LARIMORE, N.D. - Patti Aanenson doesn't remember seeing coyotes on the farm when she was growing up southwest of Larimore, even though her dad raised sheep.
It's a different story today, Aanenson said. She and her husband, Gene, live on the same farm where she grew up, and coyotes are common.
"I would say it's within the last five to seven years that we have really noticed an increase," Aanenson said. "At first, it was just hearing them in the distance, and now it just seems they get closer and closer. We have had them probably within 30 yards of our back door."
The usual routine will go something like this: The coyotes will come into the yard just beyond the range of the yard light. Their male golden Lab will start barking and scare them out of the yard, and the coyotes will return when the dog settles down.
Aanenson says she worries the coyotes will lure the dog beyond the protection of the yard and attack, but that hasn't happened.
ADVERTISEMENT
Still, she finds the coyotes unsettling.
"It reminds me of 'Little House on the Prairie,' like I should be having a fire out there to keep them away," Aanenson said. "It's very eerie."
Two years ago, she said, a friend of her son's called and asked for a ride after having car trouble on a nearby rural road.
Coyotes were watching him, he said, and they were a bit too close for comfort.
"He was walking toward our house, and he called my son and said, 'Will you come and get me?' " Aanenson recalled. "He said, 'I see all these eyes out here.' "
The North Dakota Game and Fish Department doesn't extensively survey coyote populations, but the department does collect data from rural mail carriers, fur buyers and hunters and trappers, and looks for coyotes during winter aerial big-game surveys.
Game and Fish Department officials in the eastern part of the state said coyotes definitely are becoming more abundant but they see no real cause for alarm.
"Most nights, I can hear coyotes at my house, and I kind of enjoy it," said Gary Rankin, a district game warden for the Game and Fish Department in Larimore.
ADVERTISEMENT
Rankin said he's even seen coyotes standing in the ditch along U.S. Highway 2, watching the traffic.
"That's not typical for a coyote, but it's probably just a young animal learning about the world," Rankin said.
With a maximum weight of about 30 pounds, coyotes are much smaller than their canine cousins, the gray wolf, which can weigh more than 100 pounds. Coyotes occasionally travel in small groups, usually family units, but they don't have the pack hierarchy of wolves, so the risk to cattle is limited to calves.
Coyotes can cause problems for sheep farmers, and they'll take down a fawn or an unsuspecting pet cat or small dog, Rankin said, but he has had no reports of the animals becoming aggressive toward humans.
If anything, coyotes, especially small ones, are curious, Rankin said.
"I know of several incidents where people walking with their dogs have had coyotes come up," Rankin said. "I think it's mostly curiosity. They'll follow a dog."
Rankin said he gets occasional calls about coyotes, but they're not frequent.
"We've got so little livestock in the area that the concern usually isn't related to people having damage done to their property," Rankin said. "It's more of a 'What are they doing to fawns?' That type of thing."
ADVERTISEMENT
To avoid the risk of a conflict, Rankin said people walking their dogs should keep the pets on a leash or take other steps to ensure the animals don't make contact with coyotes.
Obvious as it may seem, people shouldn't try approaching a coyote, either, Rankin said.
"If they are visible and you can approach them, that isn't normal," he said. "Something is probably wrong there. There'd be a possibility they could carry diseases, but that's the same with any wild animal."
Rankin speculates there could be several reasons coyotes have become more abundant in eastern North Dakota. The Conservation Reserve Program, a federal initiative that pays farmers to set aside land for wildlife habitat, has created more grassland and brush land areas for small mammals.
