Coyote Talk Is Everywhere

There’s one sure way to get folks chattering on my Saturday morning radio show, West Virginia Outdoors, bring up the subject of coyotes.  Much like the weather, everybody seems to talk about coyotes but nobody seems to do anything about them.  

I have heard much about coyotes over the years.   I’ve also read a lot about them, but until Sunday I had never actually seen one alive in the wild.   

It happened at the old home place back in Virginia.  I was heading across the yard to the car to drive back to West Virginia.  My son said, "Look at that."   In the far meadow, about 400-yards away, six deer were leaping across the field hell bent for leather.   White tails on all six were at full attention and they weren’t slowing down for anything.   They disappeared over the ridge top after hurdling two fences.   Soon along the same trail came what at first looked like a couple of dogs.   None of the neighbors’ dogs are of such size and black.  It was immediately clear these were not dogs. They were running wild and wide open, hot on the trail of the deer.   They were clearly coyotes.  My dad confirmed my suspicion.    He’s had loads of trouble with them eating his chickens.  He’s dropped several when he’s caught them within range of his 30-06 and tried trapping, but most have learned how to escape.

I’ve often heard coyotes will chase down a deer in packs.   An expert from Tennessee, during a seminar in Flatwoods a few years back, described a chase he had observed.  The animals ran a deer until she was ragged and fatigued.  They would hand off the chase to each other in an almost organized relay effort. Once she was tired, she collapsed and the pack finished her off.

Most of us have probably seen the viral story and pictures of coyotes attacking a buck in Oklahoma from all sides.  The incident was captured in a series of pictures on a trail camera and showed the buck die from a thousand bites.

There is plenty of information out there about coyotes, but there’s a lot of misinformation as well.  Contrary to popular belief, the West Virginia DNR did not "stock" or "reintroduce" coyotes into West Virginia.  Coyotes have been here for many years.   The beasts were largely eradicated in the east back in the 1800’s by the fur trade and angry farmers tired of having their livestock destroyed.    Some believe they never really disappeared, but became so few in numbers they went unnoticed for decades.  However, as food sources improved so did their reproduction and in recent times, with high deer numbers, they coyotes have managed to thrive. 

The states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia have had coyote problems longer than West Virginia.  Biologists in fact say West Virginia was one of the last states in the east where coyotes gained a secure foothold.   The fact dispels the myth they were somehow artificially implanted here.   Besides, reintroducing a species is no easy feet and there’s no way to fly under the radar with such activity.  Eventually, somebody would have talked and the story would have been big news.  It never happened that way. 

Many believe steps need to be taken to trim back or even eradicate the coyote population.   The DNR seems to agree with the line of thinking, but they’ve taken about all the management steps they can.   There’s no season and no bag limit on coyotes.  Between January and July you can hunt them at night with amber-colored spotlights.   The DNR has engaged experts to deliver seminars at various times of the year to help school guys who are new to the quarry about their habits and how to best hunt predators.   However, they aren’t easy to kill.  They are a wary critter and seldom show themselves in the daylight.   They learn quickly and any near brush with death to them is a lesson learned which makes them doubly hard to get the next time they’re exposed to a human.  

I often hear bounties suggested as a way to curb the coyote numbers.   Bounties, quite frankly, don’t work.  The DNR tried them in the 1920’s and ended up with coyotes from all over the country being brought into the state.  There’s no way to distinguish a West Virginia coyote from an Alabama coyote or Pennsylvania or any other state. 

The other problem with a bounty is where does the money come from?   The county where I grew up, where I saw the two coyotes chasing the deer I previously mentioned tried a bounty.   They set aside a measure of county general revenue money in a special fund for coyotes.  The Board of Supervisors (county commission) made it somewhat restrictive and only paid for females.  The fund was exhausted in just a few weeks. 

The West Virginia DNR just managed to get the legislature to agree to a senior citizen lifetime license.   Even when the senior license was thoroughly explained, there were still detractors.   Who is going to be willing to put up money in the form of another fee, tax, or license requirement to pay a coyote bounty?  The money has to come from somewhere–and it’s proven it will be a waste of money and won’t solve anything.

The DNR says for now they believe predation on deer is happening in West Virginia.  They cannot say authoritatively say how widespread.   Biologists have no data to indicate coyotes are adversely impacting the deer population at the present time, but it is something they are watching and studying.   If the numbers of the predators continue to expand it could have an impact eventually.  The next step at that time is anybody’s guess.