Can We Control Populations Of Coyotes?

Theories abound as to whether or not man can control or properly manage populations of coyotes. Generally speaking, man does a pretty decent job of learning to live with the unbelievably restorative nature of this wily creature. Much of the truth is, we don’t know enough about this animal to formulate some of the so-called facts often tossed out in discussions.

One of those “facts”, widely used by animal rights activists who also double as anti-hunting rubes, is that if we hunt and trap coyotes we cause their populations to get bigger. Of course that growth description can get quite exaggerated in some discussions, so I tried to keep it moderate.

I think there are so many factors that play into how well wild animals reproduce that making a blank statement that killing a few creates more is disingenuous at best and ignorant at its worse.

What puzzles me though is that if we are to subscribe to the theory that simply killing coyotes will result in more coyotes than why is the near extirpation of wolves and coyotes in some places, along with other predators also blamed on killing by hunters and trappers?

Wouldn’t common sense tell us that at some point in attempting to kill off numbers of coyotes, we reach a point of a kind of equinox? In other words, at what point is killing off coyotes going to equal the birth rate and thus result in a no-growth equilibrium?

If we can make this assumption, can’t we also assume that if enough effort is put forward, we can begin moving in a negative growth direction and subsequently reduce the population. Short of total extirpation, once this control method is halted or altered significantly, in a short period of time we are looking again at a coyote population problem.

I’ve been doing some research on coyotes to see what is out there in addition to the usual talking points created by wildlife biologists of today and animal rights activists. In short, I’m kind of sick and tired of hearing the same old unproven and unsubstantiated claims about predators and what perfect and necessary creatures they are to our sensitive ecosystems…….sorry, I had to swallow hard on that one.

While searching I came across a Farmer’s Bulletin, produced by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1906. It’s a report on what was going on in several parts of the country with coyotes in that year.

In 1906 there was little thought in trying to protect coyotes. They were deemed mostly as a detriment to livestock growers, as well as a serious problem with small and large game animals and the settlers as they migrated west. In the context of the Bulletin, it seemed the effort was geared as much toward getting rid of all the coyotes if they could.

The chief discouragement seems to lie in the depredations of worthless dogs and coyotes.

The evil of worthless dogs can be best remedied by a resort to taxation. Dogs should be regarded as property and taxed sufficiently to put all of the dangerous and worthless curs out of existence.

Coyotes were a terrible problem for livestock growers. As an example, Montana has a land mass nearly three times that of England and yet England, with no coyotes to contend with, are able to produce 5 times the number of sheep (in 1906).

In Kansas for example, mind you this was in 1906, the effort to reduce populations of coyote weren’t very successful when looking at things from a perspective of drastically reducing coyote numbers.

In the State of Kansas warfare against coyotes has been long continued and has been stimulated in most of the counties by the moderate bounty of $1 per animal killed. Statistics show that conditions have been reached where there is but little fluctuation from year to year in the total amount of bounty paid. At the present time nearly 20,000 coyote scalps per year are presented for bounty in the State. A dozen Western States have had similar experiences in dealing with the same pests without materially diminishing their numbers.

20,000 coyote scalps is nothing to sneeze at but although we can sense some frustration that numbers haven’t been “materially diminished”, indications are they haven’t grown either with this effort ongoing.

There is always argument as to whether coyotes kill larger game or do they just become convenient scavengers, cleaning up the leftovers of another kill? When we talk of coyotes in general we do not talk of the differences that exist in the many different kinds of coyotes that exist. Many are small and some are quite large. As a matter of fact, the larger coyotes are often referred to as wolves or prairie wolves but they are coyote and shouldn’t be confused with the gray wolf often the topic of heated discussion these days.

In this Farmer’s Bulletin, a fair amount of time is spent talking about the different foods the coyote eats. It should be pointed out that the Department of Agriculture back in 1906 readily admitted that coyotes will kill larger game animals.

Formerly, when deer and antelope were abundant, they were frequently run down and captured by coyotes. To accomplish this the wolves hunt in packs of two or more, taking turns in chasing the victim selected. Their prey runs in wide circles, enabling the wolves to keep fresh until it is exhausted.

Even with the methods granted these ranchers, etc., frustration mounted in the difficulty they saw as mounting any kind of a real reduction of coyotes.

The coyote pest presents a serious problem, and various methods of dealing with it have been tried. None of them has been entirely satisfactory, and some have been decided failures. All of them combined have resulted in a partial check to the increase of coyotes in most parts of their range.

It seems they were allowed to use just about any means to kill as many coyotes as they could. They used poison, deemed to have killed the most adult coyotes than any other method, trapping and hunting. The hunting methods varied from the use of dogs and men on horseback to community-wide coyote hunts, sometimes employing as many as several hundred people, with dogs and hunters on horseback.

A bounty reward system was also used in what they called efforts to “stimulate” the killing of coyotes. Back in 1906 a combination of public money as a bounty and private money from livestock groups could provide as much as $15 per coyote – nothing to turn your back on in 1906.

While this is only one example to look at, I thought it interesting to note that in 1906 it appears common knowledge told us that anything goes when it comes to killing coyotes and yet with the methods and efforts employed then to reduce populations, no great reductions were made and certainly there was no danger of wiping out species of coyotes.

This report is incomplete and doesn’t tell us much about the effort to kill coyotes. In other words, we really don’t know if these efforts were ongoing, how long they lasted and how many people actually regularly took part in seeking out and destroying coyotes.

We should be able to at least conclude that with enough lethal methods available and effort, coyote numbers can be at least maintained if not reduced, especially in targeted areas.

The coyote might be a lot like the ant. No matter how many insecticides man devises to kill ants, they seem unfazed. They may have temporary set backs but if you or I keep up an ongoing pest control program, we can at least keep them from destroying our property.

Tom Remington