Coyote Closely
The coyotes came within feet of dad and I. It was too dark to see them – but we could hear them walking!
It all started late into a week of deer camp. While walking from different directions, dad and I were returning from our evening watches on a cool, crisp November evening. The walk back to the cabin was dead quiet until a few hundred yards from the cabin. That was when our ‘new to the neighborhood’ coyotes started filling the still air with their eerie howls. The hair on the back neck tingled as I picked up the pace to catch a glimpse of the the cabin’s porch light.
This was always welcome sight on the lonely walks back from an evening deer stand.
During my brisk walk to the cabin, I theorized that the howling brush wolves were somewhere near Spier’s swamp. Fortunately, that location was opposite to the direction I was heading in. I released the grip on my rifle slightly in response this prediction about the coyotes location.
After several minutes, I made it back to the cabin and sat under the inviting glow of the porch’s dim light and listened more closely to the wild orchestra now playing before me. Within minutes of my arrival, Dad returned to camp and after we unloaded our guns and put them in the cabin (legal shooting time was over) we returned back outside to the porch.
That’s when dad whispered, “Why don’t you give them a howl?”
Hesitantly, I put my hands to my mouth and tried to mimic what I was hearing. The rustic music paused for a few moments. Then, silence.
Then…
Mom’s chili kicked in! Just kidding.
Then, surprisingly, one of the coyotes responded. After a few more minutes, the concert began again. Only this time much closer.
Dad said in a low voice, “Again.”
I let out another sudden solo and abruptly the music ended again.
Time passed.
Like the first time, it started up again even closer. Much closer.
Dad didn’t have to ask me a third time. I ripped out a howl and waited with baited breath for the results. This time we could hear the coyotes breaking and snapping branches within several feet of myself, dad and the old cabin porch. It was too dark to see anything but their they were – walking amongst the black tangled mess of the forest’s undergrowth.
Unfortunately, as soon as we noticed they were there – watching us. They silently crept away back into the night. The night time sounds of the forest returned with the wolves’ backstage exit. Dad and I retreated to the cabin in silence.
We both knew it would be an uneasy walk to the outhouse.
*coyote photo from wikipedia
Great story!
Reminds me of a walk in the dark I had several years ago in northern Minnesota. The chorus I was treated to was that of wolves and reading your story made the hair stand up on my arms all over again!
There is nothing like a solo stroll with stars overhead to put things in perspective…
Dear Bill,
Good coyote story.
In reference to these animals the normally inaccurate TO Star just published a coyote story claiming scientist in Peterborough are now saying the animals in southern Ontario are part wolf and part coyote and the story says they now extend up into Algonquin Park.
The story means the back-peddaling has begun and the scientific community has finally admitted there is no such thing as a red wolf. Its just as bogus as the eastern panther.
Large areas around Algonquin Park were closed to sport hunting by the provincial Liberal party to save “red wolves” which are really just hybrid canids composed of wolves, coyotes and dogs. The spoof scientifc name Canis soupus fits these animals perfectly
The southern Ontario animals are coy dogs and are not as the star says part wolf and part coyote. Trappers know them from their fur patterns, occasional floppy ears, and rare curved tails.
Dogs are just selectively bred wolves and have identical DNA.
The coyotes came to southern Ontario in 1913 and by that time there were no wolves in southern Ontario but there were lots of dogs. These animals cross bred with dogs, doubling their size, and moved north where they cross bred with hybrid wolves which native peoples in Parry Sound were already creating by crossing dug up wolf pups with their own Asian dogs to make better bear hounds.
There are lost of old records of the Iroquois hunting bears with domestic dogs from the early 1600s.
In addition, wolves have been crossing breeding with domtsitc dogs such as sled dogs ever since native peoples brought them to North American from Asia 13,000 years ago. Native Peoples, Europeans and dogs are all invasive species.
Pet owners and not sport hunters have destroyed the genetic integrity of Algonquin park’s wolves. The only way to save the genetic integrity of wolves is to ban dog ownership in wolf areas such as the Park.
There are only two things than can now be done to right the wrongs. One is to poison all the canids in Algonquin Park and re-introduce gray wolves from the far north, the same animals that were there in 1885.
The other is to rename Algonquin Provincial Park to Feral Dog Provincial Park so people will know that when they go on wolf howls they are not really communing with primal nature like they have been told but are really interacting with feral canids much like the dogs that howl nightly in Hyde Park in downtown Toronto.
Let me know when your story is done! Thanks for your visit.
That is a chilling story and one that reminds me of my own experience. I do believe I thought of another post.