Slabs...when I killed them, and there was a lot of 'em through the decades, I would just let them lay. Like you said, as a warning to the others. Thing is, that simply was not a significant deterant for the ones left sniffin' around with a hard on for a momma cow's afterbirth and then the others in the pack working over the newborn baby cow nearby.

Trust me, even back thirty years, I knew a thing or two about assembling a very accurate bolt action rifle. It's just what I was trained to do. In all that time doing predator control, I never thought about just takin' one ear off to teach one dog in the pack a lesson.

Now, mix that background with more than a few thousand acres of privete land, sharing a common fenceline on three sides by the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge, ..... ground that had not been hunted by anyone with a .25-06 rifle for the previous two decades, well you have a garden of eden for a dyed in the wool varmint hunter such as myself. For every coyote I shot, another one, perhaps two, got a lesson on how to stay alive buy simply being lucky that day.

If you think this is cruel to the coyotes by shooting them dead with a precision rifle as they come to the call, go watch the pursuit channel and watch those guys who run a daily trap line. Damn, those guys even make me fell squeemish.