars...)

Thoughts on what could have done this?

To me it looks like it died and the eagles or vultures got it.

Where you are at, I would say Yotes. They are everywhere out there. Also, I believe a cat would have started eating in the guts.

That's not NORMALLY the way wolves eat a critter

Black vultures

Yotes start at the other end. Birds start with the eyes.
See it at work alot
Id bet some kinda bird and domestic dog

Russians.

Dogs

cougar usually eats the liver first. starting right behind the ribs. they cover stuff up by kicking sticks grass leaves and dirt over a kill after they eat.

that horse died and birds been eating it

is my best guess

Don't know what killed it, but birds been eating it.

Yotes start at other end is right.

I saw one of their big cats we don't have 6 or 7 yrs ago.

If killed by canines the back legs would have been chewed up, unless the horse was a downer.

Chuck Norris needed a snack. Best not to make a big deal of it or he'll work up a real appetite.

Does not look like canine or feline to me. Most walking predators are not going to chew meat off a skull when there is a soft belly and large muscle mass available.

Looks more like birds on a dead critter to me.

was there an open wound on the neck or face ?

every dog or coyote eaten animal i have ever seen was hams first

Probably died of natural causes related to the prior serious injury. Laid there long enough the clean up crew anything that eats meat found it and went to work. Set up a trail cam and watch nature recycle it.

Kinda what I thought, but he said this damage all occurred overnight. The horse was up yesterday and he found it like that this morning.

Ive seen horses cleand to just bones over night only spots not touched is there it made heavy ground contact.

although the eating of that horse don't look like canine, my son was deer hunting early Nov. near you and told me his buddies and himself had seen a rather large pack of wild dogs running. Seen them more than once in fact.

Does look like the horse was probably down and the birds of prey got to it. Along with some possums or other night critters.

as far as the possible wolves, we killed 7 wolves about 70 miles north-west of you back in the 70's.

It was the Clinton's.

I say cat kill then eaten by other critters and eagles etc.. I say cat because in every cat kill in witnessed they are taken by the neck. They usually have a broken neck and open flesh/blood wound at point of attack. If just one night old I would set some cameras up to see what you get.

I'm very skeptical that occured at night.

I'm 100% sure that skull feeding is from avian scavengers.

I've personally never seen any wolves in the National Forest or private ground here - but other folks have told me they're here and these are not the kind of people to spin a yarn...

Thanks to all!!

He's out tonight with a thermal scope on a Remington 700 in 300 Win Mag.

This

plain and simple crawdads

Just to clean to be killed, I would say bird of pray and other critters.

I would say, like the others... the horse died and the black vultures or other birds of prey started chewing on it. If a large predictor had killed it the area around it would have been disturbed and the only thing disturbed in the blood in the grass around the head and neck area where the predictor was ripping off a chunk and eating it.

Garry-

i was waiting for it hahaha.

looks like it died on its own

I hope he has fun shooting skunks tonight. He probably doesn't need that big of a rifle

Squatch did it

If a cat or other big predator caught that horse by the neck the ground near it would be torn up, if even just from the horse's death throes, from a spinal bite. A jugular bite would result in even more disruption of the ground. There appears to be no other damage to the carcass, so it probably died on its own.

I agree with most everyone else that the damages was done by vultures. It does not take long for a flock of vultures to clean up a significant amount of meat. A decent sized flock could eat that much in a few minutes. I have seen vultures eat so much, they can barely get airborne when I startled them.

Keith

That horse died, it wasn't killed.

Chupacabra

I think eagles did the eating.

Illinois dnr says no cougars and I call bullhaucky as ive seen too many trail cam photos of cougars in Illinois. I do however agree with most when they say that horse died and wasn't killed.

Every once in a while a lion shows up here in KS. Not often though. Pretty rare.

Made a guy I work for sometimes pretty mad one time. Showed me a trail cam photo of a house cat. When I told him it looked like a house cat he said that is what fish and game told him. He still thinks it is a lion.

Was in the local dinner a few years ago when a guy walks in carrying an edition of the local paper. He is on the front page holding a plaster cast of a dog track. Says: "Look at this. I been telling everyone a mountain lion is living in my pasture". I told him it looked like a dog track and he gets mad. Says that is what fish and game said.


Got a buddy that called me several years ago. Says we found a lion track (him and his wife were trapping together) come out and look. So I did. Was a big dog track. I told him they were going to catch somebodys pet. Few days later they caught a big St Bernard. Dog was friendly and was easily released.


