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Even wolves kill mice where necessary. And eastern coyotes are filling the wolves' ecological niche. With such an abundance of deer of course they'll form packs and genetically grow larger.
With primary prey being deer and with wolf genetics this will be the evolution of things. Our coyotes here only form very loose pack associations, more often not working above pairs. They form a loose pack when preying on livestock. The most I've ever seen to a group was six animals and they were picking off our foals.
We've been seeing more and more hybriding with feral dogs in the last ten years and this is causing some issues. These are a whole new animal, bigger, bolder and more prone to thrill kill. There's been a lot more dumping of unwanted dogs which causes us more than one sort of grief.
Dumpers are a special sort of varmint. People who do this deserve to be bullwhipped. The feral issue comes more off of the reservation, while dumped animals as often as not find their way to us begging for help. It's heartbreaking. Some poor critter betrayed by their "owner" and left on the highway to fend for themselves.
Feral wise cats are a big problem. They go feral easy like, breed rapidly and put serious pressure on our game birds. Ground nesters like quail, chukar and pheasant especially. We have little choice with feral cats but to shoot them. Sometimes but rarely a dumped cat will show up and adopt us but more often they go wild and become nuisance animals.
Feral cats are lethal hunters and the way they breed will clean out quail and chukar in a fairly wide area if left unchecked. It's VERY important for us to both fix and vaccinate the cats that we keep as barn cats. Rabies and distemper are huge concerns and if we don't get them fixed we'll be hip deep in kittens in short order. The coyotes also perform a public service by helping keep the feral cats thinned down.
Coyotes don't require a moving target to trigger on. Standing still is all the better to them. They are quite...pragmatic. I've heard tell that wolves trigger on flight and it makes sense. But I have no firsthand knowledge of wolves.
You mentioned the hybrid line, and I've read a bit on that. I couldn't believe it at first but there it is. Coywolves. Wow. We have been having hybrid issues with feral dogs which is quite a nasty mix. A whole new breed of predator. Bigger, stronger, less fear of people and more inclined to thrill kill given a chance.
I had a coydog when I was younger. There's a pic of him on my profile. He was a very serious animal and a real handful to train. Security was his job and he was very good at it. He would not respond to commands from anyone but me and we were a tight pair for the whole eight years I had him. Ironically he was killed by coyotes. The pic of him I put up shows his attributes well and highlights the coyote in him.
Coyotes are in reality THE top predator around here. I rank them even over mountain lions in both formidability and shear smarts. I believe we will see an even bigger issue with ol' Wiley as the hybriding spreads. Eventually we will see an entirely new species supplant the old of both wolf and yote.
I've seen some very nasty dog hybrids here that I have trouble even describing accurately. Like something out of some futruristic post apocalypse scifi movie. The coyote has more of a future than humans do I believe in terms of being around long term. Who knows, they may become the dominant animal on the planet in time. They have a knack for survival I have not seen in most other predators and with interbreeding they become even more formidable. The latter is an issue to be taken plumb serious and I shudder to think what the final result of this will look like.
A mix of wolf, coyote and feral dogs added in could be quite the nasty customer.
About fifteen years ago I was fishing with a friend in the middle of our camp's 35 acre lake. We were in a little 12 foot jon boat with an electric motor. The lake is just about a half mile long and quarter mile wide. We heard a splash and saw that one spike buck had jumped in the lake and was making the quarter mile swim across the narrow width of the lake - very close to our boat. As it swam past the boat we both thought we saw blood on it's neck; so we followed it to shore. When it jumped out of the water a coyote was waiting. We did not see if it caught the buck since the red brush was so thick and we sat so low. We pictured that the deer was already exhausted from the quarter mile swim. What amazed us was that the coyote was smart enough or had another coyote in their pack circle the lake and wait on the other side. We believed that any domesticated dog, that chased any deer into a lake, would have simply stopped on shore and barked - it never would have thought the process through. It was almost as if forcing the deer into the lake was 'planned' or a 'learned' process from other successful hunts.
When the coyotes move into an area; deer will run in fear and jump into the road (not leaving drivers time to avoid the collision). Possibly that is another 'learned' successful hunting tactic - using cars to make their kill?
They are very smart predators. One pack of them gave me a nice doe when I used to hunt. They chased the deer right to me and I shot it - I listened to them as they approached and only saw the deer (not the coyotes). If you connect the dots I could even argue that they use hunters, that leave the deer guts in the woods, to supply them with a meal.
My father and brother-in-law also spotted one four point buck standing away from shore in the same lake. They thought the deer was bleeding from it's hind quarters as they approached the deer; which then came out and ran away.
Maybe I am giving them too much credit? I do not know. It would be interesting to study how coyotes have adapted to using the 'tools' we 'supply'.
PS I totally agree about the feral cat; but how do you argue with a 90 year old grandmother, next door neighbor, with a special needs grandchild? Of course I would shed crocodile tears if something ever happened to the cat; but I would not want to be responsible.
Only read the OP. I came within 6ish or so feet of 2 coyotes. They came into my BF's back yard while I was grilling out. I slowly got up and walked backwards to the door.
I also saw a red wolf in the yard 2 separate time. No one believed me until I showed them the footage on my security cams.
Seeing wildlife of all kinds is common in Idaho cities.
Here in Idaho Falls, I've seen beaver, deer, porcupines, skunks, moose, elk, coyotes, foxes, weasels, raccoons, bobcats, and muskrats inside the city limits. Just about everything but bears, rattlers and mountain lions. But I'm sure those critters come and go quietly, too.
