Have you been waking up late at night to a bit of yipping and barking outside in the yard over the last month or so? Are the dogs getting riled up a bit more than usual? Well, it’s that time of year, and these wily and oft elusive neighbors are taking part in their annual call from nature to keep this whole thing called life going. It’s coyote mating season.

When it comes to pack life, social hierarchy, and specifically, partnerships, coyotes are highly monogamous with typically only the alpha pair mating. One might think that with only one pair in a pack mating in a given season, things might be a bit quieter. Quite the opposite, as the entire pack can become quite rowdy. If you’re lucky to live in a more densely human-populated area, you might thankfully have to endure this only for a night or two because the pack moves on for safety. If you live remotely, you may be “enjoying” this chorus for up to a week when a pack is feeling secure in their territory.

While it’s always key to make sure outdoor pets are secure, when it comes to dogs it can pay to keep an extra-sharp eye out. Coyotes have been known to become extra “interested” in canine companions this time of year, and not necessarily as food.

That said, if you have a solid enough wire fence and a big dog you want to tire out, a female coyote in heat will run a strapping, fit male dog along a fence-line all. day. long. (I must add that I say this tongue-in-cheek, and do not in any way endorse purposely sending your dog outside to run off and spend the day flirting with the coyotes on the property line, regardless of the height and strength of your fence.)

On a more serious note, it pays to know one special tidbit of fact regarding protecting your property and pets from coyotes. I mentioned it in my last coyote article, but it bears repeating, if only for your own sanity come coyote mating season.

While killing coyotes in most states is “open season” all year long with no tag requirements, and it has long been touted and flaunted as the best way to control coyotes, doing so would be a grave mistake. It has been discovered that killing pack members, especially one or both of the alpha pair, will send a pack into a breeding frenzy in a frantic effort to rebuild pack strength and stability. This often ends up producing even more coyotes than before.

This behavior is a stunning example of nature’s will to survive. It has been found that, while this species has endured one of the longest and harshest campaigns of war and death that any animal has suffered here in the U.S. (outside of the near-total annihilation of the bison), they continue not only to thrive, but actually to grow their territories.

The only known way effectively to “control” a coyote population in terms of protecting your own property and pets is to haze them in non-lethal ways – to do your best to make it a space where they don’t want to be. This can be especially daunting when you have pets, as the pets may be the very reason the coyotes linger. However, the consequences of a lethal method of removal may well prove to be the worst possible outcome, giving you a bigger problem down the line.

However you choose to haze those pesky canines when the night-time yipping gets out of control, or simply won’t leave that excruciatingly handsome husky of yours alone, just know it doesn’t last long. Soon enough you will be back to your own deep sleep while the dogs go back to dreaming the night away chasing those rabbits.

That is, until your other neighbor, the bear, wakes from hibernation and finds that bag of dog food you accidentally left on the porch during the chaos of unloading the groceries, getting dinner for the rambunctious kids and catching up on all those texts from the disconnected drive up the canyon…. Gotta love life in our little slice of paradise on the edge of the wilderness. Sleep tight!

For additional information about James DeWalt Photography, check out https://jamesdewaltphotography.com.