I didn't take this moon photo.........but I wanted all of you to see it.

[H2O Man]

39. Good call!

While I'm no expert -- by any means! -- I know that eastern coyotes only start the yipping in the early fall. I've yet to see any reason for this, so I have a theory. Probably wrong, but here goes:

Eastern coyotes do not "pack." The male & female appear to mate for life. They have an average of five pups per year (depending on health, winter food supply, etc). While the pups mature faster than those of domestic dogs, they generally share the parents' territory for at least their first year, then sub-divide it in future years.

When pups are small, adult coyotes will hunt deer fawns, which are born around the same time. This is actually when coyotes kill the highest number of deer. (Road kill presents most, though not all, of the adult deer they consume in the fall through spring.) But in the summer months, they eat plants/ fruit, and small animals, such as woodchucks and mice.

In the early fall, the pups are old enough to be included in the family hunts. I wonder if they do the majority of the yipping? It is a strange, fascinating call. I've also found, specific to an 8-acre field behind my house with dense pines at the top and bottom ends, that some will yip at one end, to get the deer to run the other way. More coyote are stationed in wait. Listening to the kill is unpleasant, to say the least.

Back in the mid-1970s to late '80s, "coy-dogs" were a problem for area farmers. They were more aggressive towards livestock. But they have been killed off. Since the mid-1990s, however, the region's coyote populatiion has bred with the timber wolves, despite initial denials by our DEC. A farmer killed one near Bridgewater, NY (near Utica) and had a DNA test done. Since then, the DEC has been more honest. So time will tell if the local population will pack, rather than live in family units. I've seen two males that are very large compared to local coyote, and others have seen more.