SMOKING EASTERN COYOTES

Where To Find Coyotes To Hunt

Editor's Note: If you want to experience fun, off-season hunting this spring and summer, try hunting coyotes, abundant in most areas of the East. Very few other hunters hunt coyotes, landowners will look forward to your hunting, and they'll do all they can to aid your success.

The coyote, a tough, adaptable, strong, enduring and smart animal, has its name derived from Coyote, the sacred god of the Aztecs, and also is known as the prairie wolf and the songdog. Although the encroachment of people, houses and airports has hurt other wild animals, some biologists predict even if the U.S. is covered with these trappings of civilization, the coyote and the cockroach still will survive. Researchers have spotted coyotes on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona. About a decade ago, a picture of a coyote with a Rhode Island red chicken in its mouth crossing the Santa Barbara freeway was featured in a California newspaper. As one wildlife biologist noted, "Compared to a coyote, a bobcat is practically an idiot."

Put yourself in the coyote's place, and you'll soon learn where to find them. Areas with abundant livestock usually will hold populations of coyotes. Often, farmers and ranchers don't bury the animals that die on their property. When coyotes move into a region with dense populations of livestock, they find a ready-made, steady supply of food from the landowner's discards. Although initially beneficial to the farmer, before long a coyote may decide it enjoys killing a live piglet more than eating a dead one. Most livestock producers will welcome a coyote hunter with open arms and direct him to the places where they've seen the most coyotes. If hunter succeeds in taking coyotes, oftentimes a grateful landowner will extend an invitation for him to take other game such as deer, turkeys or quail at other times.

You'll also find numbers of coyotes where flocks of waterfowl concentrate. Too, coyotes will frequent areas of high deer, turkey or rabbit populations. Turkey hunters have reported calling in coyotes when they've attempted to talk to longbeards. When rabbit populations increase, coyotes will move into the briar patches and hedgerows to feed. Coyotes have become the balancing factor for overpopulation of wildlife in many parts of the East. When game species numbers swell, generally the coyotes will move into the region. In areas where deer population numbers are high, during the fawning season, a pack of coyotes can locate and kill all the young deer they want to take. On Texas' Welder Wildlife Foundation's 7800 acres devoted to wildlife research, studies conducted show that fawns account for 75 to 80 percent of the coyotes' diet during fawning season. Too, in the spring, coyotes often will kill the hen turkey off the nest or eat the eggs of the young poults when the hen leaves the nest.

A Louisiana study found coyotes didn't always kill for food. In one example, a marauding pack of coyotes slaughtered 135 ewes and lambs in one night with some of the sheep only having their necks bitten or their bodies disemboweled. Part of the coyote's adaptability is the vast variety of foods they consume. A Louisiana study conducted by Dr. John W. Goertz had researchers spending hours studying 201-coyote stomachs and droppings. Livestock (mostly cattle) and poultry remains were observed in 66 of 201 samples. Rabbits were found in 76 animals, deer in 6, and squirrels in a few. One coyote's stomach held both quail and turkey. A total of 30-different kinds of prey from insects to horsemeat were found to be part of these coyotes' diets.

Coyotes in the East most often hole-up in thick cover during daylight hours and do most of their hunting at night, especially in regions where hunters have chased them. The more hunting pressure put on coyotes, the more nocturnal they become. Probably you'll find dawn and dusk the best hours for hunting eastern coyotes. If coyote populations continue to increase in the East, as they have in the western states such as California, we may see coyotes running across our backyards and feeding in our garbage cans as they do in some suburban areas of the far West.

TOMORROW: WHAT CALLS WORK BEST ON COYOTES