104 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



Abernethy's hounds, however, though they could not kill 

 a big wolf, would stop it, permitting their owner to seize 

 it exactly as he seized coyotes, as hereafter described. 

 He had killed but a few of the big gray wolves; one 

 weighed ninety-seven pounds. He said that there were 

 gradations from this down to the coyotes. A few days 

 before our arrival, after a very long chase, he had cap- 

 tured a black wolf, weighing between fifty and sixty 

 pounds. 



These Southern coyotes or prairie-wolves are only 

 about one-third the size of the big gray timber wolves of 

 the Northern Rockies. They are too small to meddle 

 with full-grown horses and cattle, but pick up young 

 calves and kill sheep, as well as any small domesticated 

 animal that they can get at. The big wolves flee from 

 the neighborhood of anything like close settlements, but 

 coyotes hang around the neighborhood of man much more 

 persistently. They show a fox-like cunning in catching 

 rabbits, prairie-dogs, gophers, and the like. After night- 

 fall they are noisy, and their melancholy wailing and yell- 

 ing are familiar sounds to all who pass over the plains. 

 The young are brought forth in holes in cut banks or 

 similar localities. Within my own experience I have 

 known of the finding of but two families. In one there 

 was but a single family of five cubs and one old animal, 

 undoubtedly the mother; in the other case there were ten 

 or eleven cubs and two old females which had apparently 

 shared the burrow or cave, though living in separate 

 pockets. In neither case was any full-grown male coyote 

 found in the neighborhood; as regards these particular 



