
Summer to Winter Movements 
Coyotés may range extensively while searching for food, and 
often it is impossible to say whether an animal's presence at a particular 
place is due to normal hunting or to migration. Without being able to 
distinguish home range from what may be construed as a movement therefrom 
a distance of 5-1/2 miles from the tagging point arbitrarily was used to ° 
separate the two. Fractional distances were converted to the nearest 
whole number. Thus, each location at which a coyote was tagged was 
assumed to be the focus of that animal's activity, allowing it a hunting 
range of 5 miles in all directions, or about 78 square miles. This 
assumption may be literally true for pups and parent animals taken at 
dens, but perhaps not for others, which may have been tagged at one end 
of their hunting ranges. Some coyotes travelling 6 airline miles or 
more from the tagging points still may have been within their home ranges, 
but is is equally certain that others going shorter distances - such as 
4 that crossed the Park boundary and the unfrozen Yellowstone River - had 
actually drifted. Since it was impossible to define home range according 
to terrain, the mileage basis was used in all cases. 
Of the 260 goyotes tagged in the Park in the spring and summer 
(April to September, with 5 trapped October 1 and 2, 1946, included), 79 
were recovered in the fall and wintar (October to March, inclusive). As 
showm in Figure 2, 36 were taken within 5 airline miles of the tagging 
points or within what is considered to be their home ranges, but 9 of these 
had crossed the Park boundary to the outside. The 3 remaining animals 
drifted more than 5 airline miles: 1 up-country but still in the Park; 2 
out of the Fark to the northwest; 1 out of the Park to the south; 1 out 
of the Park to the northeast; 8 down-country to the north but still in the 
Park; and 30 outside the Park to the north. Those tagged in the outside 
regions and recovered during the same seasons moved in the same general 
directions. Of 90 tagged and 26 recovered, ll were taken nearby, 1 moved 
up-country to the east, 1 moved up—country across the northwest corner of 
the Park, and 10 moved down the Yellowstone Valley in the general direction 
taken by the drifting Park coyotes. 
It is apparent that about haif of the coyotes inhabiting the 
northern drainages of the Park in the spring and summer move to the out- 
Side in the fall and winter, predominantly down-country to the north. 
The conclusion is the same whether based upon movements of 6 airline 
miles or more, or upon the simpler basis of comparing numbers of tagged 
Park coyotes taken inside the Park with those taken outside. Of the 79 
animals, 43 drifted 6 airline miles or more, and 3 were recovered beyond 
the Park boundaries. The distances travelled by the 3 migrants averaged 
ee? airline miles with a maximum of 95. 
The 260 coyotes tagged in the Park during the spring and summer 
included 213 pups (81.9 percent) and 47 adults (16.1 percent), a ratio of 
i to 1 in favor of the pups. Recovery of tagged animals during the fall 
and winter was 3 to 1 in favor of the younger animals, with 59 pups 
(74.7 percent) and 20 adults (25.3 percent) being taken. The difference 