All three of them have the same thing in common. They are fascinated with the idea of a cougar in the neighborhood and convinced themselves one existed where it did not. Don't get caught up in that kind of thinking. Would not surprise me if a lion wanders down into IL from the north. Don't fall into the mind game of telling yourself fish and game is trying to hide them. They are very rare in IL too. Its not good lion habitat. Fish and game is not doing secret releases or claiming something that exists does not.

9 years ago I found a 600 pound calf that looked about like that in Saline County Kansas and I have wondered ever since then.

Lions in Illinois

Here is some info. on the big cats in Illinois. It shows cat and dog tracks for comparison.

A neighbor had a 300 lb. calf killed about 15 yrs ago. The Game Warden said a cat did it. They asked if they could shoot it, he said there was no law against it since they didn't exist. That law changed in 2015. Some hunters killed that cat on a Conservation Area near there a couple weeks later.

like 160 said, died and birds got to it. coyotes in my experience usually start froom the rear and work fwd, eating the good stuff first

I miss 'Wile E Coyote', at times like this

[quote=ShawneeMan
(I'm sure the DNR doesn't know anything about them - just like the cougars...)

Thoughts on what could have done this?

[/quote]

I love these types of posts. People post these types of things when they clearly have no idea how state agencies "list" these species. Do you understand what the state is saying when they tell you that "We dont have mountain lions"? They realize that lions can pass through, do you think they should have a season and start managing them because some guy saw one? Should they start managing for red wolves because a farmer googled an image of them? A state agency cant list, manage and tell everyone they have a certain species because some "very qualified" farmer saw them once.

That's far too much common sense for this place. People here love a good conspiracy theory.

Whatever it was it's coming back

Lots of meals left

Yeah, what happened to him. I still have some of his articles.

Here is the text from his article "Determining calves that were killed by coyotes'.


