In the depths of the woods and the
shallows of the city, the coyote,
North America’s most cunning canid,
continues to outwit and outlast.

By LORI HALL STEELE

Rule 1. The Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going "Meep-Meep!"
---Looney Tunes “Rules of Conflict” for Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner

The coyote trappers are taking their morning bath, standing aside a dusty, uninhabited road through Mio-area forests, rubbing handfuls of sweet fern all over their jeans, faces, underarms like soap. This helps cover human scent, explains Damien Lunning, one of the state’s best-known fur trappers.
      The mismatched pair — an old-school backcountry trapper and his college co-ed sidekick — hop in the truck, where the floors are covered in sweet fern, and Damien slowly drives, looking intently out the windows for dog-like paw tracks at the road’s edge. Coyotes – which the Navajo call “god’s dog” – are “just like humans,” Damien explains. They take the easiest route: a road, a two-track, a game trail through the woods.
      Dena Jones is a vet-school student from Utah who’s assisting this U.S. Department of Agriculture research to assess the spread of bovine TB to other wildlife. She spots something: “Man tracks,” she reports. Damien nods and keeps driving. Down the road they spy bobcat tracks, deer tracks, bear tracks.
      “Okay,” Damien says finally, “I got one coyote track here.”
      He steers the truck onto an overgrown two-track and parks amid scrub brush and Jack pines. They quietly get out of the truck cab, nimbly stepping only on lichen and short grass, and without speaking, begin unloading spring-loaded traps from the truck bed.

Rule 9. The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.

Chances are, even if you’ve never seen a coyote, a coyote has seen you. “It’s very likely that if you’ve walked through the woods, they’ve just watched you go by,” says wildlife biologist Rich Earle, with the state’s Department of Natural Resources.
      Beyond being among the most adaptable and intelligent creatures on the continent, Canis latrans also are the most abundant furry predators in our neck of the woods … and in North America. Their numbers and range everywhere have increased despite a century of devoted bounty hunting, hardcore fur trapping and terrain-changing suburban creep. You can thank some reproductive ingenuity: When their number wane, coyotes simply start having more pups per litter. “That’s one reason why humans have never been able to eradicate coyotes anywhere in the country,” says DNR fur-bearer specialist Dave Bostick.
      Coyotes can still be found howling from mesas and roaming the brush of boreal forests, but today they’re also just as likely to be discovered in new digs, say under a bridge downtown or at the mall. In densely populated California, they’ve been found living beneath backyard decks.
      The slim, wild dogs populate every Michigan county — including an estimated 200 in sprawl-happy Oakland County, where their increasing numbers are making headlines — but they’re found in greatest concentration here Up North and in the Upper Peninsula. No one’s sure how many coyotes prowl Michigan, but trappers and hunters last year killed 19,685, a figure that’s remained relatively constant for years.
      You may have heard their distinctive falsetto at night — a classic how-how-howoooo. They’re the most vocal of North America’s wild mammals, and that howl is one of three calls, including a distress call and a squeak. But even if you haven’t spied a coyote ever, be assured, they are watching us. Lucky for us, then, that coyotes have an innate fear of their greatest enemy: humans.

Rule 8. Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote's greatest enemy.

To catch a coyote, you’ve got to think like a coyote.
      First off, they rarely make the same mistake twice. Secondly, like the dogs they are, coyotes are territorial. They’ve got a keen sense of smell. And they’re not put off by rank cat urine or, for that matter, putrid beaver meat that’s been marinating for 15 years. So we find Dena, carefully dripping a drop of bottled urine onto a charred pine knot, which absorbs the liquid well. Dena’s coyote trap is nestled and set in a carefully dug hole, concealed beneath scattered anthill dirt. When she’s done, it’s impossible, at least for humans, to tell that people have been there.
      Damien has trapped most his 50-some years, for skins when prices were good – coyote fur fetched $100 per pelt in fur’s heyday, the ‘70s, but now net about $17 – but for the past 15 years or so he’s trapped for science. Sometimes he’ll band the animals to monitor their movements. With this bovine TB project, coyotes must be shot, then quickly shipped on ice to a lab for tissue diagnosis.
      Coyotes pose problems for trappers because they’re awfully smart, on par with the brainiest domestic breeds, like German shepherds. They wise up to traps. They avoid places where there’s evidence of humans. They’re hard to match wits with. It’s essential to know their habitats and habits.
      Coyotes prefer brushy areas, wooded hillsides and agricultural land, and they like traveling along berms, railway tracks and brushy areas alongside roads and expressways. These howlers live six to eight years in the wild. They court for several months, then mate for years, though not necessarily for life, and together raise litters that average six pups, which are born in early spring. The whole gang sleeps together in burrows that may be enlarged woodchuck or badger dens.
      Coyotes travel an average of 5 miles a night hunting, and will usually defend their entire 12-mile range during denning season. They’re busiest at dawn or dusk but can be seen any time. They’re capable of running up to 40 mph and jumping 13 feet.
      They hunt alone, in pairs or in family groups while pups are young. Most of their diet is meat — rabbits, fawns, mice — but they’ll eat almost anything. “The coyote feeds opportunistically—it takes what’s available, it takes what’s easy,” says Pete Butchko, Michigan director for the USDA wildlife services program. “They’ll eat anything from tomatoes and watermelon to rodents and road kill. That’s why they’ve been so successful: They take what Mother Nature and humans give them, and they thrive.”
      And finally, they really do know that humans are their enemy. That’s why Damien and Dena, when they’re out setting traps, are so careful not to leave footsteps.

