By Bob Duncan for Whitetail Times
Photos by Dr. Leonard Lee Rue, III
My first experience with coyotes came with my first job as a District Wildlife Biologist in north central Kansas. The mid-grass prairie was home to a wide diversity of wildlife not native to my home state of Virginia, including prairie dogs, bull snakes, bison, mule deer, prairie chickens, ring-neck pheasant, white pelicans, sandhill cranes and more waterfowl, both in terms of numbers and diversity of species, and of course the ubiquitous coyote.
My earliest opportunity to observe coyotes (Canis latrans) firsthand came during the bitter cold winter months. Like the locals told me, a barbwire fence does not stop the cold air from Canada from sweeping across the plains of Kansas. One of my Wildlife Management Areas overwintered 300,000 ducks and geese of just about every species you can imagine. The 12,500-acre lake would freeze up; however, with the number of waterfowl on the area, they were able to keep about a half-dozen large, open-water areas and birds rotated going to the harvested grain fields to feed and then returning to these important open water areas.
Coyotes took great advantage of the fact that, with hundreds of thousands of waterfowl, there were always stragglers in the form of sick, injured, or crippled birds. I watched both eagles and coyotes hunt for these birds, and while the “song dogs” were not always successful, they took their share. I returned east of the Mississippi in the mid-1970s and worked as a Regional Wildlife Biologist in East Tennessee, for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. During that time, I never heard of a coyote or a coyote sighting in the Volunteer state nor did we have coyotes in Virginia in 1978 when I began my work for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, as it was known then.
However, I did learn of an account concerning coyotes in Virginia in the early 1950s in the Burke’s Garden area of Tazewell County. A pair of coyotes was observed in the area, and it was reported that one of the coyotes was struck and killed by a vehicle and the other was the objective of an intensive effort by a professional trapping to remove the animal because of livestock depredation. Eventually the coyote was shot. It was suspected that these two animals had been released into the Commonwealth. However, that was not to be the end of coyotes in the Old Dominion—it was only a small sample of what was to come.
At one time, Virginia was one of the biggest sheep-producing states, if not the number one state, east of the Mississippi. Facilities were created in the Shenandoah Valley for the expanding sheep industry, and the potential for this agricultural enterprise was never fully realized as coyotes expanded cross the state. As explained to me by folks who worked with the sheep industry, Virginia sheep growers were numerous, but the average size of their flocks was not as large as is found in the western part of the U.S. Thus, the losses due to coyote predation represented a bigger threat to the Virginia producers and caused a bigger negative economic impact on these growers.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Wildlife Services program was established in Virginia to help combat coyote problems, and they have done a superb job in addressing livestock depredation issues with some topnotch staff working various parts of the state.
The density of coyote tracks throughout your property will be a strong indicator of the local population.
I remember working a deer-checking station in Tidewater one season when a hunter I knew brought a yearling buck to the scales. This hunter was extremely skilled and knowledgeable and always brought a mature buck in to check. I know he saw the puzzled look on my face, but I was not about to challenge his choice. He asked me to turn the deer over to inspect the animal and I found a bite wound on the jaw muscle of the young buck. The hunter said that he had not intended to shoot that particular animal, but when he saw the wound, he was concerned that the animal would eventually die a slow and miserable death. He asked what I thought might have caused the wound. My best “educated guess” was that a coyote had laid in wait and when it went for the buck’s throat, the buck reacted quickly enough to cause the bite to hit the rear portion of the jawbone, and the buck escaped. I sent a photo of the wound to some western biologist friends, and they agreed on the coyote as the culprit. I also mentioned that I had seen as many as 10 coyotes during a night deer survey count in the area he was hunting!
On a more personal note, I was fortunate to hunt a military facility in Kentucky several years back. I scouted my assigned hunting area in the late afternoon in preparation for the next morning’s hunt. It was pitch dark when I hiked to the place I picked to hunt. I set out a hen decoy and retreated to my makeshift blind in some autumn olive shrubs on the edge of the small field. As daylight broke, I heard gobblers in far-off directions. but nowhere near where I was.
