Through the Eyes of A Coyotes

Through the Eyes of A Coyotes

By Troy Hoepker

“Where did he go?” How many times have I wondered that about a coyote that has seemingly just disappeared from the face of the earth? I swear, nothing in the world has the ability to disappear into thin air better than a coyote. Maybe that’s why Native Americans used to revere the coyote as a trickster whose curiosity would often get him into trouble while his cleverness would always undoubtedly bail him out of danger. Still to this day the coyote cunningly escapes situations that an animal of lesser wit would succumb to. On many of occasions I’ve been left wondering just how a coyote had managed to elude my trappings. Yet I continue to pursue them even after being humbled by them. Maybe it’s the desire to match wits one on one with such a cagey animal just to see how consistently I can come out successful? I guess it is the thrill of the hunt or the chase, if you will, that keeps me coming back for more against this elusive trickster of the prairie.

I wouldn’t keep coming back for more time and time again if it weren’t for the lessons taught to me by the coyote. Each lesson learned in success or failure equally teaching me some new nugget of information about the inner workings of a coyote’s lifestyle and what makes them tick. Sometimes I relearn the same lessons taught to me that I had long ago learned and almost forgotten. Regardless of what it is, I’ve found that the things that help me hunt them successfully the most are the things I learn about coyote behavior in general. To be as successful as you possibly can be, you have to be willing to be a student of the behavior of the animal you pursue.

Learning how to hunt a coyote, you must first understand how a coyote travels, where he spends his time and why, what his prey is, and how he socially interacts with other coyotes. Within each of these things, they can each be broken down into sub-categories of study such as, how does a coyote’s food source change throughout the year or how does a coyote’s interaction with other coyotes change at different times of the year. If you trap, if you pursue with hounds, or if you like to call them, understanding how they go about their daily lives will help you be more successful.

Most everything a coyote does in its daily routine is influenced by food and water, weather, self-preservation or social interaction with other coyotes. To stay on top of all those things it uses its ears, eyes, and nose primarily. At the top of the list is the sniffer. A coyote can smell so well that everything it does and most every decision it makes are influenced by his sense of smell. Imagine a coyote traveling across the landscape. When he travels he’ll use the wind to his advantage to help him smell things both close by and from afar by traveling downwind of those likely areas. Going from waterways, to terraces, to buildings or treelines and ditches, this is how a coyote prefers to travel. It’s also something trappers have known for years as they make their sets adding baits and lures so that the prevailing winds will more easily capture a coyote’s attention.

But a coyote caller should also pay mind to the same tendencies to help bring a coyote into their calling. It gives the coyote confidence that it can easily reach and identify the source of the sound. Even from a distance, once a coyote hears or catches a whiff of something, he’ll then turn and come closer to investigate usually doing so from the downwind side to help him track the movements of prey, or better smell the stationary scent he smells. Self-preservation mode kicks in only when that nose of his detects traces of the human that left behind the bait at the dirthole set or he smells the hunter who is calling to him.

Now let’s stay with that same coyote as he travels along and watch as he uses those same tendencies to find other coyotes. As he travels he’ll also go out of his way to investigate scent marking sites or go downwind of things where other coyotes have likely marked with their scent. He’s used to other local coyote’s scent and he can identify intruders in his territory this way or maybe a female who might be a possible mate if the time of year is right. Once he smells a spot where another coyote has marked, he’ll likely mark it as well and may even let out a howl in the darkness to elicit a response from any possible coyote that might have made a more recent scent. Along the way, he’ll make his own scent line to tell other coyotes that he has been there whether that is in their territory, an over-lapping boundary area or his own core area. As he travels, especially at night, he may hear other coyotes howl and if close enough, may go downwind of their location just to confirm the coyote’s scent to help him with identification. Almost everything he does, he does with his nose.

Once daylight hits, usually it’s time for a coyote to return to a safe area. For dominant, established pairs or family units, this is a core area. For other transient coyotes, this could be anywhere. A good way to find these core areas is to listen for their howling as it gets dark before they have moved away from where they spent the day. The group yip howl, for which coyotes are well known, is what you are listening for and it is usually done from nearby that defended core area. I think the amount a coyote moves during the daytime would surprise most people. While it isn’t nearly as much as they do at night, they still hunt and travel plenty during the day. They may be more cautious however, avoiding open areas more during they day than they would at night. They also become conditioned to what is a threat and what isn’t.

The sight of the same tractor haying cows or mowing hay daily is seen as non-threatening to some extent as long as it has never posed them danger. They’ll even run along a combine as it picks corn to grab rabbits or mice. But a pickup truck coming into the same field may make them run for cover because of the bad experiences they’ve had with trucks and hunters. It only takes one bad experience and a coyote will remember it for the rest of its life.

When a coyote does move during the day they do so using the terrain a certain way. They’ll follow the depressions or low spots quite regularly choosing them as a travel corridor over the high ground where they are more easily seen. They’ll also use the field edges and fencerows to conceal themselves and their movements. All places they use at night too, but they are bolder at night and become a bit more lazy using ridges to travel and gateways and water crossings. Almost nothing is off limits at night including your yard. They investigate anything if they think there is a meal or territory to defend. Even during the day, they may not always be far from humans but instead right under their nose. I’ve known of several pairs of coyotes over the years that would spend the day in a hay stack of big round bales right next to a road or acreage once it gets bitter cold.

