Anyone who pays even slight attention to the outdoors world knows coyotes can be a major problem, but I had no clue that populations could be so densely concentrated until I watched this video.
A listener to the great MeatEater podcast sent in a video that one of their crew members posted on Instagram and it shows a scene that’s almost impossible to wrap your head around.
The listener, who was a landowner in Alberta, Canada, decided to run an experiment to see how many coyotes could be spotted in a particular corn field. They set up a camera to look straight down a break in the crop then went to one side of the field and let off a shotgun blast. What was picked up in the video was truly mind-blowing.
84, yes 84, coyotes were spotted running through their field after getting spooked by the gunshot.
Here’s a short clip where the count gets to 40, which would be crazy enough, but according to the post’s caption, the number over doubled from where this cuts off.
Obviously, this is a major problem for a number of reasons.
For starters, you can hear a dog making some noises in this video and it would only take a few coyotes to take out that pupper and any others they have. Also, you assume these people are hunters and that many coyotes being spotted just in this particular area at this particular time pretty much means there will be next to no game animals available.
Not to mention if they raise livestock or have young kids running around, both make easy targets for these wild canines.
On average, coyotes have a pack size of around 3 to 7 adults and 2 to 7 puppies, and they’re usually just one family. They don’t really hunt and live in large packs the same way that wolves do. So, whether this is a super pack or a number of packs banding together, it really makes you think about the number of predators lurking behind nearly every tree while out in the woods.
Good luck trying to eradicate all of these with hunting alone. I’m no expert and don’t have a solution, but in Canada as well as in the states, there’s some areas that really need to dedicate substantial resources to coyote management or this is going to get even further out of hand in a hurry.
It’s a start…
Here’s a lone coyote trying to run down a deer in a bison herd in Yellowstone National Park to prove just how tenacious these guys can be.
