Coyotes being eaten

[Battle Rat]

I had one coyote on Friday and now one today eaten in the snare.
Anyone else have that problem?

[Bushmaster]

Eagles, ravens ??

[Battle Rat]

It appears to be just coyotes doing it.

[bullgetter]

It's too freakin warm out. You will have to check more often.

[Battle Rat]

Could be.
I checked on Sunday though.

[tomcat]

I have a couple of times in past years had coyotes eat another in a snare. I think a group of coyotes entered the bait station and one coyote was caught and probably making a great fuss and the others in a frenzy, gang up on it and kill it, then eat it. This is what tracks suggest to me.

[coyote_man]

Had a high population of mangey coyotes in an area that were desperate and feeding on dead coyotes.

[gtr]

That sounds like a good explanation.

[greylynx]

I have seen this happen a few years ago.

No professional courtesy amongst coyotes.

Dog eat dog

[Battle Rat]

Ya, I wish the one doing the eating would find his way into a snare.

[trapper01]

I lost four coyotes this year to other coyotes eating the dead one. Never had this happen before this year. I caught several mangy coyotes after this happened. My guess is that the weak mangy coyotes were looking for an easy meal in the extreme cold weather.

[gman1978]

I find that it usually happens right after the coyote is caught, the others start feeding so checking them more often doesn't really help the problem all the time. Another thing that I found is that coyotes get ate by other coyotes in specific areas more often in comparison to other areas . I don't have a clue why this is the case.

[HunterDave]

If this is something that's out of the ordinary and doesn't happen very often I start to wonder what is different about this winter. Around here the yotes are traveling on the roads because there is too much snow in the fields for them to go through. Could it be that the amount of snow that we had is making it harder for them to find food to the point that they won't pass up eating a snared coyote when normally they would?

We've had chinook like weather that has melted the snow quite a bit and put a crust on top that will hold them up now. Last night for the first time in a long time I saw a coyote in a field running on top of the snow.

[Marty S]

The biggest reason that coyotes eat your dead snared coyotes is because the snared coyote has a belly full of food that the live coyote wants. The live coyote can smell what's in the dead coyote, and he rips directly into the stomach area. This is very common around dead stock. This problem has also intensified in recent years as the winters have become more harsh and available food supplies are low. 10 years ago it was a rare day to have a coyote, coyote scavenged, and now it is sometimes a daily exercise, depending upon locale.

[Battle Rat]

That's probably it Marty with the deer numbers being so low.
I've expected that the coyote numbers would have dropped off a couple years ago also because of that but they haven't yet.