LINGLE – Last weekend, the Corner Bar held its third annual Halloween Hunt. Teams registered to hunt local coyotes to win money and help control the population over the winter months during calving season. 

Registration for the event started at 5 p.m. Friday night followed by a meeting where rules were set in place. Sunday afternoon, the teams came back in with their coyotes to be counted and donated or sold. 

This year the nine teams were able to take down a combined total of 203 coyotes.

“Yesterday the guys got in, in the afternoon. They ended up shooting about 203 coyotes, which is like unheard of. It’s a lot, it’s a lot a lot for just in general. And there were only nine teams so that’s a lot for any team really, for any group, but the winning team shot 37 coyotes,” Jess Milner of the Corner Bar shared. 

The winning team consisted of Brett Ruiz, Cameron Cook and Peyton Spires.

The prizes this year were a cash prize and a drawing for a gun. First, second and third place all receive a cash prize. There were four categories for judging including: team with most coyotes, big dog, little dog, and white tip. 

“The guys do a bunch of cash prizes and then they draw for a gun. I don’t know exactly how much the cash prize ends up being at the end, because they do cash prizes based on like team Calcutta’s and then based on how many people enter and then it just basically it goes off of that. It gets split three ways between the first, second and third prize winners,” Milner said. 

The reasons they do this hunt each year is due to our high coyote population. The population is out of control and can have a large effect on ranchers during the winter seasons as winter is typically calving season. 

“The biggest reason why you would do a coyote hunt is because, one, the coyote population in this area is out of control right now. Like you drive down the highway and you can see coyotes. That’s not typically something that happens in this area. And then, the other reason why you do coyote hunts is because, you do it right now and then you do them throughout the winter, because of reasons like, people who have like cattle, it helps keep that population down. So, that way when calves are hitting the ground and being born in the winter, they don’t have to worry as much about coyotes getting their baby calves,” Milner explained. 

After these hunts, the coyotes are donated or sold. They are never just tossed out. This year they had a couple of guys come and take the coyotes. One even gave a donation toward the Duffy family and their son’s medical bills. Other areas surrounding our county also sometimes do bounties where people can bring them in and get money. Some people can even do things with their pelts. 

“We usually just donate them. Places like Douglas and Wheatland right now are doing bounties on the coyotes so they’re like 20-25 bucks apiece. Goshen County doesn’t have a bounty out right now for the coyotes but the guy who bought them from Yoder actually did a donation of $200 towards the Duffy family from Lingle and it’s going toward their medical bills for their son who was in an ATV accident,” Milner shared. “Yeah, and so he actually ended up doing that for their family but sometimes people will come and buy them just because they do stuff like that. The guy who bought them this year was Larry Peck, but then he just did a donation. And then we had another gentleman who came and got some, he didn’t get as many as Larry did, but it’s really nice when we can just have someone come and get them and take them off. Because like, they don’t end up in like ditches, in like dumpsters or anything. You can’t legally do anything like that. They have to be disposed of properly.”

They had a lot of help setting up this year’s hunt. The bar typically hosts and advertises it, but this year Cory Seers was the organizer. He gets the auctioneers, sets the rules, and weighs the coyotes. They even get some help from the hunters.