Rule 10. The audience's sympathy must remain with the Coyote.

When a coyote pup gets caught in a trap, it’s a family affair. Mom, the aunts and uncles, and dad bring care packages of food (granted, it’s regurgitated, but pups like that) and the trapped pup’s sibs circle round so he can join in the coyote games. Coyote mates are similarly affectionate, with males wooing their gals with regurgitated takeout. And they’re loyal. Dena once was bitten in the bottom by a male after escorting his lady out of the pen.
      These wild dogs have lots of personality. “Some are so sweet,” Dena says, “Others want to rip you open.” Damien reiterates: “One will be wilder than a wild man. The next one, you walk up and he’ll put his head down.”
      These are dogs of legend: They’re emblematic of adaptability and wit. Canis latrans are highly revered by Native American cultures — from Mayans to Hopi, from Navajo to Michigan’s Ottawa and Chippewa tribes — “largely because of its irreverence,” says Robin Shutt, author of Shipwreck at Sleeping Bear, a novel centered on Native American beliefs. This wild dog also, ironically, teaches that all things are sacred because it treats nothing as sacred.
      Coyote’s trickster spirit reminds us how fallable humans are, and how imperfect and unpredictable life is. “Coyote has a dual personality,” Shutt says, “representing ying and yang, good and evil, comedy and drama.”
      The coyote spirit also infests pop-culture legends with similar themes. The classic Looney Tunes character Wile E. Coyote is on a perpetual mission to capture Road Runner, endlessly falling over cliffs, smashing into walls. Like coyotes everywhere, he is able to regenerate, still possessing boundless energy and appetite. He reveals his dual personality: He is clever, and he is foolish.
      Our trapper, Damien, however, doesn’t buy the foolish part. “Coyotes make me look so dumb every day it’s pathetic,” he says. “They’ll dig out a trap, never unset it, never get caught. These coyotes are smarter than your English teacher was.”

Rule 2. No outside force can harm the Coyote -- only his own ineptitude or the failure of Acme products.

Three a.m. seems the most likely time for a chance encounter with these night predators, says Bostick. He fields a call a day from police officers, newspaper deliverers and other daysleepers who’ve crossed paths with what they believe to be a coyote.
      For the record, you can tell the difference between coyotes and larger wolves — which populate the Upper Peninsula — by their tails: The coyote carries its round, bushy tail slightly dipped when it runs, while wolves carry theirs horizontally. Coyotes resemble slender, small German shepherds with narrow muzzles, upright pointed ears and yellow eyes. Most are yellowish-gray, with white or cream-colored fur covering their throats and bellies. The average adult stands 20 inches at the shoulder and weighs less than 35 pounds.
      Most of Bostick’s callers are wary. But know this: Coyotes have never killed a person in Michigan, and the few and minor reported coyote-human tangles have been with those who’d been fed by humans, which helped them lose that innate fear. The moral: Don’t feed them. “Some people may romanticize the coyote and there are certainly some things about coyotes that are admirable, but they’re not pets—they’re wild animals,” Butchko says.
      Wild or not, they have adapted to man’s presence, even if they stay away from humans at all costs. Damien once radio-collared a coyote who roamed 45 miles away and set up house near an outlet mall in West Branch, next to Interstate 75. “He was probably eating hamburgers out of the dumpster.”
      Back in the wilds at the traps, coyotes have similarly acclimated to human presence, which is why Damien and Dena work so hard not to leave any human smell, print or sound behind.
      The pair has finished burying their sets for the day. So far, in the ten weeks since beginning this research project, they’ve buried 250 traps and captured 22 coyotes. It’s slow going, but that’s the way with coyotes. “You’ve got to be patient,” Damien says. Indeed. The duo works 12-hour days, seven days a week, trying to ensnare elusive coyotes, only to wake up, take their morning bath in sweet fern and find the traps empty — just like today. Worse yet are the morning when traps have been dug up and treated like toys, the days when small paw prints remind us even the most seasoned trappers can be outwitted by a playful puppy, who then runs off to howl into the night.

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BE COYOTE SAFE
Coyotes have a long history of harming herds out west, but have little record of damage to livestock in Michigan. Still, given the chance, they have no moral qualms about raiding the occasional henhouse or snacking now and then on Fluffy or Fido.
      So keep things coyote safe. If you suspect there’s a wild dog roaming your ‘hood, keep pet and bird food out of reach, check compost pile, secure gardens and, by all means, never feed them.

Published in Traverse magazine