Several years ago I was visiting with a local cattle producer who told me quite the interesting story. As he would go out to a pasture to check his cows, he would routinely see a lone coyote that would seem to appear out of nowhere just standing there in the wide open pasture. He never could figure out where the coyote was coming from or why he was seeing him there so continuously in such an odd place in the middle of the day with no cover around. Then one particularly frigid day while out once again checking cows, he went to the cattle waterer to make sure it wasn’t iced over. As he removed a panel from the side of the tank, a coyote came bolting out of the structure almost hitting him! The farmer had been running heat to the tank from the nearby pole and that coyote had found a way to slip inside and stay in there in a cramped space where it was nice and cozy during a rough cold spell. Goes to show just how adaptable a coyote will be!

Winter brings travel patterns that focus on cover and habitat of prey animals for coyotes. That and carrion and any man made source of food that is readily available such as feed, livestock, or trash. They have to make the most of their time hunting when food is scarcer and calorie intake is important. Those things make a fine meal in the spring and summer months too, but a coyote’s diet is so adaptable that he can feed on everything from grasshoppers, berries, fruit, snakes, and a much wider menu in warmer months. Everywhere around him there is a potential meal even if it is only bite sized.

Coyotes look for several things when they seek shelter or a place to spend the day. Depending on the weather it could be anywhere. A brushpile, a ditch, under a cedar tree, in a culvert, an abandon barn, a grassy strip, a terrace or fencerow or even right out in the wide open space just to name a few. The worse the weather the harder shelter they may seek such as a brushpile, building or culvert. On sunny days, even in extreme cold it isn’t odd to see a coyote bedded on a south-facing slope or on a terrace sunning itself. Because of their use of so many places, it’s no wonder that they know right where to head when being pursued by hunters. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that after a heavy snow and once game trails are worn down by heavy use, I like to look for new tracks after a light dusting on existing snow so that I can determine a new fresh track in the trail. Once I’ve done that, if the track is fresh enough, I’ll look for where a coyote’s tracks show him leaving the easier to run trail and blazing his own into deeper snow. Once you see that, there is a decent chance that the coyote you’re after may be headed to cover nearby to bed.

During winter there is a hot-to-trot short window that is a frenzy of activity for the coyote that is breeding season. A male will follow a female everywhere until she is receptive to his eagerness. The female will snap at males and run from them until the time is right and she selects a mate and the males will show their dominance running off multiple suitors for the right to be her partner. Males and females alike become increasingly territorial during this time and on into gestation and whelping. After a pair has found a den site they will run off intruders and once the female has had her pups, it’s up to the male to bring home enough food until the pups are big enough that the female can get away and hunt again. They’ll remain a family or “pack” group all with a home range until dispersal of the pups in the fall or early winter.

In the Chicago metropolitan area there has been an ongoing coyote study for sometime to learn more about how coyotes live in an urban environment. The Cook County Coyote Project has tagged almost 1,000 coyotes and radio-collared over 440 so far making it the largest urban coyote study in the world. These urban coyotes are humanely trapped, fitted with tags or collars, micro-chipped for future identification, evaluated on their health condition and samples of blood and hair are taken. The collars allow researchers to track the movements of these coyotes through GPS until the collar will fall off at a programmed specific time months later. Ear tags are applied (yellow for females and red for males) with unique numbering to further help identify individuals in the field. When possible, even pups at den sites are tagged and chipped letting researchers actually follow a coyote’s life from birth to death in some cases.

One such female was captured in March of 2010 near the Lincoln Park Zoo when she was a sub-adult. Researchers discovered that she was able to move all over the downtown Chicago area making regular habits of patrolling Lake Shore Drive along Lake Michigan and within Lincoln Park. Up until the last sighting of her in 2013, it was known that she had at least two litters of pups and that her home range included many areas in and around downtown Chicago. These specialized collars were able to give quite the insight into how she traveled from point A to point B. Tracking revealed that she preferred to use roads as her areas of travel with such detailed documentation showing that she actually observed traffic patterns at places such as red lights where she would move into or across intersections with the movement of cars and changing of the lights.

Another female first captured in 2000 as a yearling was tracked over five cities as she searched for a territory of her own in that first year. Eventually she settled with an uncollared male in 2001 and started a pack. In 2004 she was recaptured and collared again as she was pregnant. She remained an alpha female until her death in 2010 and her movements were tracked every year as well as many of her offspring. Over the years, 25 of her pups out of six different litters were chipped. This coyote’s territory was near O’Hare International Airport where she lived around ten years and died of natural causes even though she had lived in a dangerous city for so long.

We certainly don’t have that many urban coyotes here in Iowa, but the study goes to show how a coyote can survive anywhere and how easily it can adapt to any terrain or lifestyle. If only we could strap a camera on a coyote’s back and see just how they conduct their daily business.