Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
that coydog offspring won't survive. The animals that inhabit the East are not coydogs, but are most
emphatically eastern coyotes, a true-breeding subspecies of the coyote.
Eastern coyotes are also extremely controversial. For one thing, they too attack sheep, although
sheep raising is far less prevalent in the East than in the West. Moreover, under some circumstances
eastern coyotes can be significant predators of white-tailed deer, North America's premier big game
animal. For a long time, most wildlife biologists believed that coyote predation on deer was generally
limited to the spring fawn drop, and that evidence of deer in coyote scats at other times of the year was
largely due to feeding on deer carrion. Lately, however, research by Maine wildlife biologist Gerald
Lavigne has altered that opinion substantially.
Given two conditions—very deep snow and inadequate mature softwood cover in deer wintering
areas—Lavigne found that coyote predation on deer can be very substantial. Still more interesting
and significant, he discovered that coyotes under those conditions readily killed healthy deer in their
prime—not merely the weak, sick, and old, as had previously been believed. Once a deer is floundering
in deep snow, it apparently doesn't matter much whether it's healthy or infirm; in either case, coyotes
can soon exhaust the deer and bring it down.
Although coyotes under these conditions can reduce the number of deer available to humans in lim-
ited areas, there's no evidence that they're decimating deer populations on a wide scale in the East, as
often charged. Indeed, the number of deer taken by human hunters in eastern states has risen substan-
tially—and sometimes dramatically—during the very years when coyote populations were also grow-
ing and expanding. In many areas where coyotes are abundant, state wildlife agencies have steadily
liberalized hunting regulations in order to hold deer numbers within biologically sustainable limits. Al-
though the eastern coyote unquestionably preys on deer, it's evident that it isn't a limiting factor in
whitetail numbers except under rather drastic winter conditions.
Undeniably, coyotes can and do cause major problems and substantial economic loss in several ways,
but the equation is more complicated than that. Coyotes are great opportunists with catholic tastes.
Their primary food sources aren't such things as sheep and deer. Rather, they feed heavily on mice,
voles, ground squirrels, woodchucks, rabbits, carrion, frogs, snakes, lizards, house cats, small domestic
dogs, garbage, large insects, seeds, berries, fruits, and other plant materials—in short, on almost every
kind of food that's edible. Their penchant for eating fruit, incidentally, is also making the coyote
animal
non grata:
in some areas where watermelons are grown commercially, coyotes have developed such an
affinity for the juicy melons that growers are beginning to shoot them.
The difficulty is that it's relatively easy to quantify coyote damage to sheep, deer, and other creatures
valued by humans, but extremely difficult to assess the value of coyote control of mice, voles, rats,
woodchucks, and other creatures that also cause a variety of damage. Unquestionably, coyotes do a
great deal of good in this regard, but that's small consolation to someone suffering serious coyote de-
predation on his or her flock of sheep.
This leads to the thorny and contentious issue of coyote control. Millions upon millions of dollars
have been invested in coyote control programs, especially in the West. Coyotes are assailed in a variety
