DNR may liberalize coyote hunting rules

Coyotes are everywhere and always have been.

Next month, the Natural Resources Commission is going to do something about that.

Sorry, that’s a gross exaggeration. The NRC couldn’t make coyotes go away no matter how many suburban gardeners demanded it.

Coyotes are indigenous to North America from Alaska and southern Canada to Mexico, including Michigan. They’re one of those wonderfully adaptive species, like humans and white-tailed deer, that can live anywhere from forests and deserts to Toronto suburbs and Chicago back yards.

That’s been true for millennia.

What’s different for coyotes — like lots of other wildlife — is human beings are building more McMansions in places that coyotes used to have to themselves. Then people start seeing Roadrunner cartoon threats in an animal that probably does more good than harm.

Coyotes are omnivores. Although they’ll eat anything, probably 80 percent of their diet is rodents, small mammals such as rabbits, and bugs. Eating all those mice and grasshoppers are a positive economic affect of having coyotes in your neighborhood, especially if it’s agricultural.

They aren’t destroying the deer herd — mainly because, like the cartoon, they hunt alone — and aren’t snatching pets and toddlers out of back yards.

Part of the reason coyotes are so successful is that they’re the perfect combination of shy and elusive. There may be coyotes in your subdivision right now, they just aren’t going to show themselves.

But the Department of Natural Resources has heard the worried complaints and has proposed liberalizing coyote hunting regulations. The NRC will consider the recommendation at its March meeting.

Currently, coyotes may be taken in daylight statewide from July 15 to April 15. They can be hunted at night from Oct. 15 to March 31. The daytime season comes with fewer restrictions than night hunting.

The DNR proposes to expand the  day and night coyotes season to year-round, but would keep the spring ban on hunting with dogs from April 16 to July 7.

The same order would straighten out the confusing regulations for when and where nighttime hunters can use artificial lights. Hunters can pursue raccoons, opossums, foxes and coyotes at night, but when they’re allowed to switch on their flashlights is beyond confusing with different, specific rules for each species.

The regulation straightens it out by making lights legal while hunting those species with predator calls or at the point of kill if hunting with dogs.

Probably the most interesting parts of the proposed order are the conclusions.

Will it keep suburban homeowners from being menaced by giant fanged carnivores? (A really big coyote is half the size of a typical German shepherd.) No, the changes aren’t expected to have a significant impact on coyote numbers — and that’s probably especially true in places where hunters aren’t welcome.

Will it turn more people into coyote hunters? It’s an arcane pursuit; the regulations only make it a little more accessible.

Contact Michael Eckert at meckert@gannett.com, (810) 989-6264, on Facebook @michaeleckert or on Twitter @michaeleckert.