Have never hunted varmints - just shot them as targets of opportunity while deer hunting.

We have a jet black coyote on my farm we have seen 3 times now. Got a trail cam picture last winter, jumped him while turkey hunting this spring (i was too slow to get a good shot) and he came running thru tall grass in the field while i was standing on the dock fishing yesterday morning - he turned tail as soon as he saw me and my jeep

My question is how rare are black coyotes. I am not sure all 3 sightings are the same one so perhaps there is more than one. The two times i have seen them live he looked much bigger than the one i got a trail cam picture of (which i have since deleted unfortunately)

Fyi, this is in the piedmont of south carolina. We are over run with coyotes because a local farmer raises turkey and the pit where they throw the dead ones makes sure the coyotes and buzzards have plenty to eat

I've never seen one but have 3 friends who have killed them. One is a guy who lives just North of me and he's never seen another one, it was captured on film in Predator Obsession.

Another guy lives 90 miles SW of me and seen one almost on the Arkansas line but finally killed one around his house, Kelly kills over a hundred coyotes a year and travels all over the country.

The third guy lives in Arkansas and has killed 2 or 3 of them but he's killed some rather interesting color phased coyotes so I guess it's the gene pool...

I'd say they're pretty rare and if I ever kill one I'll have it tanned.

We saw a black or very dark colored fox or coyote cross in front of the car in NW CT last evening.

I say "fox or coyote" as it seemed a little thin for a coyote and big to be a fox. Perhaps it's fur was short?

It was a distance away however it was a wild animal in a state forest area.

Saw one while deer hunting in Virginia, later we got it on a trail camera.

Have you had a good enough look to rule out a coy-dog?

yeah, that was my thoughts exactly...

bread with a stray something or other...

know a guy locally who has a coyote cross, his wife nursed it when it showed up with a bad wound when it was pretty young..

its fine around their family, but around other people it is the nastiest disposition ugly thing...the call it 'The Bitch'... for a name.. they have about 8 dogs on their 20 acre property...

they have tried multiple time to get rid of it, by just taking it out and letting it loose in the woods.. yet the thing shows up like a homing pigeon....

they took it back into Forest Service land, 50 miles from any town or travel roads....took it 2 weeks, but it showed right back up on the door step... that time, it had some festering wounds on its left shoulder and its left jaw... someone had hit it with a shot gun blast...

however it healed up, and it has these two big clumps of buckshot under its skin.. which just added to its personal disposition...

this one is a female...

No I haven't. Not sure I could tell the difference either

Coy dogs rarely happen in the wild due to the scheduled breeding cycle and need of a "pair" to be successful in raising a litter.
I've seen a very dark phase in NJ of all places.

I shot this one a couple years ago. The wife and I were doing some chores in and around the horse barn and she spotted it moving across a hillside. I came out to take a look and told her it must be a neighbor's dog. It stopped a few times and looked back on its track. Soon two coyotes appeared out of the woods.

I had my Savage M99A 250-3000 on the tractor a few steps away. Pulled it out the scabbard and put the scope on all three. Coyote, coyote, black critter with a white throat patch. Knelt down and made a rest on a front tractor tire. All three were being real friendly when I sent a Sierra 90 gr HPBT at the black critter which was later to be determined 227 yards away.

Closer inspection indicated the critter must be a cross and later was confirmed by a game warden. It was a male and stunk just like a coyote.

I seen one up here a few years ago. He was running with three other coyotes. Pretty cool.

In general it's fairly rare. It's hereditary and it runs in families, just like hair color in humans. In one of the areas where I hunt, there are more black ones than any other color. I think that's the result of a mated pair of blacks getting embedded in the area.

I don't think western coyotes show that much variation in coloration, but DNA testing in the past few years showed that most if not all eastern 'yotes are hybridized with wolves. Which could be the reason there's so much more variety in their coloration.

They seem to be pretty common down here. This guy in Florida had 5 come in and killed 3 of the 5 with a bow.

Out here in western CO they are mostly grey with some red, nothing like those black ones!

Impressive...Looks like he got his truck stuck too...that is what the one(s) i have seen looked like.

Every one I have seen has the white chest flash for some reason.

