Nature Bulletin No. 2
Forest Preserve District of Cook County -- July 31, 1969
George W. Dunne, President
Roland F. Eisenbeis, Superintendent of Conversation

****:COYOTES IN COOK COUNTY

One winter night, a Forest Preserve Ranger heard the yapping howl of 
some animal that made his hair stand on end.  A few days later, a farmer 
in the Sag valley saw what appeared to be a wolf lope across a road.  
Finally, the ranger, concealed within sight of a faint path apparently 
used by wild dogs or foxes, shot a coyote.  The little bunch of black 
bristles at the base of its tail, covering a scent gland beneath the skin 
identified it as being of the wolf family.  The animal was sent to the 
Illinois Natural History Survey, at Urbana, where it was pronounced to 
be a prairie wolf (also known as the "brush" wolf).  In the west it is 
generally known by its Spanish name: coyote.

That same winter the rangers shot four other animals that were 
obviously part coyote and part dog.  Coyotes, which were common here 
in the early days, may eat a few pheasants and quail, and some rabbits, 
but their main diet consists of small rodents such as field mice and 
gophers.  Wild dogs however, and the cross-breed of dogs and coyotes, 
are clever, cruel, silent killers.  They, and the common house-cat that 
has gone wild, are a terrible menace to all wildlife.  Some heartless 
people dump unwanted dogs and cats out into the forest preserves.  If 
these do not starve -- and most of them do -- they become savage 
hunters and killers.  Therefore the rangers have orders to shoot them on 
sight.

They Palos area offers ideal den locations and hunting range for 
coyotes.  In that hilly section of Cook County, 23 miles southwest of the 
Loop, the Forest Preserve District owns more than 9,000 acres 
extending from Archer Avenue (Route 4-A) south to 143rd Street and 
from old Kean Avenue west to Sag village.  This area is wild and 
largely forested.  Running east and west through the center of it, lies the 
Sag valley in which was built the Calumet-Sag canal to connect 
Calumet Harbor in Lake Michigan with the main Sanitary Drainage and 
Ship Canal in the DesPlaines River Valley.  Apparently the coyotes, 
and many other animals, have their dens in the high ridges of rock on 
both banks of these canals -- rock excavated from the Niagara limestone 
that lies close beneath the ground surface.

The coyote has learned to outsmart man and to stay out of his sight and 
gun-range.  Rarely seen or heard-of for many years, they have gradually 
spread back through Wisconsin into northern Illinois.  They are the 
most wary and cunning of all our wild animals, keen of sight and smell, 
and amazingly swift.  They are so wise that only the most experienced 
trappers, wearing boots treated to conceal the man-scent, after tracking 
them for days to learn their habits, sometimes succeed in trapping 
coyotes.  Big steel traps are used, handled with special gloves, carefully 
concealed beneath the grass or leaves around a sapling which is sprayed 
with scent from another coyote.

One of the Forest Preserve men, grading a hiking and bridle trail with a 
big power-driven grader, glanced up to see a coyote standing not over 
300 feet away.  This one was apparently curious and perplexed by the 
big machine with its purring motor.  The scent of the man was 
overcome by the exhaust of the engine.  But when the operator stopped 
the grader and got off, that coyote went away from there like an arrow.  
He has seen plenty!

There have been no sightings or reports of coyotes in the forest 
preserves in the past fifteen years.