Coyote vs. Man is a topic that’s given me plenty of fodder over the years, including the winter evening my husband grabbed a big one by the scruff as it was in a dogfight with our Wheaten terrier and hurled the wild intruder into a snowbank.
And who will forget the Yorkville man who, in an attempt to save his dogs from some aggressive coyotes, shot a bullet to scare them, which flew through the bay window of an across-the-field neighbor, grazing her in the arm as she was finishing dinner dishes.
Luckily neither man nor beast suffered serious wounds in those two canine tales.
And there were no physical injuries when Laura Pall had her own close encounter Monday near the Fox Valley Park District’s Gilman Trail between Densmore Road and the Route 56 bridge.
With her two mixed-breed pups, Sky and Smokey, on leashes, Pall was taking a familiar stroll around 11 a.m. about a mile from her home on Wildwood in an unincorporated area near Sugar Grove when an animal, which she at first thought was a deer, suddenly loomed in front of her.
However, it didn’t take long for her to realize it was a “huge … largest I’ve ever seen” coyote, which she compared to the size of the German shepherds she and husband Michael had previously owned.
About 40 feet from her, the coyote “kept coming closer and the dogs started freaking out,” she told me.
As did their owner.
Pall was well aware the advice in these situations is to stay put and make a lot of noise. But as the coyote seemed unfazed by the screams coming out of her mouth and continued to advance, “I was not going to just stand there and let it come to me.”
And so Pall turned in retreat.
“I am not a runner. I’m a walker,” she said. “On this day I became a runner … but not nearly as fast as I thought I would be” with adrenaline rushing through her veins.
When she looked back, Pall said, the coyote was continuing to “gallop” toward her, then suddenly ran into the brush by the creek, where she saw and heard a bunch of commotion. The pack – she estimated between four or six – began making loud “hyena-like noises,” which she described as “the eeriest sound I’ve ever heard.”
The coyotes, Pall continued, were about 20 feet away from her and advanced another 10 as she frantically called her husband, out of breath and grateful he picked up the phone. As luck would have it, Mike Pall also happened to be in his car at the time and close enough to be her knight in shining armor, “laying on the horn” as he drove down the gravel path to her rescue.
“We’ve lived here for 12 years so we certainly heard the coyotes in the distance,” said Laura Pall. But this kind of encounter was “the scariest thing … I’ve walked that trail all the time and never seen anything like that.”
Nor had Fox Valley Park District Police Chief Larry Lapp.
“I’ve been at the park district for the past two years, and this is the first reported incident I have heard about,” he told me. “For the most part, as I have been on this section of Gilman Trail and the Forest Preserve Trail myself, wildlife will typically avoid bikers, walkers and joggers on the trail.”
The area, Lapp also noted, is primarily forest preserve property, which borders the Gilman Trail, Densmore and Hankes roads and Route 56. Except for the gravel trail, it has been “pretty much untouched,” he continued. And because it is a natural habitat, “it is ideal for deer, coyotes and other wildlife.”
According to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources website, coyote numbers have been on an upswing for the past 30 years, particularly in the Chicago area. Which shouldn’t be a surprise, noted St. Charles trapper Mark Romano, who has been studying coyotes for more than three decades.
Last year he and Rob Erickson, owners of Scientific Wildlife Management, worked on an Illinois Department of Natural Resources educational project that put radio collars on coyotes, which in turn provides schools with valuable ecology and behavior data. The company’s website also allows residents to report sightings, which gives useful information to local governments managing coyote issues.
As farmland turns into townhouses, retention ponds, wetlands and strip malls, these animals can more easily find a friendly habitat that includes food, water, shelter and space, said Romano. And the population is even slightly higher now because of the mild winters and plentiful rain that helps grow their food supply.
“They know us better than we know them. In today’s world these animals are familiar with our sights and signs and odors,” he said. “They know our environment, our neighborhoods, when our stores shut, they know the smell of car exhaust or of people having backyard parties.”
Not only are coyotes adaptable, they are curious and smart, nature specialists emphasized. They are also protective. And because pups, born around April, are now juveniles, there’s a lot of teaching going on right now to show the youngsters how to be successful hunters.
Romano was “confident” Pall’s encounter likely involved a mother and father calling out to their pups to “round them up.” That “yip-yap” heard from the bushes, he added, was “the family talking to each other.”
Or, as Renee Oakley, facility manager at the Fox Valley Park District’s Red Oak Nature Center, suggested, they were trying to intimidate, telling Pall and her dogs “to get out of my territory.”
Both agreed the fact the parent coyote veered off into the bushes rather than continue following her meant it was not being overly aggressive.
Coyotes can be seen “all the time at Red Oak, wary of humans as they run through the trails and brush,” Oakley said, emphasizing they are “scared of people” unless they’ve been fed by humans and become habituated.
“If they get used to people and see us as a food source, we are not a threat anymore,” she said. “We need to treat them as the wild animals they are.”
Like humans, each animal reacts differently in any given situation, which means they can also be unpredictable.
“Let’s give them healthy respect. They are important to our ecosystem, but everything with a mouth can bite.”
Although running, as Pall did, is instinctual and understandable, experts note, the best thing to do when facing a coyote is to get louder and bigger.
Chief Lapp suggested carrying a piercing whistle. Romano and Oakley listed an umbrella or walking stick as an appropriate deterrent, and if a loud noise does not scare them off, throw something like a nearby rock or your water bottle.
And for heaven’s sakes, guns and even large bats, which some Facebook posters suggested, need to be left at home.
“Firearms and other weapons are not allowed on any FVPD property,” Lapp pointed out. “Trying to shoot a wild animal that is most likely just as scared as the individual encountering them could possibly lead to someone else getting shot or a bullet damaging nearby buildings or other properties.”
Pall has not been back on the trail since this encounter that she likened to “watching a scary movie.”
“It will take a little time for me to feel peaceful on it again … for now, I’m going to stick to the paved part of the trail.”
dcrosby@tribpub.com
