Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

January 15, 2015: With warm weather in the forecast, Dakota and I took off on a Thursday afternoon to see if we had any coyotes down. My concern with warm weather trapping, especially with coyotes, is green belly. We figured we better do a quick check and see if we couldn't get a few more snares up along the way. The long range forecast is for more warm weather, so I'm going to have to figure out a way to get back to make checks every couple of days. Even if it means checking in the dark, which I'm not a big fan of for safety reasons. Having said that, I've spent many dark nights checking traps over the past few seasons. I just try to avoid it where possible.

We started off checking empty snares but in short order we came to our first coyote. A nice sized male on a trail that leads through a stand of willow. We set this snare about a month ago after seeing tracks leading off a beaver dam that led through the willows. After several checks, I was starting to wonder if a coyote would ever come back through that way but sure enough, this one did.

The coyote went under the rotten log and entangled itself in the willow bush. You can see it if you look closely.

The male coyote that crossed the beaver dam and hunted its way through the willows.

After checking a few more snares without luck, we came to another spot that had been set for about the same time period as the first coyote we caught beforehand. I was starting to lose faith in this spot as well, but it just goes to show you that if a coyote went there once, chances are it'll go there twice. This one was a nice young female with a good white belly.

A nice female coyote with a white belly. She is a little dark along the back though.

The rest of our snares held nothing. We had brought all of our lynx and coyote carcasses with us that had been lying by the garage at home. A neighbour's dog decided to munch on the lynx carcasses so I decided it was time to get them set out in a kind of mini bait station. The location we chose is the same location where we had disposed of the coyote that had shoulder mites. Numerous tracks showed that coyotes had visited the spot, so in obvious trails, we got a half dozen snares set up around the bait site. The location didn't offer the opportunity for more than six, so six it was. We'll see what happens next time we're back.

Coyotes number 5 and 6.

So far with only a handful of snares set, we've managed to take six coyotes. My hope is to take ten from the ranch. More would be a bonus but with all of this warm weather forecast, I'm worried about getting too many snares set with a bunch of coyotes caught that haven't had the proper chance to cool down and even freeze. We have 24 snares set now, including the six set at the mini bait station. We will be returning right away to make another run.

Stay tuned!