My dad spent the last 30 years before he retired working with predator control for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. His job, simply stated, was a wolf trapper. He also trapped bobcat, foxes and other predators but red wolves were his primary focus.
During that period in the 1940s and ‘50s, wolves had no competition from other similar sized canids until another more prolific creature, the coyote, began to show up in the state. As far as I’ve been able to determine, my dad trapped the very first coyote ever captured in Louisiana. As the population of red wolves began declining, his focus was mainly on the more prolific coyote.
It is not uncommon today to hear and see coyotes. I can remember feeling the hair stand up on the back of my neck before daylight as I made my way to my deer stand and a pack of coyotes began their piercing howls, yipping and yapping nearby.
An organization that covers interesting wildlife stories, “The Lonely Camp” has produced an article on Facebook that captured my attention because it dealt with coyotes, how despite efforts to eradicate them they seem to continue to proliferate.
Killing half a million coyotes per year has not slowed the production of these animals, according to the article. The coyotes’ range has expanded 40% during this same time.
The way they operate is completely different from other predators. Lethal control has greatly reduced or eliminated such species as timber wolves which have been basically wiped out, the grizzly bear pushed to just a handful of mountain strongholds.
“Yet,” according to the article, “the coyote absorbed the same pressure, same traps, same poison, same aerial gunning, same bounty systems and responded by walking into every state the wolf has vacated, every city the mountain lion had abandoned, and every landscape that lethal control was supposed to clear.”
Research has shown several reasons why coyotes have not responded in the way other predators have. Breeding is one factor. A coyote pair produces an average of six pups a year but under heavy pressure, the litter size is increased. You kill more and the survivors produce more.
There is zero incidence of infidelity or polygamy among coyotes. During estrus, the pair spends every hour together and should a mate die, the survivor grieves.
The animal that humans have spent a century trying to exterminate mates for life, raises young cooperatively, grieves its dead and compensates by raising larger litters. Simply stated, coyotes have responded to the most sustained management in history by quietly colonizing every state in the continental United States.
It matters not what humans try to do to it. Nothing we have ever done is sufficient to outpace an animal that breeds fast, bonds absolutely and replaces its losses.
So if you live in the country, the next time you’re sitting outside at dusk watching lightning bugs fire up their tiny lights and a pack of coyotes begin singing their loud and eerie songs across the way, just enjoy it because nothing you can ever do will quiet them.
Coyotes, like mosquitoes, kudzu and fire ants, are here to stay.