Early this spring, many Americans’ eyes were glued to the Mega Millions lottery as the jackpot barreled its way to an eventual $1.13 billion.
Jeff Williams was more concerned about a different lottery.
The Forest resident had submitted multiple entries in the Bedford coyote lottery, which provided hunters and trappers chances to win cash prizes for each coyote they killed in the county.
When numbers were drawn after the lottery closed at the end of February, Williams and his hunting friends had won four of the seven prizes, for a total of $2,000.
It wasn’t quite the $537.5 million (after taxes!) that will go to the winner of the Mega Millions jackpot. But for Williams and his crew, it was a nice bonus for their predator-hunting passion.
For organizers of the lottery, it was a small price to pay in their effort to keep the county’s coyotes at bay, something they see as important not only to members of their agricultural community but also residents who were concerned about the roaming wild canines.
Yet there are others who are more skeptical and critical of coyote control methods such as bounties and lotteries.
Groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Coyote Project are among those that have campaigned against predator-hunting contests, calling the practice cruel and unnecessary.
Even wildlife biologists generally agree that financially incentivizing coyote trapping and hunting has little impact on reducing coyote populations on a landscape scale.
Newcomers to the commonwealth
Coyotes are not native to Virginia. And while there are some borderline-outrageous conspiracy theories as to how they ended up here — a common one is that insurance companies brought them here to reduce deer populations and the resulting profit-draining claims for deer-car collisions — the answer is much simpler.
Coyotes simply migrated from the West.
“When I first started working in the early 1980s, they were just starting to arrive here, west of the Blue Ridge and up in the northern mountain area,” said Mike Fies, recently retired lead biologist with the Department of Wildlife Resources furbearer program. “They gradually filled every county west of the Blue Ridge and eventually colonized every county in the commonwealth, and even some barrier islands.”
The animals can travel great distances when seeking new territory.
“We had a coyote that was radio-collared at Fort Bragg [now Fort Liberty] that was eventually recovered in Ashland, Virginia, a distance of more than 200 miles,” Fies noted. “So, they’re capable of long-distance movements but generally stick with a territory once they establish one.”
Fies said he estimates that the coyote population has been relatively stable in the western half of the state for the past decade, while still building in some eastern counties.
“The limiting factor is that they have to have an adequate food source,” Fies said. “But they’re so adaptable that food is often not much of a limiting factor.”
That varies based on the landscape.
Forested mountain terrain offers less food than suburban and urban areas, which is one reason that coyote sightings have become so common in Virginia’s more populous regions.
“You can have a bunch of coyotes packed into an urban area that has lots and lots of food,” Fies said.
In urban areas, that food supply can include insects, pet food, garbage, fruit and small rodents such as mice, rats and squirrels. Even small house pets are on the menu.
Fies noted that good Samaritans who feed feral cats are helping coyotes.
“Those feral cat communities are coyote magnets,” he said. “Not only because of the food that’s being provided for the cats, but the cats themselves are potential prey items.”
There is a perception among some white-tailed deer hunters that coyotes have a detrimental impact on deer populations. That’s not the case, Fies said.
“We’ve found a lot of deer hair in coyote stomachs,” Fies said. “But we believe most of it is from scavenging.”
In forested terrain, Fies said, studies have found that bobcats and bears are much more significant predators for deer, particularly fawns, than coyotes are.
“Based on what we’ve seen from the research here in Virginia is that there are few places, if any, in the state where coyotes are having a significant impact on deer numbers,” Fies said, adding that it takes only looking at deer population levels — which are stable or increasing across most of the state — to see proof of that.
There is no doubt that when coyotes and humans interact, some conflict is likely inevitable. Don Gardner knows that well.
He is the vice chairman of the Bedford County Agricultural Economic Advisory Board, which assists the county’s board of supervisors on agriculture-related topics.
“About 10, 12 years ago, a lot of people were calling the board of supervisors and complaining about the number of baby calves, lambs and young goats that they were losing to coyote predation,” said Gardner, a retired large animal veterinarian who runs a dairy heifer-raising operation with his two sons. “A lot of people were even saying their little dogs and cats were turning up missing.”
So the board of supervisors turned to the ag board with a question that’s been around almost as long as coyotes and humans have lived on the same ground.
