How to Track Coyotes

Video Transcript

We’re Nick and Valerie Wisniewski on behalf of Expert Village.com. We are going to show you how to identify eastern coyote trails. For more information, you can visit our website at www.walnuthilltracking.com. The eastern coyote Canis Latrans is a member of the wild dog family and like other wild dogs, it shows 4 toes in its tracks both on the front foot and on the hind foot. Like other wild dogs, the negative space between toes and the heel pads make an x. The nails are fairly robust and those will sometimes register in the track as well. What distinguishes eastern coyote tracks from other wild dogs are basically 2 things. The one thing that coyote has is called buddy toes. The 2 inner toes stay together very tightly pointing almost straight forward. They do not splay out as much as other wild dogs or domestic or wolf. The other thing that is very unique about the eastern coyote track is that it has a generally oval shape especially on the hind foot. As you can see in these tracks, the heel pad of the front foot is much more robust than the heel pad of the hind foot. What we’ve done is laid down a trail which is fairly typical for an eastern coyote. When an eastern coyote is moving around the landscape, most of the time it is going to move in what we call a direct register trot. What happens in a direct register trot is a front foot will hit the ground and the hind foot on the same side of the body will land in almost the exact same spot leaving the impression of only 1 track on the ground. The coyote when moving around the landscape is very comfortable in this gait and the stride or the difference it is traveling can go anywhere from 17 ½ inches to 26 inches or so and Valerie is showing you how to measure a stride here. This one is a little less than 20 inches which is fairly typical or average for an eastern coyote as it is trotting. Another thing that we look at to determine whether or not we have a coyote or some other wild dog, is that we look at the trail width and a coyote has a fairly straight or narrow trail anywhere from 2 ½ to 5 ½ inches wide. In this particular example we are showing you here, it is just less than 5 inches. That is fairly typical for a coyote. When you are looking at a coyote trail, one thing that stands out almost immediately how neat and precise the trail is. Once they are in this pattern they will travel in this pattern for miles upon miles. Often times when we are tracking coyotes, we will actually back track a coyote trail and suddenly one trail will split into two and we will realize that we had a pair of coyotes traveling in exactly each other’s foot steps for a long long distance.

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