If there is any animal more controversial than a coyote, I cannot think of it. I know people who would like to see them fully protected. I know others who believe they should be hunted relentlessly. Most folks, however, recognize that they play an important role in our ecosystem.
Even those people, however, would prefer they remained a not-in-my-backyard sort of creature.
It seems to me, that’s the way we humans have always viewed these canids. We want them to exist, just not too close to us.
Coyotes, after all, are a perplexing animal. They don’t appear all that different from the dogs we love. Yet, they’d happily eat your puppy for breakfast, given half a chance.
They harbour a healthy fear and respect for humans, but they’ve also been known to bite or show aggression. There have only been two documented fatal coyote attacks, but the thought of that possibility enters our heads too often when we hear them howl in the dark of night.
Fortunately, the anomaly is not the animal.
Perhaps, the truest thing you can say about coyotes is that they are the ultimate survivors. No matter what humanity throws at them, they adapt and thrive. When a subdivision encroaches upon their range, they find ways to make the most of the new opportunities. They’re now routinely seen in urban green spaces and hydro corridors.
They’re commonly photographed trotting down suburban streets.
They remain a regular fixture in Ontario’s farm belt. They are found in every city in the province. They’re at home in cottage country. Their range in Ontario extends north of Lake Superior.
A coyote by any other name
In Ontario, hunters frequently call these animals coywolves, suggesting they are a cross between wolves and coyotes. They are officially known as eastern coyotes, however.
“Although easterns do have some wolf, and even domestic dog genetics in them, their DNA is overwhelmingly coyote.” Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH) Fish and Wildlife Biologist Matthew Robbins said. “For this reason, it is largely inaccurate to refer to them as coywolves.”
They are heavier than their western counterparts, weighing between 35 and 55 pounds.
Mature males are typically largest though alpha females can rival them in size because they are atop the pecking order at mealtime.
They breed in February with, on average, six to eight pups born in late April. They are omnivorous, opportunistic hunters. They’re diurnal but tend to be more nocturnal the closer they are to humans.
Home is where the food is
In a natural setting, coyotes gravitate towards previously disturbed areas, Robbins said.
Clearcuts, wood lots, and overgrown farms where biodiversity and therefore food is more plentiful are good examples. As you might expect from such an adaptable creature, they can be found in all manner of landscapes, though they tend to avoid mature forests. All they need is sufficient food and enough cover for denning.
They will eat rodents, from mice to beavers, as well as birds, amphibians, insects, and even fruits and grasses. In urban areas, they will add discarded food, road-killed squirrel, or wandering pets — whatever is on the menu, basically. In rural areas, large mammals including deer, caribou, moose, as well as domestic livestock, can be prey. Basically, if an area has enough food, a pack of coyotes is probably calling it home.
Packs and wanderers
Their success as a species can be attributed to the pack system. Dr. Brent Patterson, senior research scientist and canid expert with the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR), explained that a pack is simply a family group — parents and young of the year — that hunt together.
A pack’s home range is determined by food availability. If food is scarce, the pack must range further to find it. If food is plentiful, ranges are smaller. Patterson said in Ontario’s productive areas, such as farm country, the average pack home range is 14 square kilometres. In unproductive areas, say large tracts of homogeneous forests, a pack might require as much as 120 square kilometres to eke out an existence.
Territory size translates to population densities. Where pack territories are smaller, such as in Prince Edward County, hunter surveys have shown there are 20-40 eastern coyotes per 100 square kilometres. Those numbers, he said, decline sharply the further north you go.
Pack hierarchy
The hierarchy of the pack has a lot to do with the resilience of Ontario’s eastern coyote population. Parents eat first and keep the pack in line. Their offspring scramble for whatever is left and remain subordinate. Patterson said, most juveniles born in the spring will disperse before their first birthday because of this. The lucky ones will find a mate, start a new pack, and establish a home range of their own.
Before that occurs, most juveniles will have covered a lot of ground. Patterson said one juvenile collared in the Greater Toronto Area was found in Prince Edward County — about 200 kilometres distant. Most travel 40 to 60 kilometres, but he said, some roam hundreds of kilometres.
Huge numbers of juveniles wander the province each year.
They are, Patterson said, the coyotes most hunters harvest.
Management by hunting and trapping
Coyote hunting and trapping is contentious to a portion of the non-hunting public. After all, they are not an animal we consume — and hunting or trapping for fur offends some. Despite these emotional arguments, there are good reasons to hunt and trap our eastern coyotes.
First, hunting and trapping are management tools that place pressure on them, preventing them from becoming a nuisance animal or too numerous. This can be beneficial to their prey and farmers. It can also reinforce a healthy fear of humans, which probably deters unpleasant human-coyote encounters more than anything.
“There is ample evidence that human activity influences the behaviours of these canids,” Robbins said. “Studies have shown that coyotes in rural areas, where coyotes tend to experience active management are typically more avoidant of humans than those in an urban setting.”
Yet, while trapping and hunting can put a dent in local numbers, it rarely does so for long.
In 2022, in areas in Wildlife Management Units (WMUs) where tags are required to shoot wolves and eastern coyotes, resident hunters purchased 11,408 wolf tags and reported harvesting 162 wolves for a tag fill rate of 1.6 %. Non-resident hunters, who were guided, purchased 271 wolf tags in 2022 and reported harvesting 51 wolves for a success rate of approximately 19%.
