My Favorite Coyote Stories

My favorite coyote story of all time is of a coyote I took out of Dad’s traps one fall – all by myself, when just ten or twelve years old. It was a Sunday morning and for whatever reason I was up well before Mom and Dad and my brothers and sister.
Perhaps it was the excitement about checking the coyote sets Dad had made the day before; there were two sets, one was several hundred yards east of our house and the other about the same distance to the south. Being the only one out of bed, there was no one to ask permission or go with me, so out the door I went alone – headed south.
Luck of luck; there was a big coyote in the south set, caught by two of the three traps. I walked right up to him, as he was not able to move much and seemed resigned to his fate. Now what do I do? I’d watched Dad take several foxes out of sets. He would smack them over the nose with a stick, hold their mouth closed with his hand over their nose and put his knee in their chest and

suffocate them. That seemed simple enough that a kid my age could do it.
I found a suitable stick and after several smacks across the nose, he seemed unconscious and ready for my knee and hand – which I gave him. Problem is that a ten to twelve year old weighs quite a bit less than a hundred pounds, and this was a coyote – not a fox. When he seemed dead to me, I took his feet out of the traps and commenced to drag him to the house to show this trophy off to Dad and Mom and my brothers and sister.
But the coyote wasn’t dead and about half way home he began coming back to life. I found another stick, beat him some more, tried again to suffocate him and continued to drag him toward the house. Within shouting distance of the house, Mr. Coyote was again starting to show life. I wacked him some more and hollered to the house until my older brother Marion came out to help finish the killing and dragging.
I’ve been involved in the demise of many coyotes since that time, but this will always be my favorite coyote story!