Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Coyotes attacked my dog this morning

You could be right.

Several years ago the neighbor was walking in the woods with her three dogs when 4 coyotes chased one up right in front of her. This was no small dog, probably outweighed any of the 4 coyotes yet with 4:1 odds I think the coyotes had the lunch menu planned out. They did hesitate even with the neighbor yelling at them.

The dog had one very chewed up tail and neck injuries.

You guys might find this interesting. This is a wild coyote that befriended a Pitbull. This girl took her dog for a run in an abandoned parking lot every morning at the same time, and eventually a coyote showed up. It gradually (after a few weeks of this) become more comfortable with her and her Pitbull, and eventually they started playing together. Clearly, dogs and coyotes "speak the same language," as it were. It became a routine morning ritual, and then one day the coyote stopped showing up. Might have been killed.

The option to watch part II appears at the bottom once part one is complete.

Or else maybe a young coyote just out on its own and starved for company?

Bean:

That's a great looking Jack Russell. Glad he's getting some payback.

- Tom

What I meant was that both species seem to come pre-programed with the exact same roughhousing rules.

Tom,

Thanks, Spark has got to put the bite on when the yote is having the dieing quivers a couple of times.

A few years ago two friends left the province for a week and left me to care for their dogs, a beauty female pitbull and an Australian sheperd. I live next to a cattle feedlot so there's plenty of coyote's.
Anyway, the snow drifted up on the fence and they got out. They came back a day later,but escaped again the next day.
Two days later the pitbull came back, torn all to hell. Her neck was laid wide open for about 10 inches,right to the shoulder. I could pull the hide back and look right down into the shoulder area,never saw anything like it. I poured some peroxide in it and and wrapped it up as best I could. My friend came back a few days later and took her to the vet to get sewed up. She pulled through, but didn't move around much for a month or two.
The little sheperd never made it back at all. We found the spot were the fight likely went down,and there was reddish sheperd fur on the ground. Hoped to find some dead coyote's around,but looked likethey got away clean. Would've liked to see how the fight went down though.

I have had that happen a LOT when I'm over on the Front Range--the coyotes in Yuppieville aren't hunted--and they have very little fear of people. I've had coyotes come within yards of me when I have the dogs heeled to me--and I've been able to plunk a fe with rocks.

No righteous coyote on the West Slope would even think about acting like the Front Range coyotes.....


Casey

I'm surprised the Pitbull let hers get away alive. Only a gang attack on a single Pitbull could have caused her so much damage.

Bean, nice looking dog. Mine has the puncture wound almost exactly in the same spot as that 1st pic. on the right shoulder. She is really stiff. Seems like her neck is stiff, sore too. She has been out twice to sniff around the scene of the attack. I provided armed overwatch.

TDC,

Spark and I have developed a evening routine. When I get home from work I grab the .223 and we go for a short walk into the wash. Those darn coyotes have learned pretty quick though. They wait for dark and come and howl from the back of the property. I'm going to have to get the DOW permit to use lights and hunt at night soon. Alpincrick, these are western Colorado yotes, after the first few deaths they became nocturnal.

I wonder if small to medium white dog = sheep to a coyote's eye?

Well so far this year I've killed about a dozen coyote's back behind my house,mostly in the span of about 2 weeks, and you still hear them yipping it up outside. I'd say she was probably pretty well outnumbered even though she was a good size dog. I can take a walk of less than a mile back there and see half a dozen coyote's some days.

I can't tell you what a coyote thinks, but I have a feeling that that is not it Tex..

Coyotes do like food, but they don't seem to be as eagerly interested in it as they do other dogs and other coyotes.

I've set and watched newborn calves get dried off and on their feet many times, as well as run coyotes off that were trying to help pull a calf when I got there, and I was too late a bunch of times too. Those 'yotes run off and go away most of the time, even from a dead calf, but if you have a dog, it's like the coyotes can't hardly resist coming in as close as they can get away with. The dog, especially a smaller one, is much more enticing than the calf, or a sheep to them. IMHO

You can hunt over bait or a gut pile and see that they have a cautious interest in it and will eventually get there, but a little coyote pee in a squirt bottle sprayed on a sage brush, or even watching them check the bushes where your own dog peed, I think interests them much more than food does.

Kind of like leading a dog on a leash through a dog park and he has to check all the other pee spots. Or hauling a dog in the back of a pickup and he acts all tough and carries on when he sees another dog along the road -- it's not because he's hungry.

I think coyotes just hate dogs, and will eat them too, but it has more to do with competition, or aggression, or territory, than food, I'm pretty sure.

