see post 22Originally Posted by Gray Blazer
While camping just north of Wise shelter in SW Virginia earlier this week I had the pleasure of listening to a chorus of coyote calls very near my camp. After a few minutes they were gone. On Tuesday morning as I was taking a break 2 coyotes came over the ridge and spotted me, stopped dead in their tracks, turned around and high tailed it out of there.
On step at a time, One mile at a time. All the way Baby!
Well, sorta true.....
This is probably a reasonable assumption for coyotes that haven't been habituated to humans yet.
Once a coyote (or any wild animal for that matter) loses it's natural fear of humans, all bets are off. They'll come up on your front porch or come into your garage and take small dogs and cats right in front of you.
Small children have suffered predatory attacks out in Kalifornia while adults were in close proximity. In many places there, coyotes run the streets in suburban neighborhoods looking for food (your trash or your cat) because they have absolutely no fear of humans.
They routinely spends thousands of dollars "relocating" trapped coyotes, only to have them return. They refuse to address the problem, which is; the animals have lost their natural fear of humans. Moving them around doesn't address that in the least.
In my part of the country, coyotes that don't fear people don't last long - they tend be bullet traps. ;^)
I think Eastern Coyotes have been known to Eastern Woodland Tribes for along time because Coyote plays a prominent role in Micmac legends and so forth. It has probably always been closer to wolves than western coyotes, but I think wolves and dogs and coyotes all interbreed and are all part of the same species and there must always be some intermixing and intermigration that keeps things changing over time, even before Europeans arrived. We have to consider also that all the Native tribes had alot of different breeds of dogs of their own, which would have also been a means by which wolf and eastern coyote and western coyote populations would change over time. Perhaps less so the smaller western coyote. Not sure.
I was just down in the Dominican Repuplic. Lots of dogs down there and they all look more or less the same. Not sure what breed you would call them, but they were mid sized and short haired and light coloured and all looked very similar to one another whether they were pets or strays. It was hard to tell which were which, as they were all treated more or less the same, but some were clearly family pets, and others were clearly strays. It struck me though as soon as I first saw them that they seemed like REAL dogs, and lived and interacted with humans as you would have expected them to over thousands of years. They weren't something artifically bred, just these local indiginous mutts, more the way you would expect it should be.
"I see", said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw.
I'm not really a hiker, I just play one on White Blaze.
Interesting exerpts from wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote
"Unlike its cousin the Gray Wolf, which is Eurasian in origin, the coyote evolved in North America 2 MYA alongside the Dire Wolf. Unlike the wolf, the coyote's range has expanded in the wake of human civilization, and coyotes readily reproduce in metropolitan areas. It is thought by certain experts that the coyote's North American origin may account for its greater adaptability than the wolf, due to North America's greater prehistoric predation pressures."
"Traditional stories from many Native American nations include a deity whose name is translated into English as "Coyote". Although especially common in stories told by southwestern Native American nations, such as the Diné and Apache, stories about Coyote appear in dozens of Native American nations from Canada to Mexico.
Usually appearing as a trickster, a culture hero or both, Coyote also often appears in creation myths and etiological myths. Although usually appearing in stories as male, Coyote can also be female or even a hermaphrodite, in some traditional Native American stories."
"Coyotes have also been known on occasion to mate with wolves, though this is less common than with dogs due to the wolf's hostility to the coyote. The offspring, known as a coywolf, is generally intermediate in size to both parents, being larger than a pure coyote, but smaller than a pure wolf. A study showed that of 100 coyotes collected in Maine, 22 had half or more wolf ancestry, and one was 89 percent wolf. A theory has been proposed that the large eastern coyotes in Canada are actually hybrids of the smaller western coyotes and wolves that met and mated decades ago as the coyotes moved toward New England from their earlier western ranges.[18] The Red Wolf is thought by certain scientists to be in fact a wolf/coyote hybrid rather than a unique species. Strong evidence for hybridization was found through genetic testing which showed that red wolves have only 5% of their alleles unique from either Gray Wolves or coyotes. Genetic distance calculations have indicated that red wolves are intermediate between coyotes and Gray Wolves, and that they bear great similarity to wolf/coyote hybrids in southern Quebec and Minnesota. Analyses of mitochondrial DNA showed that existing Red Wolf populations are predominantly coyote in origin."
