HINTS ON WOLF AND COYOTE TRAPPING 



By Stanijey P. Young, Biologist, foniiirlii of Division of PniJittar 

 (ind Rodent Control. Fish and Wildlife Service 



THE RANGE of coyotes and wolves in the United States to-day is 

 confined mainly to the immense area west of the Mississippi River. 

 Wolves, how^ever, have been so materially reduced in numbers west 

 of the one-hundredth meridian that except for those drifting into the 

 United States from the northern States of Mexico, they are the cause of 

 little concern. The areas now most heavily infested with wolves are 

 in Alaska, eastern Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, 

 Minnesota, and Michigan. A few of these animals are found also 

 in northern Louisiana and eastward along the Gulf coastal area into 

 Mississippi. Coyotes, on the other hand, exist in all the Western 

 States, as well as in the Mid- Western States above listed as inhabited 

 by wolves. They have also been reported in Orleans County, N. Y., 

 and in southeastern Alabama where introduced. 



Coyotes and wolves make serious inroads on the stocks of sheep 

 and lambs, cattle, pigs, and poultry, as well as on the wild game 

 mammals and the ground-nesting and insectivorous 

 Why Control ])irds of the country. Wherever these predatory animals 

 Is Necessary occur in large numbers, they are a source of worry and 

 loss to stockmen, farmers, and sportsmen because of 

 their destructiveness to wild and domestic animals. The coyote is 

 by far the most persistent of the predators of the w^estern range 

 country; and moreover, it is a further menace because it is a carrier of 

 rabies, or hydrophobia. This disease was prevalent in Nevada, 

 California, Utah, Idaho, and eastern Oregon in 1916 and 1917, and 

 later in Washington and in southern Colorado. Since this widespread 

 outbreak, sporadic cases of rabid coyotes have occurred each year 

 in the Western States. The coyote has also been found to be a 

 carrier of tularemia, a disease of w^ild rabbits and other rodents that is 

 transmissible and sometimes fatal to human beings. 



Much of the country inhabited by coyotes and wolves is purely 

 agricultural and contains vast grazing areas, and a large percentage 

 of the food of the animals of those areas consists of the mutton, beef, 

 pork, and poultry produced by the stockman and farmer, and the wild 

 game that needs to be conserved. It is a matter of great importance, 

 therefore, to the Nation's livestock-producing sections, as well as 

 to the conservationist's plan of game protection or game propagation, 

 that coyotes and wolves be controlled in areas where they are destruc- 

 tive. Trapping has been found to be one of the most effective 

 methods of capturing these animals. 



Every wild animal possesses some form of defense against danger 

 or harm to itself. With wolves and coyotes this is shown in their 



acute sense cf smell, alert hearing, and keen eyesight. 

 Strategy To trap these animals successfully, one must work to 

 Required defeat these highly developed senses when placing traps, 



and success in doing so will come only w4th a full knowledge 

 of the habits of the two predators and after repeated experiments wdth 

 trap sets. Of the two animals, possibly the wolf is the more difficult to 



Note. — This circular supersedes Leaflet 50, Issued in 1030 by the U. S. Deiiartment 

 of Agriculture — a contri[)ution of the Bureau of BioloKical Survey, wliich was con- 

 solidated in 1940 with the Bureau of Fislieries to form the Fish and Wildlife Service, 

 U. S. Department of the Interior. 



