God's Dog

God's dog Story of the Coyote

The coyote is many things to many people. No other wild animal has so successfully captured the imagination of humans who have come in contact with it. And, no other wild animal has more ably picked up the cadence of the march of civilization.

The coyote owes its naming to Thomas Say, the father of American zoologists. Scientist Say, who traveled with Long's group of explorers into the Rocky Mountains in 1823, is credited with first calling this little predator, “coyote”-probably an adaptation of the word, “coyotl,” a name the Spanish people picked up from the Aztec Indian.

The Aztecs, as did many other Indians, thought the coyote was in close communion with their Deity. This small animal-weighing 18-30 pounds, in rare cases going up to forty pounds-influenced the imagination of the native American greatly, for his image appears in much of their art. Coyotes were depicted on stone in early petroglyphs, on hides in paintings and pots in bas-relief.

Important as the coyote was in the life and times of the early American, only the Navajo Indian revered “God's Dog,” to the point of giving it protection. In fact the Navajos are the only people who have given the coyote any asylum. The Navajos liked to think that when God tired and needed a little fun and release from His cares, He would enter the body of a coyote for a short sojourn on earth. And if you have ever watched a coyote, or a pair of coyotes, at play, you easily understand how such a legend began.To many of us Caucasian Johnny-Come-Latelies, the coyote is the embodiment of the Devil himself. To the early settler of the West, the cattlemen, the sheepmen, the goatmen, the farmers trying to raise poultry, the coyote was responsible for accumulating debts.

The early Westerner could think of no other combination of words calculated to degrade or to goad a person more deeply than, “You damned coyote!”But the student and trained observer of naturé sees the coyote as having been placed on this earth for a very definite purpose-to act as a control on rodents and small mammals. Certainly nature has done a good job of adapting this small predator to that work. The coyote has a keen nose, extremely sensitive ears, good eyesight, and an exceptionally high intelligence. All of these are put together in a tireless body carried on fairly swift and very durable legs.

What the coyote can't catch by smelling out, by first seeing or hearing and then stalking, it can easily outsmart.

Ernest Thompson Seton, the brilliant interpreter of wildlife, related in his “Wild Animals At Home” how a pair of coyotes manage to catch a prairie dog. This takes some smart doing, if you know the prairie dog!This little rodent lives in communities out on a fiat plain or mesa. He feeds on grass, weeds and the roots and seeds of these plants. For his home he has a burrow, which is usually accessible by a number of entrances. He digs his hole straight down for 12 or 18 inches and piles the dirt in a mound around the opening. The “dog” obviously does it just this way for two reasons: to keep

Probably would have devoted several of his books to the life and times of the coyote instead of just mentioning it in passing.

When the early explorers of the West first saw the coyote, it was confining itself mainly to the plains country lying west of the of the Mississippi. The The Rocky Mountains seemed to form the western boundary of its range. But now and then one did drift north into the Canadian wilds and south into Mexico.

The function of the coyote as outlined by nature was to prey upon mice, rats and other rodents that exceeded population limitations which are determined by food and habitat. The coyote was also a scavenger, cleaning up after the deadlier wolves which preyed on the larger mammals. In the minds of early observers, this trait, eating of carrion, likened the coyote to the jackal of the old world. This association persists, and with it the scorn modern man has for the coyote.

But with the white man's invasion of the West, things changed rapidly for wildlife. Hunters killed off the buffalo and decimated the antelope, deer and elk. Settlers turned over the sod and cultivated the land. Farmers dammed the rivers and irrigated the deserts. Thus, within a few decades man had effected a complete change of the wildlife habitat. Nature had spent thousands of years adapting certain animals to certain terrains and climates, now with the habitat change, the balance was completely upset.

Many forms of wildlife disappeared.

Arizona and the southwest fostered the Merriam elk. Masked bobwhite disappeared. Other animal species retreated toward the Great Divide; Mearns quail, the dusky grouse, the otter became rarities.

