Save for a few animal rights organizations, coyotes are pretty universally hated.
Pesky song dogs of the woods, these canines annoy hunters by preying on their beloved deer, they annoy farmers by preying on their beloved livestock, and they annoy suburban housewives by preying on their yappy lapdogs in the backyard. These highly adaptable and resilient canines are found across a diverse range of habitats, from remote wilderness to busy urban environments, feasting on small mammals, birds, fruits, and even insects.
Unlike their larger cousins (wolves), coyotes are primarily solitary creatures, but they do form small family groups. These tiny packs usually just consist of a mated pair and their offspring, and they’ll live and hunt together until the pups are old enough to venture off on their own.
Most of the time when you encounter a coyote, and some of us have, they are fairly skittish… usually opting to hightail it in the other direction. They’re also mostly nocturnal so it’s relatively rare to even encounter one in the daylight hours. But for one hunter in Wyoming, it was quite the opposite.
According to Cowboy State Daily, David Mossburg was out elk hunting with his son in Wyoming, which he recently moved to from Tennessee. He set up in an area where elk are known to pass through, when he spotted this pair of coyotes headed straight towards him:
“A lot of the coyotes I’ve seen were scrawny, mangy, dog-looking things. But these had really nice coats. At first, I even wondered if they might be wolves. But then I saw, clearly, that they were coyotes.”
I have to say I agree with the sentiment… a good lo0kin’ yodel dog right here.
One of the dogs took off and the other started barking at Mossburg, and it wasn’t backing down. The standoff went on for more than a couple of minutes, and Mossburg added that he strongly considered shooting the aggressive coyote with his Remmington 870 12-gauge shotgun, but ultimately decided not to because he wasn’t exactly sure where his son had set up (they had separated earlier in the hunt).
In the video, he says to the coyote:
“Uh, I have a 12-gauge with a deer slug, do you want me to shoot ya? Huh? Huh? Why don’t you go with your buddy, live another day?”
Eventually, the coyote ran off and Mossburg suspects it may have been a male protecting the pregnant female.
Pretty wild encounter… them Wyoming coyotes hit a little different than the ones in Tennessee, eh?
