It is highly unusual to get nice coyotes in February. They may look good initially and be fairly thickly furred but if you compared them to a November coyote you'd see a marked difference in quality.
I trapped and hunted coyotes professionally in Eastern Washington from 1988-2001 and depended heavily on taking large numbers of coyote hides to make wages for the winter. I always started trapping in late October when the deer and elk seasons closed and went to the first week of January.
Coyotes become prime in late October or early November. Coming into prime is triggered by waning daylight hours. Fur thickness is a function of average climate in a given area. One unseasonably cold winter in Texas is not going to produce better coyotes than an unseasonably mild winter in Montana. And fur does not prime back up if there is a late season cold spell.
Different areas of the country produce different colors and quality of fur. Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas produce some of the finest quality and best colored coyotes in the country. Eastern Washington and Idaho have good quality and good colored coyotes, though not as nice as the aforementioned. Coastal coyotes are dark and largely undesirable in the garment market. Much of that fur ends up in trim or felt. The same applies to southern coyotes.
In my area coyote hides were never better than they were in November. By the middle of January that coyote has worn that fur through brush, fences and thickets and is showing broken guard hairs and sometimes missing patches. Burrs, weed seeds and pine pitch will cause them to scratch or pull at the fur which does some damage. By February they are staring to breed and showing considerable rubbing. It's not to say you won't find the exceptionally nice coyote in February from time to time but generally not.
I don't know who in the Northwest is still buying fur. Gary at Moscow has been buying for as long as I can remember. I don't know if he'll buy any late season coyotes, especially in the round.
Probably way more information than you ever wanted to know about coyote fur.