For those curious about the Dire Wolf:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dire_Wolf
What you want to believe doesn't have any bearing on reality...educate yourself.
“He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.” –Socrates
I would have to agree more with Engine on this one.
My understanding is they are very timid of humans, but agressive towards dogs.
Not so much as predator/prey but as members of the same species, different pack.
I have to say though that it seems that wolves, dogs, coyotes are all related as one big plastic and diverse but competitive and intermixing species, with widely varying behaviour. Coyotes are more distinct from wolves and dogs, but then there are exceptions like the Red Wolf and the Eastern Coyote. They all seem very adaptable though, so behaviour and characteristics can change from one place to another and over time. Also there is likely considerable variation in behaviour within individuals, be they wolves, dogs, or coyotes, depending on both their nature and their nurture.
Yep. I have a 90 lb. Doby/Rott mix who tangled with a coyote. He did ok but got scratched and bitten some. The real problem, at least where I live, is that they will use a bitch in heat to lure a male toward a pack. Folks around here lose dogs and cats constantly. 'Yotes seem to be more of a problem than lions.
Founder, Royal Order of the Scarlet Nape
I have personally seen coyotes trying to lure dogs away. Also, they DO consider dogs, depending upon size of course, food out here in the Rockies.
I saw a pack of them beyond the tree line and started glassing the grass in front of us. About 75 yards away I spotted one on its belly crawling toward my dog and me.
They are a very real threat to almost any animal out here. There are no wolves in the area, apparently, to control their population.
YMMV.
Founder, Royal Order of the Scarlet Nape
You might want to google "coyote attacks in Denver, Co."
Let me know what you think.
Founder, Royal Order of the Scarlet Nape
Out of curiosity, have you heard of anyone using my favorite breed- Rhodesian Ridgebacks?
While living in Arizona, I brought this same subject up at a get together with uncles and grandfather who were all born and raised there. They said there have been cases of coyotes attacking dogs, but there were more cases of Coyotes impregnating dogs, so don't take a bitch in heat out hiking.
I grew up in Central IL, and we and our neighbors constantly lost cats to coyotes, and a number of small dogs went missing over the years too. We had a shepherd who never was bothered as far as we knew.
One day I was sitting back to back with a friend in a kind of "peninsula" made by a loop of the Mackinaw river (we were both glassing treelines for wildlife), and we were approached by a pack of 6 coyotes. We sat still, but it was obvious they knew we were there. They surrounded us and watched for a while, and since they didn't seem to be scared of us it worried us a bit, so we got up and made noise until they ran off.
Coyotes can be agressive....I raise angus cattle here in Lower Alabama....coyotes always come around during calving season...have no use for them....that's why you will see donkeys in with most herds....donkeys will attack a coyote and kill it...amazing thing to watch....donkeys don't really like dogs either but can be trained to leave alone.....so all you gotta do is get a donkey on the trail with ya....no more coyote problems...cheers, bill
hmmm, a pack donkey ... thats not a bad idea ....
I was wondering the same thing. Ridgies are my favorite breed as well.
As I recall, Greyhounds are one of the five breeds used to "engineer" the Ridgeback.
Founder, Royal Order of the Scarlet Nape
As I know the story the origins are pretty speculative, but do include Greyhounds (or the forerunners thereof). Ditto for English Bulldogs and Mastiffs, with a heavy dose of the (now extinct) Hottentot Hunting Dog- the source of the ridge.
Rhodies have good speed, great endurance, amazing quickness, and are hell on wheels in a dogfight- there's no doubt in my mind they'd make a great addition to any pack of dogs used for coyote hunting.
I don't think ridgebacks are quite fast enough, even some of the other sighthounds aren't. The best dogs are supposed to be Lurchers, half greyhound for speed and other things for endurance. Greyhounds are plenty tough to anything that's prey, if you've ever seen a race, you've seen their behavior. They're always in a pack and basically just swarm, surround, stand on and rip apart whatever they catch.
Here's a good page on coursing yotes, even got pic of a ridgeback/grey cross.
http://www.high-lonesomehounds.com/Other%20Game.htm
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