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President's Report
by Charles Neveu
Hi Canadian trappers! This month I want to talk about a
project that started 12 years ago. After taking a seminar
given by Ken Johnstone & Frank Hathaway from DNR on trapping
coyotes in winter to help the deer population, a group of
trappers from Drummond N.-B. , that I will call the Twin
Levesque Trapper Team decided they would do their part to
help the deer. The coyote population, if not controlled,
become organised like a wolf pack and become very effective
to kill deer in winter. It is said that one coyote will kill
6 deer during one winter. If controlled by trapping or
hunting the coyote population is thinned out and doing so
confuses the pack by removing alpha or higher rank coyotes.
After the bulk of the general trapping & hunting is done,
usually mid December, the team gets together and starts
trapping coyotes doing so until the end of February (end of
coyote season). The two major players in the team are the
twins, Bernard and Gerard Levesque along with 3 or 4 other
trappers and a lot of people along the year that join and
help. It took a few years to figure the tricks and always
learning new ones all the time. I’ve included a summary of
the catches over the years. I am pleased to announce that
this past trapping season we surpassed the 2000 coyotes
mark.
The project is not over because, if you trap a big portion
of the coyote population, they will respond by having more
pups per litter and more females are breeding. The good side
is they are easier to trap. One point to mention is when we
started, the average weight was 40 to 45 pounds and now the
average weight is 30 to 35 pounds. Also it is important to
keep putting pressure on the coyote population by trapping
them to help the deer.
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Coyote Count |
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2000-2001 |
74 coyotes |
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2001-2002 |
132 coyotes |
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2002-2003 |
157 coyotes |
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2003-2004 |
279 coyotes |
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2004-2005 |
250 coyotes |
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2005-2006 |
175 coyotes |
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2006-2007 |
195 coyotes |
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2007-2008 |
160
coyotes |
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2008-2009 |
192
coyotes |
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2009-2010 |
180 coyotes |
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2010-2011 |
142 coyotes |
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2011-2012 |
108 coyotes |
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Total: |
2044 coyotes |
To conclude I want to say that it is very important as a
trapper to always be open to learn new sets and new
techniques to improve your abilities. Here are some examples
of improvements that the team learned: skinning coyotes with
a winch, snowmobile foothold set, foothold sets in deer
yards to avoid deer.
Remember that if you are a coyote and you pass through
Drummond you might get caught and sent on a free trip to
Ontario at a Fur Auction House of your choice.
Respect the environment and the animals and whenever
possible, bring a kid trapping.
Charles Neveu
NBTFHF President
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