But the coyote, instead of retreating, advanced against the tide of man. He went south, deeper into Mexico, to meet the Spanish ships bringing sheep, goats and cattle. It was also an easy matter for this clever fellow to backtrack the covered wagons and the Mormon handcart brigade, to find the source of those wonderful chickens, domestic turkeys, ducks and geese the pioneers were bringing west.

The coyote actually doubled and tripled the extent of his range, in spite of the fact that he was hunted, trapped and poisoned more ruthlessly than any other form of wildlife.

The coyote survived the strychnine poisoning campaigns conducted in the plains country in the 1860's when the reputedly smarter wolf was all but exterminated.

By the turn of the century the coyote was reported ranging north of the Arctic Circle. He appeared on the eastern seaboard and way down in Central America. He crossed the Rocky Mountains and went up the West Coast as far as the barrens in Alaska.

How has the coyote managed to do this? Perhaps the Navajos had it right-he may be "God's dog." Certainly he isn't just the caricature-the craven, sneaky, chicken thief and garbage picker-he's made out to be. Fact is, when you get to know him, he will surprise you.

The coyote is one of the few wild animals not afraid of fire. He'll often make his silent, almost ghost-like appearance at the perimeter of the light cast by your campfire. If you grab for a gun, a stick or a rock he'll dissolve into the night. But, if you just sit still and watch, you will become aware that the animal is actually study-ing you, too.

Campers and outdoorsmen in Arizona often hear coyotes, barking, howling, yapping-whatever you may want to call it-in the night around their camps. If you listen closely, you'll swear they are conversing.

It is the habit of coyotes to gather in twos, threes, or sometimes a half dozen may take positions on rises of ground around an outdoorman's camp. First one and then another will break out into a series of barked or howled phrases. The first time you hear it, you'll compare it with the yapping of a small dog. But as your ear becomes tuned to the sound a coyote makes you'll find it quite different.

The barking of a dog is monotonous, because a dog repeats the phrases and tone. But a coyote will yap and howl with constantly changing inflections, intonations and phrasing. As first one yaps, than another, and a third, each taking his turn, you'll swear they are discussing you, asking for and advancing opinions.

A group of coyotes will "sing" half the night-and the early westerners: the cowboys, the sheepherders and the prospectors hearing this gave it a name, "Coyotin' around the rim." And this very apt and descriptive term often is also applied by old-timers to a bull session held around a campfire-and by men, not coyotes.

Such a conference around your camp will continue until your campfire dies and you crawl into bed. Then one of the conferees may raid your grub box if you have left it open, or if you have a dog in camp, tease your pet into chasing him into the hills, where the other coyotes will lie in ambush. If your pooch gets back, he'll be a much wiser hound and a much better watchdog.

The professional hunter and trapper probably knows the coyote better than any other outdoorsman does. He is constantly pitting his wits, his rifle, traps and poisons against the clever coyote. This small predator is, in fact, the main reason for the continued employment of the professional hunter and trapper in this modern world.

In the early days it was the depredations by the coyote on the pioneers' livestock and poultry that caused the cattlemen, the sheepmen and the farmers to check their six-shooters, rifles and shotguns with the local sheriff while they sat in the town hall and organized against their common enemy. The Grange, the Cattle Growers' Asso-ciations, the Wool Growers' Associations and the Mohair Growers' Associations and the Farm Bureaus were out-growths of these first meetings. These pressure groups caused the old U.S. Biological Survey to hire the "gov-ernment wolf hunters."

These government men got the rest of the wolves that survived the poisoning campaigns of the 1860's, but they did not get the coyote. In later years the scope of the Biological Survey was broadened and it is now called the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and has within it the Division of Predator Control. This division employs today's professional hunters and trappers who are still on the trail of the coyote.

These hunters are not out to exterminate the little predator. They seek only to control coyotes on sheep, goat and cattle ranges and on wildlife management and restoration areas. And to do this they must use every means available: the trap, the rifle and the poison.