Difficult to track
Patterson said harvest numbers are difficult to track in the WMUs where tags aren’t required. But, he added, there is still no evidence that hunting is a threat to a sustainable eastern coyote population.
“I have interviewed very successful groups, and even they will grudgingly admit that coyote numbers don’t change all that much from year to year in their hunting areas,” he said.
Robbins added, “The most current research suggests that hunting and trapping pressures can decrease localized coyote populations for a time, but that any gaps created by these mechanisms tend to be filled quickly by transient, free-roaming individuals. The existing pool of these transient coyotes is considered so large, in Ontario and elsewhere, that it is not considered feasible to have a significant long-term impact of coyote populations via conventional hunting and trapping methods. However, this does not mean that removing individuals, particularly dominant animals, from an area will not temporarily reduce numbers at a local scale.”
Hunting and trapping rarely have a dire impact on local numbers, especially, in areas where eastern coyotes are protected by seasons, limits, no discharge of firearms regulations, and urban environments.
Though it might seem counterintuitive, more reported sightings of coyotes do not necessarily indicate there are more animals either. Patterson explained when game is scarce, coyotes travel more and take greater risks — which often means people see them more.
Methods of hunting
Every now and then, you might get an unplanned opportunity to take a coyote. That chance might come when one stalks and then charges your turkey decoys. Or when it is pushed past you by other hunters on a deer drive. Sometimes they just seem to materialize under your tree stand.
A lot of coyotes are taken in situations like these.
True coyote hunters, however, aren’t looking for incidental kills. They are setting up hunts based on sightings, information from landowners, past experiences, and a knowledge of how their local pack uses the topography.
Three methods are commonly used: calling, setting up over bait, or driving coyotes with hounds. Each method could be detailed at length, but here are the fundamentals. The easiest method for the new coyote hunter is hunting over a bait pile. This is as simple as setting up downwind of a bait. Baits could be road-killed animals, a gut pile, a dead farm animal, scraps of meat, or carcasses from a trapper. Baits sites don’t last long so be prepared to replenish them.
Placing bait
Ideally, you should place the bait where a coyote needs to break cover to get to it. It’s also advantageous to set up so there is room for a suspicious coyote to circle downwind of the bait without getting behind you.
Most hunters use a long-range flat-shooting rifle with good optics. They watch the bait from a comfortable, well-concealed hide, situated as far away from the bait as rifle accuracy and skill allows. Shooting sticks or a good, improvised field rest were made for hunts like this.
The farther you are, the less likely you are to get busted. The goal is to get a crack at a stationary coyote gnawing on the bait. Since you will probably be using a small calibre centrefire rifle that can send a bullet a long way, its also prudent to set up so you are shooting in a safe direction with a natural backstop, like a hillside.
Calling coyotes
Calling coyotes is similar but much more active. Typically, you set up an electronic caller and an electronic lure that simulates some sort of bird or rodent to add visual enticement. There are many good ones on the market.
These calls and decoys, which imitate prey species in distress, act as your bait, so set them off to the side so it keeps the coyote from looking in your direction. In this kind of hunt, a shotgun is often a better choice because coyotes can come in fairly fast. If you are hunting with a partner however, a good plan is to have one person with a shotgun and the other with a rifle to handle coyotes that stall out of shotgun range. The idea is to call, wait for a while, then move a few hundred metres and repeat until you find a responsive coyote. How long you stay at a location, depends on your faith in the spot and how much time you have.
Lastly, hunting coyotes with dogs is one of the most consistently effective ways to hunt. But much organization, landowner permissions, and coordination are required — not to mention the need for good dogs and a real knowledge of the lay of the land and the best ways to hunt it.
Essentially, the hunt is a drive, and hunters from the group are set up to cover choke points and good ambush locations, while the dogs and handlers push coyotes through. These hunts have a lot of moving parts, but an experienced group makes it look easy.
One last howl
Whatever your feelings about coyotes, they are not going away anytime soon. MNR reports coyote populations are doing just fine. The declines we see in some areas are mostly the results of declining prey cycles. When their major prey species crashes, coyote populations crash two or more years later. And when coyote numbers decline, prey species, facing less predatory pressure, recover. And coyote numbers mimic that, too.
Throughout these highs and lows, they are on the landscape, doing what eastern coyotes do — adapting to the environments that they find themselves in, hunting, and finding ways to survive.
Disease, lack of prey, and loss of habitat — these are the things that reduce their numbers. Modern hunting and trapping efforts do not do so in any lasting or significant way.
At least that’s how it is in Ontario. And, for our eastern coyotes, that’s not a bad state to be in.
Livestock issues
According to Farmers Forum online magazine, coyotes are the top predator of livestock in Ontario, with 1,411 livestock kills attributed to coyotes in 2021. This led to more than $722,000 in compensation by the province. Patterson said that cost often exceeds $1,000,000 annually.
Ontario Fur Managers Federation reports that coyotes are only second to beavers in nuisance calls for the organization’s trappers.
Most calls come from municipalities and smaller farms.
Poultry, sheep, and cattle are the top three targets.
The top places for predator compensation from high to low
- Durham
- Kawartha Lakes
- Grey, Leeds & Grenville
- Lexington and Addington
- Renfrew
- Simcoe
- Hastings
- Bruce and Lanark
- Calibres
Most-popular coyote calibres