None of this is set in stone fact or anything, just something I've been studying a long time, and have some theories about.

I'm not sure either one can tell the difference. We can take dogs out of the equation and lump 'em with wolves, on account of dogs are just retarded, misshapen wolves.

Neither do dogs seem to have much concept of size as a basis for social distinctions, I'm not sure my 8lb terrier is really aware he is so much smaller than other dogs, and my 50lb heeler will roll over in submission to him as if he were her size (he outranks her, has since she was a puppy).

In that context, wolves and/or coyotes are just treating our dogs exactly as they would strange wolves or coyotes in their territory. If it is a small dog it just dies quicker is all.

I'm thinking at least some of those cases of a wolf or coyote decoying a dog to its doom by playing with it and luring it out are mostly just young wolves or coyotes, doing what comes natural, not yet old enough to get territorial or fight for rank. The dog follows it, and then the parents nail the dog same as they would anyway, nothing preplanned at all.

Nothing out of te ordinary for the wolves or coyotes either, most wolves are eventually killed by other wolves, I expect coyotes are pretty much the same way. ANY strange canine caught is likely to be set upon and killed.

As for the dog getting eaten afterwards, that commonly happens between wolves too, prob'ly also with coyotes I'd guess. Surely too the strange odor/taste of the dog on account of its artificial diet must contribute to its likely hood of ending up on the menu after getting killed.

Heres a pretty good article on wolves...

http://www.wolfsongnews.org/news/Alaska_current_events_3015.html
FAIRBANKS - For all the controversy and headlines that Alaska's aerial wolf control program generates, the real killer of wolves in the Last Frontier escapes the spotlight.

Wolves - not hunters, trappers or government-permitted sharpshooters in Super Cubs - kill most of the wolves that die in Alaska each year....

...Tom Meier, who studies wolves in Denali National Park and Preserve, figures that "at least" 60 percent of the wolves that die in Alaska's most famous national park are killed by their canid cousins.

"That, by far, is the most common cause of death," he said.

The number would probably be higher than 60 percent, Meier said, but biologists have a hard time determining how some wolves die because "by the time we get to the carcass, there's not enough left to figure out how they died," he said...

Grangaard has come across the aftermath of several wolf fights over the years, both while trapping wolves and tracking them for the Department of Fish and Game. The fights don't appear to last long, he said.

"You look at the tracks in snow and I'll bet that fight lasts two minutes," Grangaard said. "There's very few tracks and a wolf laying there dead."

Defending their turf

It's all about territory.

Cannibalism among wolves is not uncommon, either.

While Meier has never seen wolves kill members of their own packs, he has seen wolves cannibalize pack mates after they are killed by other wolves or die for other reasons. He recalled an incident several years ago in which 6-month-old pups ate their parents after the older wolves were killed in a fight.

It's not unusual for trappers to find wolves they've caught eaten by other wolves, especially when they are caught in snares, Grangaard said. Surprisingly, that's not the case with wolves caught in leg-hold traps, Grangaard said, perhaps because the trapped wolves are still alive when other wolves arrive on scene.

"I've had a lot of heads hanging in snares, where the whole body has been eaten," he said, recalling one winter when he lost nine trapped wolves to cannibalism.

Once, Grangaard said, he interrupted a wolf eating another wolf he had snared.

"When he heard me coming he took off and hit another snare," he said.

In recent years, Meier said, he has seen more wolves being eaten after they are killed.

"Last winter, just about every wolf we went to check out was eaten," he said. "I don't think they're killing them to eat them. They're killing them for the territory.

Birdwatcher

Very interesting thoughts. Extremely informative.

From what I've seen, I'd put territoriality at the top of the list. When we (my dog and I) find one outside it's core territory, it'll run off without much ado. But when we go through their territory, they get really pissed and feisty. They'll follow at a distance and yip at us, and even skylight themselves on a hill so they're sure we see 'em.

Keeping the neighborhood safe for Spark.

Friday night I glanced out the back window. Coyote. He stood still too long at 300 yards. It's nice to be able to shoot off the porch. This little one's not going to have pups this spring. And Spark is biting it instead of the other way around. I took the pictures the following morning as it was too muddy to walk across the wash that evening.


As it lay


Flip side. No exit .223 55gr JHP

Very nice Bean. I have been watching but have not seen the coyotes that attacked my dog. I know they have been around because my dog will sniff around the back yard and then raise hell when she gets a whiff of where they have been. We had fresh snow yesterday so I went out first thing this morning and found two sets of tracks crossing the back, along with the usual deer tracks. Its just a matter of time before I catch up with one.