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Social Behavior
Many people feel that the Vietnamese mistake was the first war that the United States didn't win. That isn't true. For forty-five years, Uncle Sam has fought a war against coyotes...and lost! In the years between 1937 and 1981, minions of the Fish & Wildlife Service scalped 3,600,000 coyotes. The ears with a connecting strip of skin were sent to a central tallying point as proof of their 'body count.' If my calculations are reasonable, coyotes suffered six million casualties in this war with Uncle Sam. Yet, we would have to admit that the coyotes have won the war.
Charles Cadieux, Coyotes
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Coyotes travel and live together mostly in packs of 3 or more, also as mated pairs, or solitary individuals. The center of a coyote pack is the mated pair, alpha male and alpha female, which are typically the only individuals to breed in the pack. The mated pair is accompanied by associates who can be related or unrelated.
Coyotes eat small mammals for much of their food source and are solitary hunters. The coyote will stalk its prey, moving as close as possible, and then it will take its prey by surprise. The size of the territory of a coyote pack is related to abundance of food. The greater the abundance of small mammals as food sources, the less territory is needed.
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Hunting does not manage coyote populations, in fact there is opposite effect.
People and agencies have injected coyotes with chemicals, poisoned them, shot at them from airplanes, strangled them with neck snares, run coyotes down with snow mobiles, used leghold traps, buried them alive in their dens, and employed a host of other hideous methods. 1,884,897 bounties were paid on coyotes from 1915 to 1947, and the techniques listed above continue to be used today. Killing Coyotes Does Not Diminish Coyote Populations. Surprisingly, these efforts to control coyote populations have not decimated the animal’s numbers. In fact, the coyote’s range and numbers have increased. In Colorado, for example, the Colorado Division of Wildlife reports that coyotes are likely more numerous than they were when settlers first arrived.
Violently disruptive measures cause packs of coyotes to splinter, allowing younger males to breed with females, a task usually preserved for the alpha male in a pack structure. The absence of a hierarchical structure results in an increase in coyote population. New coyote packs require new territory, and coyotes cover an increased amount of land in search of food sources.
Food Sources
Coyotes consume large numbers of rodents. Any reduction in the population of coyotes may have the unintended consequence of an accompanying increase in the population of rabbits, rats, and other small mammals. Potential food sources in suburban and urban areas also beckon to coyotes.