It was one of these trappers, who had a line of traps set on the fringe of the cultivated cultivated lands near Maricopa, on the edge of ige of metropolitan Phoenix, who had a very interesting experience with God's Dog.

Coyotes had been preying on poultry of the farmers and sheep on winter pasture in Salt River Valley, and the trapper had caught one of them. He shot, and thought he had killed, the female, which he took out of the trap and threw into the back of his pickup truck. It was then he noticed the female had been nursing a litter of pups.

As he bent to reset his trap, the animal which had been only wounded leaped out of the truck and ran across a field, along a fence line toward the bordering desert and a mesquite tree-filled desert wash.

The trapper jumped in his truck and wheeled in pursuit, trying to get close enough for another shot with his rifle. There was a hill on the other side of the brushfilled and tree-filled wash, and he saw that if the wounded female coyote ran through the cover and up the hill, he would have several open shots at her. He slammed on his brakes and jumped out of his truck. When a coyote ran out of the other side of the wash and up the hill, just as he had anticipated, he shot, and hit it. But when he went and picked it up he saw that it was male!

The willingness of the male coyote to make the supreme sacrifice, so his family may live, is a trait noticed more and more by professional hunters. Some of the outstanding examples of gallantry have been observed in the Arizona Strip. This country lies just south of Utah, where a bounty for coyotes has been paid in years past.

Although the bounty system for control of predators was first thought of by the Greeks, in 600 B.C., and has been in force in various parts of the world since then, it actually serves only to stimulate propagation of predators, or coyotes in North America.

A "hungry" trapper smart enough to catch a coyote is smart enough to realize that every female coyote he destroys decreases the breeding potential of the species, so he turns the females loose to bear more young. But, many a Utah trapper could not bear to see $6 run away through the brush, so he scalped the female first. These bald-headed female coyotes have been caught on the Strip.

The salaried hunter, on the other hand, usually seeks out the dens of the coyotes, because his efficiency is determined by the decline in the number of his catches.

Ted Riggs is such a government hunter, doing coyote control work on the Arizona Strip and the Kaibab North National Forest, home of America's famous deer herd.

Riggs has accumulated a vast wealth of knowledge, and a tremendous respect for the animal he seeks to control.

In the spring, when coyotes mate, the pair together will locate their den. This is usually on a small, rocky rise or outcropping. Then not just the one, but several dens will be started, to detract the attention of enemies away from the one which is actually to be used.

The male soon begins hunting for himself and his mate.

Under ordinary circumstances, studies have shown, approximately 50% of the coyote's diet is made up of rabbits and other rodents. Carrion supplies another 25%. Wild game makes up 72% of his diet, while 14% is supplied by domestic stock and poultry.

It is this costly predation, heavier in areas like southern Utah and the Arizona Strip, which is relatively a barren, desolate country, that gets the coyote in trouble.

The male coyote is smart enough to pass up easy kills and will travel miles to prey on a rancher's or farmer's stock, and thus divert attention away from his family and his home. He may carry his kill, a chicken, turkey, lamb or kid, back to his den. Coyotes have been recorded carrying such food eight or more miles. But, more often he will eat his fill and return to regurgitate the food for his mate and young.

This last, testing the food himself, is becoming more and more of a practice since 1947. For it was then the Division of Predator Control of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a very selective and lethal poison, called, "Ten-eighty." It was so named because 1,080 compounds were concocted and tested in the research chemists' laboratories before it was felt that a perfectcontrol for coyotes had been attained.

Ten-eighty, unlike strychnine, does not make the coyote sick and thereby warning it and giving the doglike animal an opportunity to vomit up the poison. A coyote once poisoned with strychnine and recovering is almost impossible to fool again. Ten-eighty was believed to be such an efficient control that the coyotes would never have opportunity to learn how to avoid it. But, the coyote has learned about 10-80! And so, the male coyote during denning, whelping and nursing time does almost all of the hunting, and tests the food before he brings it home! It is only when the males have been destroyed, or when the pups arebeing weaned and need more food that the female begins to hunt again.

