Mormon Cricket in distress....

[T Bone]

Went out calling this morning with a couple friends. Nothing came in on 3 stands using a FoxPro caller.......Then we heard some yipping and howling and after glassing for 20 minutes located a coyote with 3 little pups on a hillside about 400 yards out.

Both the pups and the adult were running and jumping and chewing. After a couple minutes of wondering what they were eating, we figured out they are eating those big fat mormon crickets that are the size of my thumb. Makes sense, they are easy to catch and big enough to make a meal of. Never would have thought them to eat crickets...

The pups were too young for me to pull the trigger on. I'll give them another month or two then go smoke them.

Meanwhile, I'll practice my cricket calling!

 

[Nut]

Smoke em next month then.

Thanks for the story of the hunt.

 

[1_pointer]

There's a few places on this side of the GB that are RIPE with crickets. I've seen crows so full of 'em that they can't get off the ground!

 

[Cdog911]

I've been told my guys your way that they'll go to eating nothing but Mormon crickets when available and that you'll find droppings made of nothing but the empty shells. After all, the coyote is the ultimate opportunist. I don't have Morman crickets in my region, but our coyotes will eagerly gobble up grasshoppers and seem to enjoy doing it. I was working a complaint late one spring/ early one summer and while driving down the highway about a mile from where the complainant lived, I spotted a coyote in the ditch alongside the roadway. I quickly pulled over and bailed out with my rifle all ramped up to tak a running shot, but the coyote just ignored me. He would walk along until a grasshopper flushed, then he'd leap into the air and snatch it in his mouth. A couple times, he looke at me but never seemed too concerned about me, so I enjoyed the show for a couple minutes before walking up to about twenty feet and putting him out of my misery. He was a young adult.

 

[ELKCHSR]

I found one of those crickets in the Big Hole a few years ago, they are big and look like they would probably not take long to fill the bellies of any meat eater.

 

[Danny Batastini]

T Bone, I seen millions of those mormon crickets up in northern Nevada once, ugly little critters. Tell me, what won't a coyote eat? I think I can answer that, "rocks" lol.

 

[Slydog]

we have them dangd mormon crickets again this year and I drove through a swarm yesterday, while scouting for deer....... I'm still trying to get them off my wheelwells.....
They make it slick to drive on when there are thousands on the road and the sound of them popping when you drive over them is sick...lol

Thought maybe I'd hear their distress cry when I was driving on them but all I could hear was the popping and crushing sounds..... I'm afraid you are on your own as far as getting that distress sound........

sly

 

[wilecoyote76]

My folks were driving back from Fallon, NV last weekend and said they saw so many that the earth looked like it was crawling. You can definitely tell where the crickets have been especially on the roads cuz it looks like an oil spill. That popping and crackling sound is eery for sure. I guess if I were a coyote I would eat them if nothing else was around but the looks of them makes me want to stay the heck away, far, far away!!

 

[FAIRCHASEBEN]

You know what else eats em ... Turkeys !

Last year while scouting in Utah I came across a flock of wild turkeys gorging on mormon crickets . If only we had more trees here in Nevada we could import more turkeys ... done .