However, several hen turkeys started tree-calling and flew down in front of me. As daylight was getting brighter, I noticed some fur amid some vegetation which I thought might belong to a coyote. However, I could not see a head or tail and could not say for sure. I remember thinking, if that is sure enough a coyote, then it is doing what I am doing: hunting turkeys! About that time, a whop-whop sound was made by a gobbler, who never gobbled on the roost, and I watched as he flew down and strutted to my decoy hen. I put my front bead on his neck and took the 20-yard shot and watched as the gobbler went over backwards. To my horror, as the gobbler fell backwards, a coyote came out of the taller grass and seized the bird by the neck.
What Wile E. Coyote did not know was that Roadrunner had a .12-gauge backup that morning and the 34-pound coyote had just made its last hunt. There had been a big thunderstorm the night before our hunt, and I wondered if all the thunder caused the coyote to disregard the sound of my shotgun when I shot the gobbler.
I have inadvertently called in coyotes with turkey calls while turkey hunting out of state. On one occasion, my brother Gordan and I were hunting in Ohio with one of their Wildlife Officers and we had set out several inflatable vinyl turkey decoys. We had not been on that steep hillside long when I noticed a movement several hundred yards down slope in an adjacent cutover. While hoping for a big tom, I was disappointed to see a coyote coming to our turkey calls. We lost sight of the critter when it selected a ravine for the final approach to the fake turkeys. We all watched to see the reaction of the coyote when it charged a decoy, only to have the lightweight, inflatable decoy bounce up into the air like a beach ball when the coyote slammed into it. We all laughed so hard, and loud, that the very confused coyote turned tail and ran over the hill. Hopefully it gave up hunting turkeys after that!
The average coyote litter size ranges from 4 to 7 pups but can be larger or smaller. Litter sizes are based on the current population and food supply. If the coyote population is large, there will be fewer pups born and if it’s small, more will be born.
While deer hunting Virginia, not too many years ago, I shot a big doe heading to a bedding area. She had stop momentarily at the edge of the woods before going on, and I had a safe shot and took it. She flinched and fell downslope into the woods. I was just enjoying being on a stand when I heard some turkeys and decided to have some fun with some kee-kee runs and called in eight or so birds looking for the calling turkey. Not too long after that, I noticed a small antlered buck starting across the same area as the doe and I got a grunt tube out and called him within easy range and enjoyed watching him until finally he decided to move on.
Then a coyote came out of the woods near where my doe had fallen, and it stopped suddenly when it crossed the blood trail left by the doe. I was not quick enough to get that coyote that morning, but I was really ill when I found that the coyote had, before coming into the field, ravaged my doe. I will spare you the details, but everything was ruined on that fine game animal. I learned a valuable lesson and now don’t spend time interacting with nontarget species if I have a deer on the ground! And by the way, on my next deer hunt, I shot a coyote!
A couple of years ago, I was turkey hunting and had a young coyote, most likely a yearling, that stopped and looked at my turkey decoys but seemed unsure and trotted off to the thicket it had come out of which was a warren of deer trails and coyote scat.
A while later, an adult coyote came crossing the field from the same general direction. The coyote was about 90 yards away (i.e. out of range), but I could not help but notice that it was carrying something in its mouth. I am nothing if not curious and wanted desperately to know what the prey item it was carrying could be. I managed to scare the coyote into dropping what it had in its mouth, and as it ran away, I walked to where it had dropped the whole head of a yearling buck. If I had to guess, it may have been taking the head back to a den site with young.
Coyotes are here to stay and have obviously found a niche for themselves in the Old Dominion. It may be my imagination, but I seem to have noticed that when young groundhogs start coming out of their dens, coyote problems for pets and livestock seem to decline.
I must confess that the introduction of non-native or exotic species usually does not bode well (i.e. starlings, nutria, flying carp, and cormorants) for native wildlife.
I have had people tell me that shooting—and I guess that also includes trapping—coyotes just causes them to have an increase in the number of young produced. Coyotes are very smart, but they don’t operate on the web. Coyotes have one litter per year, usually producing four or five young. I think that in the process of removing coyotes from the population, if done at an intensive level, might result in the increased survival of litters as a result of increased food availability due to reduced competition from coyotes eliminated by various control measures.
Two things I am pretty sure of: coyotes are here to stay and will be here after most other things are long gone. Secondly, I am also surer of the fact that the coyotes that hunters and trappers harvest will not be producing any more young!
Bob Duncan is the retired Executive Director for the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources and a certified wildlife biologist for more than 40 years.
©Virginia Deer Hunters Association. For attribution information and reprint rights, contact Denny Quaiff, Executive Director, VDHA.
