We boiled the skull of the coyote that Kirk shot, and were surprised to have the bottom jaw come out in three pieces. It was broken clean through, with a large, shattering injury to the lower right jaw, under and behind the last tooth. Huh, I thought, did Kirk shoot him there? I didnāt think so. I knew he had gotten a good, lethal shot to the chest.
Looking back at the photos, his face showed no outward signs of injury. [Somewhat graphic pictures below, click for more if youād like to view them and read the rest of the story.]
We didnāt notice when we were skinning it, probably too fixated on getting the lips perfect. But I found a photo of the head that shows a lot of tissue damage under the skin there- ow! Lots of bruised and purple flesh, and is that hole an infection exit hole? An old bullet hole? The now-clean bone looks like it was trying to knit and fill in, so I bet heād had this injury for a little while.
Itās interesting because the several attacks weād had on our poultry had been clumsy, and Iād originally thought maybe it was a pup not yet skilled at hunting. Usually coyotes are pretty surgical about taking birds, they snag one quickly, and take off to eat it somewhere safe. But in the big duck attack, the dog seemed to bite, but not kill, almost all of the birds, and the ones that did die seemed to be more traumatized than skillfully dispatched.
Later, we had some chickens come up with all of their tail feathers missing, and the above chicken had a tear to her rectum, to boot. (She managed to keep a single tail feather, and looks funny now! And, sheās healing up fine.) And none were missing on those days. I thought it odd that the coyote got his mouth on the chickens like that, but then botched the hunt in the end. Thatās not like a coyote! Itās more like a domestic dog, but weāre pretty sure there arenāt any out here, at least during the day when this had been happening.
But now I see why he was having trouble, and why he was in unthrifty condition too. He was struggling with a very serious, and probably very painful jaw break. I have to imagine that every bite was excruciating for him, poor guy. No wonder he was trying for poultry, it was probably the only thing left he had any chance at snagging, and even that was hard for him. I wonder what caused the injury? An earlier gunshot wound that closed up? Or a blow from a horse or cow kick? I canāt think of what else would cause damage like that, in such a weird location.
Well, so I think we probably did him a favor. Though coyotes are clever and tough, serious damage to the mouth is not a good thing for a predator. He likely wouldnāt have made it through winter and would have suffered a lot. Like I always say, nature is tough!
Good bit of detective work on your part. I so appreciate your pragmatism, even so, ouch, that hurts to see what that coyote must have gone through. And I agree, merciful on your part to put him out of his misery. Kinda cool to get a better understanding of what was happening to your chickens.
DM
The picture above the chicken is gross in my opinion!
Sweetsweet313, I’m sorry if it grossed you out; I did try to warn the reader before clicking to read the rest of the post that the photos were a little graphic. That’s the thing with farming, a lot of biology is involved, and almost every day, there is something gross… š Him leaving half-dead, chewed up ducks and torn-open sheep carcasses was gross too, as was cutting open those sheep to try to save the lambs. But, you get used to it, it’s the reality of farming, the cycle of life and death is there in front of you every day. This coyote would have died a slow and miserable death of starvation with this lethal injury, and that’s really pretty gross too! So, hopefully at least we learned something from seeing what happened to him; that was my intent, was to portray honestly what happens to some wildlife- they don’t all live charmed lives, for sure!
Michelle