Posted on 09/25/2019 9:37:19 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
about a year ago I was in our community swimming pool around 5am and one hopped the gate of the community and came trotting by the pool, looked over at me since I had been exercising/splashing the water, but it kept on trotting on into the community. I got out and went inside just to be sure not to have any issue with it.
Point well taken! They are supposed to be pretty skittish, so noises will usually make them leave if they think someone is coming. Usually. We have an old cow bell on the porch that I ring at night when I suspect they might be around.
I live in NW Indiana on the lake, and there’s a major rail line there and some random woods, so we see the same thing. A few years ago my town caught quite a few in traps.
It does not run or act rabid. A rabid coyote is unlikely to break off the attack like this one did after realizing his prey was a little too large to drag off and may resist more than it cared to deal with.
Coyotes are everywhere, now - we even have them in Maryland.
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I live in a suburb next to Minneapolis and maybe 500 feet from I-494. I see them in my backyard a number of times a year.
Seems like overkill; but go for it...
“”Coyotes are everywhere, now - we even have them in Maryland.””
You should fear them. Those are the ones who commute to DC each day and PROUDLY work for our benefit - barf!
Unlike the wolf, which is big game (regardless of the law), and which needs big game to some extent to live, the coyote is a varmint, and can live off almost anything.
The wolf has lost most of its range over the last two hundred years; the coyote has extended its range coast to coast.
A coyote killed a fawn in our yard one evening and came back at 12:30 in the afternoon to retrieve it. It was about the size of a Labrador- a good 75 lbs.or so. I’m in Fairfield,Ct.
We’re used to those ones hereabouts.
These four-legged ones are new. But so far, they bother us less than the others do.
My friend was in North Haven. At the edge of town where he was, the coydogs were a big deal. He always kept an eye on his dog.
I think they’re blowing this WAY out of proportion. The coyote never assumed a threatening posture and first trotted up rather casually as if it were inviting the little girl to play. And when she turned and ran, it triggered his prey instinct so he pursued. The last thing you want to do in an encounter with any canid is turn your back and run for that very reason. If it had meant to harm her I think it would have.
FWIW, coyote-dog matings are exceedingly rare but all coyotes east of the Mississippi are hybrids, part red wolf, part gray wolf, part dog and mostly western coyote.
Coyotes were completely eradicated from the eastern states by the end of the 19th century. But they returned in the 20th Century, traveling north of the headwaters if the Mississippi through the Great Lakes watershed, which also happens to host more natural hybridization than anywhere else on earth. By the time the western coyote had crossed the Great Lakes and dispersed throughout the eastern states, it had picked up a little wolf and a little domestic dog in its gene pool. In the last few years they’ve done DNA testing on hundreds of eastern coyotes and found them all to be similarly hybridized, which for one thing explains why western coyotes are uniformly tan and eastern coyotes can be anything from black to blond and anywhere in between.
So the coy-dog thing is mostly myth but the eastern coyote already is a coyote-wolf-dog hybrid.
Around here, we see one at a time ;-)
(That Trijicon thing is expensive - it would be cheaper for us to hire you!)
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