What can be done?
The Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources formally labels coyotes as a nuisance species. That means there is no closed season on the animals.
Licensed trappers in Virginia have taken an average of 3,527 coyotes annually over the past decade.
In addition to dedicated predator hunters, many hunters kill coyotes as targets of opportunity when deer hunting. There are no hard numbers on total hunter take, but Fies estimate it to be between 15,000 and 20,000 animals annually.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture also has a program to help control predators to assist the agricultural community. That program primarily targets specific animals that have been targeting livestock.
Yet despite those efforts, there remains pressure to do more.
Fies said that when he was with the Department of Wildlife Resources, he frequently was asked by county officials for advice on managing coyote numbers. He never recommended bounty programs, which about a dozen Virginia counties have on the books regardless.
“Modeling suggests that you need to kill about 50% to 60% of the population every year over multiple years to really have an impact on coyote numbers,” Fies said. “So, programs like bounties or contests don’t even scratch the surface.
“You just don’t kill enough to have a population impact.”
Instead, if specific animals are causing problems, Fies said the best approach is to have experts target those animals. If a landowner isn’t experiencing coyote problems, Fies said he recommends they just leave the animals alone.
That’s also the approach advocated by groups such as the Coyote Project, which promotes a philosophy of coexistence.
But that approach doesn’t stop those phone calls and complaints.
Gardner said he preferred the idea of a lottery to bounties because he thought hunters and trappers would be more interested in the opportunity to win large prizes versus a $50 bounty.
“If a guy is deer hunting, he’s probably going to let that coyote walk so he doesn’t scare Mr. Big Buck,” Gardner said. “But if he has a chance to win $2,000, that’s another story.”
The lottery has been funded by private donations, which have been supplemented by a $1,000 donation from the Bedford Farm Bureau.
The most recent lottery offered a grand prize drawing of $1,000 and six $500 prizes. It drew 143 entries.
Gardner said he believes that the lottery, which returned this past fall after a several-year hiatus prompted by the COVID pandemic, was successful.
“After three or four years of the lottery and the coyotes being trapped, shot at, called, killed and pursued, they got wary and started staying away from houses and not being so brazen,” Gardner said. “The complaints to the board of supervisors dropped off.
“It was less about population control than putting the fear of God into them. And it didn’t cost taxpayers one cent.”
While the lottery reduced complaints about coyotes, the other thing it did was create demand for the lottery itself. Which is why it was renewed this past fall.
“It wasn’t so much people complaining about coyotes as it was people who participated wanted to see it started again,” Gardner said.
One of them was Williams, a lifelong hunter and angler who considers predator hunting one of his favorite outdoor pursuits.
“Like a lot of people, I killed my first coyote while deer hunting,” said Williams, who became more enthusiastic after getting his first electronic call as a gift from his father.
Williams and his crew have graduated to specialized electronic calls, thermal scopes for hunting at night, and customized rifles fitted with suppressors to reduce noise. He and his hunting group, which includes his Virginia state trooper wife, entered 50 coyotes into the lottery.
He split winnings with the hunters who were in the group on nights that prize-winning coyotes were killed, and he sent landowners where the hunts occurred $50, too.
He admits that his coyote hunting is, at its roots, a passion rather than a public service. And he knows that there are critics.
“That’s OK,” said Williams, a 43-year-old who works at BWX Technologies in Lynchburg. “If we were all the same it would be a pretty boring world.”
He also is aware that, as good as he is at calling and hunting coyotes, he’s not making a landscape-level difference.
“There’s no way in the world you’re going to get rid of them all,” Williams said. “Even now with high-tech thermal equipment, in this area you’re going to have more [unsuccessful] stands than productive stands.”
Fies said predator hunters will not have to worry about shooting themselves out of a hobby.
“They are very adaptable and hardy animals and they have been outsmarting humans with regard to control for hundreds of years,” Fies said. “We’re certainly not going to be able to do anything here in Virginia that will be more successful than anyone else.”
Instead, he said his approach is to help landowners understand approaches that make the best sense for their specific property, and to help others understand how to minimize conflicts through behavioral changes, like being mindful of attracting the animals with food.
“They’re here to stay in Virginia,” he said. “We’re just going to have to learn to live with them.”