It's a Pikachupacabra! THis is so fun. I guess placement is the key. I wonder if there's some program that translates the infrared to sort of normal. More more more!

It's a Pikachupacabra! THis is so fun. I guess placement is the key. I wonder if there's some program that translates the infrared to sort of normal. More more more!

Out damn troll! Out NOW! Begone or I will set my fierce sister The Troll Killer on you!

Hahaha, anonymous is me, this time.

Never mind.

That's cool. Perhaps you'll catch them partying. All sitting around telling stories, smokin' cigs, and whatever else they do when they think humans are not watching. Ha.

I wish that would really happen.

"Two of things are just like each other...one of these things is not the same..."

I'd place a strong bet on two of them being coyote, maybe the same coyote. The third (the "was it a horse?" shot headed upslope) may or may not be. You're just going to have to lure it in with goodies. But not too good, because it may've faced traps and poison before. Any bait for a coyote will also bring in raccoons (just warning you.) For ease of game-cam photography...you might want to mow around the area you want to bait in. Thus no annoying sticks, branches, waving grass, etc. Clear line of sight from the camera (oh, and tie down that flapping strap.) Yes, the animal knows it's more in the open. But it's going to spook anyway.

Bait with something that can't be picked up and carried away in one swell foop. One cup of kibble, a little scattered, as if you'd spilled it. Not there every night--even if you're putting out the game cam every night. Two nights in a row, then nothing for a night or three, then one night, skip two, etc. Pretty soon the animal will check out the area regularly, but you won't be teaching it to depend on your food. If you point the camera a different way at different times, that's good too. "Hm...there's a food source around here somewhere but I'm not sure."

Standard cautions you probably already know but some reading this might not, about encouraging coyotes to visit. They're predators and if you offer them prey, they'll take it. This includes small domestic animals, including chickens. No healthy coyote will bother a dog its size or larger (though a male coyote will breed a female dog in heat--and no, you do NOT want coydog pups! Absolutely adorable but unreliable as adults.) but puppies, kittens, small dogs and cats, and chickens and other domestic fowl, are at risk. If you want to have chickens, build a damnsure-secure chicken house (pour a concrete foundation, make it tight, sink the chicken-run fence six or more inches into the ground and put a top on it and never forget to latch the (tight-fitting) door in the evening. Foxes, coyotes, ratsnakes, kingsnakes--all will happily eat chicken for dinner, and skunks will just bite their heads off and eat the brains.

A friend of mine suggested having ducks instead of chickens. He said that ducks stay awake at night, will go out on the river it they are threatened and he said the eggs taste just fine. I'm sure the turtles would take their toll, but I may try ducks.

Actually, I'll probably do both. Nancylee out at Kerrville recommended Bantam chickens because they can jump up into a tree to escape. I really don't want anything I have to cage, so I thought Bantams sounded good. What do you think?

Regular chickens roost in trees too, if you don't clip their wings. I've never had banties, but my experience with chickens who escaped wing-clipping is that they prefer to roost over cars and cover the windshield with incredibly stinky chicken poop (of course we park in the shade--who doesn't? Every seen those grackle roosts in Austin and what happens to cars under them? Mild, compared to chicken poop.) Some nocturnal predators have no problem climbing trees and happily eat birds: rat snakes, king snakes, and gray foxes come to mind. Not sure about owls, but a Great Horned could take a chicken, no problem, if it wanted to. By day, banties are the perfect size for sharp-shinned and Coooper's hawks, and a Cooper's could take a regular-size hen (not sure about a big Rhode-Island red.) Both take birds on the ground, perched, and on the wing. If you don't cage your birds, something else will eat the eggs (coyote, heron, fox, snake, raccoon, skunk, stray dogs or cats...) We lost chicken eggs (and pullets) to snakes and skunks, and when I had the "sold her birthright" hen, who made a deal with our dog to stay in the doghouse for protection at night, the dog ate the daily egg. Banties and game hens are good at hiding their nests, so you might get lucky--or they might nest on someone else's land they like better...

Also check city regs as you're inside city limits. They may require no rooster (which means no fertile eggs, no baby chicks) or require certain confinement standards.

I HATE ROOSTERS!!! So that won't be a problem.

I'm going to have to think about this egg laying thing. I like the idea of fresh eggs, but I don't like caging things and I don't want to put critters out just so they can get eaten. Even so, I may just put some chickens and ducks out and see what survives.

I won't have to decide until I'm out there, so there's no hurry.