I have never seen one, but in one of my favorite places to hunt (borders mine property and my buddy works at the mine) he says he has seen one or two running around. I havent heard of any here in AZ so thats a first... Hopefully come December he will be looking at me over the bead of my 870!

Black coyotes are unusual but not rare. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in taxonomy or a genetic specialist. From what I can determine in research done by such experts there are black phase coyotes that are just plain old coyotes � only black. The same as the red phase ones and the blond ones. Unless it has some distinguishing characteristic that would look very �domestic� only DNA testing would tell if it was a cross of some sort. I don�t think that could be determined by coloration alone. The southeastern portion of the U.S. seems to have that gene and while black phase coyotes aren�t behind every tree they aren�t terribly uncommon. Hunters from the southeastern states will post a black phase coyote occasionally. I have never seen one here in the mid-west however I do have a friend that has a black coyote on his farm and he sees it often. The local Wal-Mart has one mounted by a local taxidermist that was killed around here somewhere. It is a beautiful animal with a white star on the chest.

been a couple killed in Montana, one was shot a couple years ago near Big Sandy....rare enough here i remember where i heard the last one i know about was shot even a couple years later....

Black coyotes began showing up on our place 30 years ago after a couple of German Shepherds began running from a nearby subdivision. The gene is now diluted but occasionally a larger, black-tinged coyote is seen. Coydogs are not that uncommon in this area. Twenty years ago a government hunter from here was sent to southeastern Canada to trap unusual coyotes. He reported back that they were all coyote/wolf crosses.

Heres one I called in a winter or 2 back.

Dang that looks like a dog i had growing up. We found it at our family farm one weekend and left it thinking it would die. Came back the next weekend and there it was so we took it in. It was all dog though - not a cross breed. This was in the mid 80s when wildish dogs were much more common than coyotes

FWIW, a few year back there was a couple shot in So. Indiana and the story made it into the paper. Don't know how correct the article was, but it stated that melanism was 5X more rare in coyotes than albinism...

I know I'd like to shoot one! Would make for an interesting trophy.

Thats the only 1 I have ever seen. It came in with another what I would call brown yote. It was a Female, and her tanned hide is now in my living room.

Three it of five with anything is impressive but with a bow; that is awesome.


I hunt in SC and black phases are somewhat common in our area and into GA. The coy dog cross makes sense but the ones I have seen, looked 100% coyote.

Yea, that guy can hunt and shoot. It would be interesting to hear how he did that.

i have only saw one very big black coyote eating on a deer carcas in the snow at 500 yards i took a shot at him with my rem 22-250 and hit him he ran 800 yards and fell dead , my best shot to date.

There seem to be a lot of black coyotes in the SE and few in the far west. I have seen two black ones in British Columbia and none anywhere else in about 50 years of seeing a LOT of coyotes around the far West. Once in awhile a black one shows up in every area.

I missed a chip shot at a large black coyote back in about '93 and it still hurts like it was last week......

That was in brushy western Oregon BTW.

plenty of black ones here n va. my taxidermist has mounted 4-5 in the last few years

Seen a couple on our property in South Alabama.

To me, those pictures all look like they are dog crossed coyotes.

Thirty some years ago I shot a jet black red fox south of Brush, Colorado. He was as black as you could get and had a white tipped tail. Wish I'd have kept him.

.

I saw some interesting pups a few years back. I couldnt guarantee they were full blood yotes but there were 4. One black, one blonde, and two Normal. The blonde and black didn't make it long. Thanks to grandpa. But I figure they were crosses, but neat litter.

some black ones prolly are some arent......melanisim is far from uncommon in various wild dogs....actually over all in animals it tends to be more common than albinism because the darker individuals stand a better chance of living and passing on their genes than the white ones.....it is a simple recessive gene that controls it just like albinism, in mammals atleast....color genes tend to get complicated in reptiles and birds as there are more genes controlling color....

I do quite abit coyote hunting here in Sask and have only seen 1 in my life. Quite rare.

I have seen two. They were shot by another. Red is much more common here than black.

Notropis, that's quite a camera that can take a picture before the date gets here.

Seriously though, good pics and looks like you have a number of black ones in your area, or should I say did have?