
Photo by K. McAdam 
JOHN COYOTE, A STUDY IN PERSONALITY 
A freebooter of foothill and plain, he acknowledges no master. 
Traveler, romancer, musician, rogue and thief, he 
is the gentleman buccaneer of the prairies, whom none tolerate, yet all respect 
been feasting from a dead horse or 
other critter? If not you’ve much to 
learn in connection with diabolical 
stenches. in a less degree the magpie 
stinks. But don’t imagine for a minute 
that because he will eat from a car- 
cass left lying on the plains he is easy 
to trap at such spots. He has a pe- 
culiar method of knowing when a hu- 
man has been near such places which 
makes him stay away from that im- 
mediate vicinity. When his suspicion 
is aroused he suddenly remembers that 
freshly slain rabbits are excellent 
food for coyotes! Get the point—- 
DON’T excite his suspicion, at least 
of the place where your trap is set. 
HERE are degrees of intelligence 
in coyotes, same as in people. 
Some are just naturally foolish and 
will get trapped before they have had 
an opportunity to learn much. Others 
are born with a wisdom handed down 
from their ancestors, a wisdom gleaned 
of bitter experience with the steel trap 
and the poison bait. Thus you may 
stumble onto a family of coyotes and 
eatch all of them within the fort- 
night and again you may tackle an- 
other group and get nothing for your 
pains. 
80 
OYOTE education not only comes 
from actual contact with merci- 
less steel jaws; one sees a fellow 
four-foot struggling in a trap and 
straightway a sympathetic pain 
shoots through his limbs and _ sends 
him helter-skelter from the spot, a sad- 
der and very much wiser coyote. And 
this knowledge is handed down from 
generation to generation so we have 
nothing but sympathy for the future 
trappers of the west. 
One of the most sure-fire methods 
of trapping the coyote is to play upon 
his sense of curiosity. The coyote is 
nothing but a wild dog, after all, and 
we know how playful a dog can be. 
One coyote that caused me a lot of 
trouble fell for the simplest sort of 
lure, bait or whatever you want to 
call it. I made a couple of good sets 
along an old road not using any sign 
of bait or scent. Two weeks later I 
rode a horse over that trail, dragging 
a short piece of old rope behind. At 
the proper moment I (careless like) 
let it come to rest between two of my. 
traps. John Coyote happened along 
(careless like) and (careless like) 
stepped into one of the traps when he 
got to nosing that rope. This idea 
came to me after I’d seen tracks where 
a coyote had been wrestling with an 
old rag, just like a pup would. 
Once on the Baptiste River a big 
brush wolf traveled regularly up and 
downstream, defying all my attempts 
to waylay him. Finally I caught a big 
otter three miles upriver and after 
skinning him left the carcass hanging 
from a spruce limb. The wolf came 
along and danced a circle right under 
that carcass, in spite of the presence 
of my tracks and the sign I had made 
all around there. Now rabbits were 
plentiful enough in the woods and it 
would have taken a decided stretch of 
the imagination to assume that Brer 
Wolf was hungry and wanted to eat 
that otter! No, he was simply curious. 
I made several sets, during a snow- 
storm, along one of the bottoms and 
after another day and night had passed 
I took that otter carcass and dragged 
it along past the sets. Result—one 
. very meek and chagrined wolf! 
ATER on I tried the same thing 
on a coyote, using a skunk for the 
drag and it also worked. These are 
ideas I am giving you and they will 
bear working out. You don’t have to 
employ the use of either a rope, an 
otter or skunk carcass especially. I 
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