In most cases, if there's a random surprise meeting, all a person has to do is alertly give them the road and they'll take it. The critter I'm most wary of are raccoons. Coyotes don't want a fight, but a raccoon is always ready for a scrap first, and they can be really aggressive.
The coyotes here won't try to fight a dog unless their mate is with them and the numbers are in their favor. Even then, if a dog seems to be very willing to fight, they would sooner flee than fight if the dog is medium-sized or larger.
I have a fond memory of waking up early one Sunday morning, and while I was filling my coffee pot with water at my kitchen sink, I saw a young doe strolling down the street. I watched her for over an hour while she wandered around in my neighbor's yards, munching on the flowerbeds and checking things out just before the sun came up.
As soon as the sun rose, she disappeared. that's something they are all very good at doing.
We have a place out in the country. One time, I was just sitting in a chair outside, and I could see something coming up the hill, so I got out of my chair to get a closer view. It was a bobcat. When it saw me, it just turned around and went back down the hill. LOL
Another time, I was picking up sticks to make a fire for the fire pit. A fox came out of the woods to my left. It stopped and looked at me, and looked at my dog, who was to my right. The dog and the fox just looked at each other for a minute or so...no tension...just observation. And then the fox turned around and left. My dog didn't try to chase it...which is out of character for her. It was kind of weird.
I was driving in my neighborhood a year or so ago, and saw a coyote just walking down the street in broad daylight, modern suburbia. We had had some recent floods, and I assume the rising water had displaced it.
A few years back I was pulling out of my driveway at dawn and saw what I thought was a stray dog walking down the road. It walked right by my car. I opened the car window to call to it, thinking it was a lost dog and was shocked to realize it was a coyote. He didn't even blink as he walked past my car, which was running at the time. Completely freaked me out. Where I live now in Texas there are often stories of coyotes getting small dogs. I have 3 so, I do worry when we are out hiking but so far have not encountered any. Bobcats are common here, though you rarely see them.
OP back. Wow, lots more posts since I last posted! I still haven't walked on that old college campus of mine where I saw the coyote.
There's a TV show on Animal Planet called "Intruders". It seems to be just like the old show that used to be called "Infested" about wild animals or pests that encroach on humans in their habitat so incredibly strong that it makes life a living hell (for the humans).
Well, I saw a recent episode about coyotes (coincidentally) that occurred in MY EXACT city that I live in. These coyotes got into this couples' backyard & ended up killing 2 of their 4 dogs. They had video cameras so they saw how it happened.
I very strongly suggest that for ALL of you who live in areas where there are coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, etc. to purchase COYOTOE ROLLERS. I'd buy it if the problem was getting out of hand. Anyone have it & if so, how effective is it? This video shows how it works:
OP back. Wow, lots more posts since I last posted! I still haven't walked on that old college campus of mine where I saw the coyote.
There's a TV show on Animal Planet called "Intruders". It seems to be just like the old show that used to be called "Infested" about wild animals or pests that encroach on humans in their habitat so incredibly strong that it makes life a living hell (for the humans).
Well, I saw a recent episode about coyotes (coincidentally) that occurred in MY EXACT city that I live in. These coyotes got into this couples' backyard & ended up killing 2 of their 4 dogs. They had video cameras so they saw how it happened.
I very strongly suggest that for ALL of you who live in areas where there are coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, etc. to purchase COYOTOE ROLLERS. I'd buy it if the problem was getting out of hand. Anyone have it & if so, how effective is it? This video shows how it works:
Coyotes are cat vacuums. My buddy and his knucklehead wife asked me to watch their cat while they were on vacation. I went over day 1 to check on it and his wife demanded fluffy be able to go out back during the day. I went over multiple times, even after dark and no cat. The next day I started snooping around and found orange fur under the bushes. Had I known they were going to let it outside I wouldn't have volunteered.
I started seeing it regularly on our street shortly after that.
I'm not allowed to have chain link fencing where I live but I don't let my dogs out without me. And I would never allow my cats to roam outdoors.
Bright lights tend to keep them away so my house/yard is lit up at night.
I always carry my stun gun flashlight when I walk my dogs at night but I steer clear of the woods and other areas where the wild animals are most commonly seen at night.
But I'm talking about when you're in the city, amongst civilization/residential homes, etc.
There are estimated to be 6,000 mountain lions in CA, and 5,000 coyotes in the city of Los Angeles.
In the suburbs of Los Angeles I regularly saw skunks, opossums, snakes and coyotes while working as an exterminator. One of my clients had photos of a mountain lion that frequently visited her property, but I never saw it in the flesh.
One day a red racer streaked across a driveway near me, and I also came upon a mojave green sleeping by a house. I relocated several hundred skunks and opossums into the wild, and even a Pacific rattlesnake. The property owner did not want the snake harmed.
Once I observed a single coyote pacing along a chain link fence, while the large dog inside the yard cowered by the patio door. I saw another coyote waiting at a red light (more likely waiting on the cars), and then he loped across the street when the cross-traffic stopped and the light changed to green. This behavior was quite unlike his jaywalking kin.
Have also come across peafowl that were released by Anheuser-Busch Gardens when it closed in SoCal, but they kept their distance. I read that peacocks, during mating season, will attempt to mate with anything, so it was probably more like me keeping my distance.
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