The perseverance to survive and to perpetuate their kind, displayed by coyotes is astonishing . . . almost miraculous-indeed worthy of God's dog.

Innumerable instances have been related by government trappers of taking coyotes which had lost two feet in traps yet were traveling on the two remaining good ones. Some had lost their left feet, or their right feet, or the alternate front and hind foot. In any event they managed to travel well enough to be responsible for thousands of dollars worth of livestock and wildlife, and to continue to raise families.

The coyotes ability to survive against all odds is uniquely displayed in desert country, where at times no surface water is available. There the coyote follows a desert wash until he smells water underground. He then digs a hole down to the pool of water caught in a rocky basin. Then, in the community of seed, the very animals and birds the coyotes prey upon use this same hole to obtain water.

This digging, by coyotes, for water, was responsible for the nursing of Coyote Wells, in Imperial County, California, And of course, the haphazard digging of a prospector in trying to locate a body of ore is often known as. "Coyoting for the vein."

As was stated in the beginning, the coyote is many things to many people. To the farmer and the rancher. the coyote is a craven, socaling thief that comes to kill in the angin. To the sports hunter, tan coyote is companion for the gase available to rifle and shotgun. but let me relets mother story, then see what the coyote is to you.

A professional hunter was trapping for coyotes near Bowie, Arizona. He caught a female who showed sha Ised a wall grown fitor of pups nearby. So the bunter released the female, after putting a collac on her and attaching an automobile tife chain to drag behind the azalusal.

He did this, thinking the female would return to her den and that the dragsing chain would leave enough of a trail for hint to follow, wad destroy her litter. For more than a week, the hunter rode the range, repeatedly cutting the sign of the female coyote dragging the chain. But, she never returned to her den! Instead, the lapstar, rending the sigu on the gromid, saw that har mate was bringing her rabbits that he had haunted.

After a week or two had passed, and the banner was convinced the female coyote would not betray her fam ily, he and another hunter rode out on horseback to trail her down and to kill her.

The two men found the marks left by the dragging chain and followed the trail most of the morning, traveling many miles. They saw the tracks of her mate, now, who had brought her a jackrabbit that very night. And it was during this trailing they also found her den, but. now it showed signs of having been abandoned for many days. The family of pups and the male ware gone.

The hunters continued following the the spoor left by the female dragging the the admin. Her trail finally ran parallel to a barbed wire fence, perhaps a hundred yards or more away. And, then they flushed her from a brushy thicket. Instead of running directly away from, then, she turned almost at right angles and went through the barbed wire fence and away, where the horsemen could not ride in pursuit, The hunters jumped off, pulling their rifles, and began shouting. One of them wounded her, she fell, but recov ered and ran on to disappear.

The hunters then remounted and rode it while back long the fence to a gate, where they passed through and then rode back to where they had last seen the female coyote. From there they trailed her to a deep arroyo where she had hidden and killed her.

The whole morning, and part of the afternoon of that day had been consumed in trailing the female coyote. Their horses were exhausted and thirsty. The men re membered a stock tank a distance up the arroyo, and they rode to the tank to water and rest their horses before returning to the ranch.

As they topped the earthen dam, they saw a group. of young coyotes playing at the water's edge on the far side, The hunters Jumped off their houses and pulled their rifles again from their scabbards. At the same time, an adult coyote appeared on the ridge above and behind the pups. It posed there, diverting their attention and shots, as it was killed-and the young bed disappeared into the brush, When the hunters rode over, they found a male coyote!

Pieced together by the hunters, skilled and able interpreters of sign, the story of parental sacrifice, was that the female never betrayed the location of her den and young after she was trapped, colored and released with the dragging chain. Her mate took over the family chores. The dog coyote not only fed the family, but during the interval he moved the five, ready-to-wean pups nearly five miles to the stock tank, where they would have water to drink.