Coyotes are probably the most cussed and discussed critter on this continent. They are adaptable, resourceful, unpredictable, and damaging AT OTHER TIMES. Coyotes have incredible survival instincts and regardless how much some people learn to hate them, you have to still respect them for their ability to survive in an ever changing environment.
Coyotes provide a tremendous amount of recreational hunting opportunity, they are entertaining to watch at times, and other times they can create havoc with livestock.
Coyotes have aesthetic value to some, recreational value to some, fur value to some, AND NO VALUE TO OTHERS. LOL!
They can run from a vehicle when it slows down or they can follow a tractor around the field looking for mice. They can run from the sound of gun fire when they are being shot at or they can come to the sound of gunfire if it means dead pr. dogs to eat.
Coyotes readily modify their behavior to adapt to their environment.
Yeh, they do provide a service by cleaning up the dead stuff but so do maggots. The coyotes simply remove the odor problem associated with maggots and a rotten carcass.
Like most stories, the coyote has two sides to it's story as well.
Everyone has a tendancy to evaluate coyotes based on their own personal experiences with them.
Because of the diversity of interests involving coyotes, they are a species that needs management and/or control much like deer. In some areas they never cause problems while in other areas they always cause problems.
Very few coyotes won't kill sheep when provided with the opportunity but I will focus on calves for now.
For what it's worth, here's some of the typical patterns with coyotes and some of the situations I have encountered over the years:
Whether or not coyotes kill calves on a particular ranch or not depends on many different variables. Some ranchers have never had coyote problems, some ranchers always have coyote problems, and some ranchers occassionally have problems.
Those that do not have coyote problems blame poor management on the ranchers that do have coyote problems. Sometimes this is correct but many times it's not.
Whether or not a CATTLE ranch has coyote problems depends on WHEN they calf, HOW they calf in relation to the type of geography, food availability for the coyotes, the number of territorial adult coyotes in the area, the number of other ranches that are calving in the same area at the same time (more natural food), the number of cows calving at the same time on a particular ranch (more natural food), weather, hunting pressure, etc. etc.
Coyotes are opportunists and will generally take the easiest route to obtain food. If that means fighting with a mother cow when other food is available, it's usually not worth the effort for the coyote.
If bad weather sets in, other food is scarce, cows are calving in heavier cover, etc. etc. this changes the picture significantly. As the detectives would say, this situation provides "motive" for the coyote.
I agree that many times coyotes will get blamed for livestock that died naturally and the coyotes simply cleaned up the dead livestock. I have seen that many times and proved the coyote's innocense. On the other hand, I have seen where coyotes will be credited for cleaning up calves that died naturally when the coyotes actually killed them. I have seen both situations.
Most of you guys are pretty sharp cowboys but it takes a little detective work to know for sure what actually happened.
When calves are born, they have a soft cartilage cap on the bottom of their hooves. This cap will be scraped off rather quickly in a calves first struggles to get up. If the soft cartilage shells are still on the hooves when you find the coyotes feeding on the dead calf, this calf was never on it's feet and was probably born dead.
You can usually take that one to the bank!
If you don't learn anything else from this post, read that last paragraph again and start looking for this.
Of course I look for other signs as well such as the tongue and head of the calf being swelled from a difficult birth, the cow being wobbly from a difficult birth, the color of the calf blood, whether the calf ever nursed, the disposition of the cow, etc. etc.
A cow that fought off coyotes will usually be heated up pretty good but sometimes this can be a fever from a difficult birth as well. At times, when coyotes are trying to grab a calf, it can cause the cow to stomp on her calf killing it indirectly. These calves may have never had a chance to get on their feet.
A calf that is born dead usually bleeds in one spot and the blood tends to appear darker in color. A calf that was killed by coyotes tends to paint the grass or snow a bright red blood color as it bleeds out or sprays out. The blood is another real key in determining what actually happened at the "crime scene".
If you put all these signs together, you can usually know for sure but the soft cartilage caps and the blood are usually the "smoking guns".
Now if the coyotes happended to be right there as the calf was born and grabbed it and drug it off before the cow could get up, I suppose it's possible for coyotes to kill a live calf before it could scrape the soft cartilage shell off. That would be a rare situation.
I HAVE BEEN TOLD that if a calf took a breath the lung tissue will float, if it didn't it will sink. I haven't tried this myself so I cannot say for sure.
I have seen numerous occassions where a heifer or young cow was partially paralyzed from a difficult birth and the coyotes would literally eat into her rear end as she is trying to calve. Many times these situations will reveal a backwards calf and a rancher that didn't catch it in time. Most of these heifers and young cows have to be destroyed due to loss of blood.
It seems that a cow that had a still born calf acts a little different than a cow that had a live calf. The cow that had a live calf seems to show a little more concern than a cow that had a still born. I cannot prove THIS THEORY so take it for what it's worth. It is just a theory.
Coyotes will always congregate on the calving grounds for miles around to eat the highly nutritious calf colostrum manure, the dead livestock, and to clean up the placentas or "afterbirth" if you will. Most of the coyotes in the country are within two miles of the cattle during calving so naturally this gives the appearance of more coyotes at this time of year than at other times of the year.
Most of the time geography plays a big factor in whether or not some guys have coyote problems. If the cows are calving in rough breaks with heavy cover and places where coyotes can sneak in and grab a calf, they will usually have more problems than those who calve out in the open where coyotes are more visible.
When a cow abandons a new born calf to go to feed or water, this provides an opportunity for coyotes to sneak in and grab a calf.
Many times the first ranchers to calve in the area will attract the coyotes to them before their neighbors have even started calving. By the time the neighbor is calving, the coyotes have plenty to eat so the later calver may never have problems.
I have seen the whole thing played out in the snow many times. Coyotes stumble across a new born calf when the mother, usually a heifer, went to water or feed. If the calf gets up and runs, the coyotes chase it, open it in the flank area and kill it that way. A typical calf kill is opened in the flank area where a typical sheep kill is by the throat.
Bobbed calf tails are usually the first sign of coyote problems.
Hunting pressure can reduce the number of older coyotes in some areas. OLDER TERRITORIAL COYOTES are much more prone to killing calves than the younger dispersing coyotes that replace them before spring. The older coyotes tend to be bolder and more aggressive than younger coyotes and are also more familiar with the area.
Another situation that is quite common is when coyotes can run a calf off the creek bank or when they can get them out on the ice.
Usually most coyote kills are single isolated one shot opportunities and by the time the next opportunity would present itself, there is more than enough more natural food to eat. On rare occassions you will get a coyote that becomes a bonified calf killer and will kill multiple calves but this is the exception. At least that has been the exception in my experiences.
Last year I saw a situation where coyotes ran calves off a creek bank and killed them. These calves were a week old and already tagged.
In conclusion, I hope I have given many of you more to think about in regards to coyote predation than what you have seen or observed yourselves. You cannot take anything about coyote behavior and etch it in stone. Coyote theories have to be "carved in soap" due to all the variables that affect their behavior.

That is a very good read!

Yotes,id say.
. Maybe a family making a kill.

They will almost always go for the jawbone on sheep.

Jerry showed me how to check and see if a coyote killed a lamb in The event I find one dead on the farm and he isn't around.

A cougar kill would have clawmarks on Its hind quarters because more often than not cats attack from behind. They like to knock their prey off balance.