doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Spring Gobblers 2025

I have spent more 2oz #5 turkey shells on coyotes than turkey in the last few years. Blitzed one at day break on Sunday. Surprisingly, less than 20 minutes after the shot and death howls, two big gobblers came racing to my calls.
My daughter didnt' get a shot off, but it was the first time she's seen one called in and the first bird in put on the full show strutting straight towards us, spitting and drumming every 2 or three steps. So close to success, she moved just before he went behind a large poplar, and he was not going to tolerate that!
She seemed to have as much, or more, fun poking around the 40's plymouth and 1919 Dodge we were sitting amoungst after the birds skee- daddled - it was a great morning.

P.S.> good for you guys for still getting out there... I am still sitting on the ground- actually back to sitting on the ground as my children have my typical pads and cushions...

The more coyotes you shoot, the fewer turkeys you will bring home. We have been down this road many times.

I believe a lot of things about game managment. I read a lot of things about game managment. I observe alot of things about wildlife behavior. I have yet to be presented any data or argument that creates a postive place for the coyote in eastern woodlands.
Are you implying differently? (I don't recall such a discussion here ?) However regardless of game situations, the fact that I find calves like this:



and shoot coyotes carrying legs across a pasture, leave me in the good graces of the land owner, and it is a situaiton that encompasses more than Turkeys.
But that said, this was opening weekend, I have sole persmission on the property, and I found two piles of gobbler feathers. Maybe the bobcats are getting them, but No coyote, gets a pass from me.
In my case the ratio of Turkey to time spent remains the same--- time spent is way down. But Coyotes encountered is way up.

That is what I am implying and stating explicitly. And I have pointed this out many times. The interaction is hardly overwhelming, but it is, in general, positive. Also true for ducks, pheasants, and other ground nesting birds, including passerines. They are not "good" for most ungulates, though they may have some positive affects, those are usually outweighed by the direct negatives. Not so for birds, however. Not in the coastal canyon lands of California to prairie potholes of the Midwest, to the eastern turkey timbers.

Marks, good on you. I kill all the coyotes I can too. I do remember hearing a presentation from a DWR biologist at a Quail Forever-sponsored seminar that mentioned that coyotes may have a positive impact on quail survival because they kill a lot of nest predators (foxes, raccoons, etc) and this outweighs the direct effect of coyote predation on quail (and presumably turkeys) and their nests. I think this must be what Brent is getting at. The reasons you gave for killing coyotes are valid and persuasive, at least to most of us. Good luck with the turkeys this year. They have eluded me thus far but the Virginia season is young!

For what it’s worth I don’t believe the 0 to 3 coyotes I kill annually over a three county area is going to make a difference in either direction. I trap them for personal achievement and shoot them for good measure as mentioned above.

Reword for Brent: “makes no difference” = “the size of my sample set is inadequate to determine if I am helpful in my actions to improve local habitat balance and ecosystem quality within my perception or if I made a mistake per Brent’s opinion ”

If you don't believe it is going to matter, then you are simply killing them for the joy of killing. What else is there? And, this is, of course, the time when coyotes have pups in their dens, so you are fating a handful more to a nice slow death by starvation.

In the end, I think most people shoot coyotes because they like to kill something, anything.

The guy that owned this truck, (license plate, fittingly "WEAVE1", what certainly thrilled to be chasing his tracking and kill hounds after a coyote through chiseled cornfields that he did not have permission to trespass. Or at least he was thrilled until his front end folded under him. He was going 50-60 miles per hour when I saw him the first time. Interestingly, the county conservation officer was part of the 5 truck party taking part in the chase. Just thrill kills, that is all it is.

We have been down this road many times, and no amount of evidence will ever convince the Nutty Professor that coyotes are known game bird predators, and are not beneficial to hunters.

Some of us are able to observe and reason. We see an image like this, and do not assume it is simply a coyote trying to save a turkey from freezing to death. It is a coyote that knows a turkey provides a lot more protein than a field mouse.



The Nutty Professor would say coyote tracks around this dead turkey mean that the coyote was just looking for the real killer... like O.J. Simpson.



There is no question that coyotes are efficient predators that will kill pretty much any smaller bird or mammal they can catch. That includes foxes and feral cats. But they are also out there hunting game birds, rabbits, fawns, and even house pets 365 days a year. They do not discriminate. They do not decide to leave turkeys and other game birds alone, and only eat the possums, skunks and other nest predators. There is a good reason that you never hear intelligent hunters wishing that coyotes would populate the places they hunt.

https://wildturkeylab.com/predators-that-kill-adult-wild-turkeys/

I do see the problem with that red pick-up truck that was chasing coyotes in frozen corn field stubble... He should have been driving a Ford truck.

I do not find a thrill in killing- there is far too much more out there to experience. Our set up yesterday morning turned out to be underneath a Wood Duck nest. That was a thrill I have never experienced before. The mating pair each came and went twice. Never flying directly to the nest but leap frogging in two or three trees out from the nest each time. I have several screech owl trees mentally marked, but this was the first woody that I have seen off the pond and nexting boxes.

PLease don't let me get this off topic....
My first long beard almost 25 years ago...

Half century long turkey buddy killed this one about a mile from where I killed mine three days before I got mine. While it’s public land, he was the only hunter behind the gate on opening day. Unusually heavy for a non-agricultural swamp bird in this part of the country. Game Wardens weighed it at the gate and it was 20 lbs. He confirmed weight on his butcher's scale at home. He is the best turkey hunter I’ve known personally. We don’t hunt together, as we prefer solo, but he and another friend have shared spots and birds over the years. Gil