# Smash and Grab



## Dick Monson (Aug 12, 2002)

I was driving home from fishing today and as I came past the edge of a slough 2 Canada geese got up from the shore and made a fast pass over the grass. A coyote dashed out from cover into the water up to his chest and grabbed a gossling. Hats off to him. ND is inundated with Canada geese that are doing crop damage in an untold amount of $$$$. I think if more farmers left a buffer strip of tall grass around the sloughs and lakes the coyotes would keep the geese honest.

The coyote has just come out of the water.


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## shaug (Mar 28, 2011)

Dick Monson wrote,



> I think if more farmers left a buffer strip of tall grass around the sloughs and lakes the coyotes would keep the geese honest.


I like to sit in these cattail strips around a pond or slough and pass shoot waterfowl. A few floaters dekes in front on the water and a few shells behind in the field with me in the middle in deadly. Cattail seeds float in the wind, land on the water and wash up on shore. They quickly take root especially if the water recedes a little. However, Canada Thistle likes the same route.

One year I came out to my favorite slough and the farmer had disked all the cattails down. I visited with the farmer about it and he said it wasn't that he wanted more farmland (an acre or two) it was because there was no way to spray it. He had to get it before the thistle went to seed. Back in 2008 when Lake Sakakawea dropped 40 feet the exposed shore line turned into weeds. Nobody did anything about it, I suppose the job was too big. That fall when the wind blew it looked like a snowstorm coming up out of there.

It is all a double edged sword. Yes, the pheasant hunting was great in all those weeds and sweetclover along Sak that fall and when the water came back it was a nursery for fish.

I don't have the answers, but we do need to keep some coyotes honest.


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## Dick Monson (Aug 12, 2002)

Absolutely agree. As the sloughs go down the thistles and other weeds colonize that cattail habitat quickly. It is a real problem. And for sure there are problem coyotes here and there that need to be plunked. My only point is that coyotes also are beneficial to farmers and hunters alike. They are a terrific game animal whether guys are trapping or hunting them. The goose depredation problem in cropland is getting bigger every year and coyotes can trim that population up if given a chance.

Here's a pic of a soybean field next to a lake where geese are feeding on the young plants.










Here is another soybean field with a border buffer strip of "CRP-type mix" of wheat grasses and clover. That strip is only 20' wide but the flightless geese are unlikely to cross the buffer because of predators like coyotes. And the buffer has other conservation benefits too.


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## hwdeuce (Apr 6, 2010)

Do you guys think more farmers are putting in those buffer strips of crp to hold geese out 
Of the fields cause there wrecking the fields


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## Dick Monson (Aug 12, 2002)

If the USDA allowed a separate CRP option for this buffer activity I think farmers would sign up. Give up a strip around the water in exchange for saving larger acreage of crops seems logical. And prevent some soil erosion and improve water quality too. One of the stupidest regulations is currently CRP needs straight borders instead of following the contour of a water body. Or at least that is all I have found.

A side note on coyotes and geese is that an APHIS wildlife services agent told me one of their suggestions for goose depredation (before kill permits) is coyote decoys and silhouettes out in the fields. But the farmer has to move them every day or the geese figure it out.


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## kingcanada (Sep 19, 2009)

Pretty cool story, but coyotes don't do much damage to birds like fox do. They are better equipped to deal with geese than a fox though. Fox are mostly hell on ducks, pheasants, and other smaller birds. They are known to put serious effort into snatching goslings before the goslings grow much though. Eggs too. 
Buffer zones are great for 4 legged predators to get upland birds, but the buffers benefit the upland birds so much as habitat and cover from aerial predators that it more than makes up for it. It would have been interesting to see, like the golden eagle I saw taking down a grown antelope last winter.


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