How To Get Rid Of Coyotes

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Coyote are usually classified as a pest species due to their predation habits. The most common complaints include the following:

  • Coyotes preying on sheep
  • Coyotes preying on chickens
  • Coyote posing threat to pet
  • Fear of coyote threatening people
For these reasons, many people wish to have these nuisance canines trapped and removed. Not all trappers provide this service, but some specialize in coyote trapping.


Click here for a nationwide list of 100's of professional coyote trappers serving all 50 states.

How To Get Rid Of Coyotes - The increasing world population and the erstwhile need for more land mass has resulted in a decrease in coyote natural habitats and this has seen more and more of them dwelling with humans in suburban areas. Coyotes play a huge role in keeping the rodent population down, but their propensity to snack on pets and livestock wearies many a homeowner or farmer. The nighttime howls of coyotes, especially during mating season, is particularly disturbing as it resembles the sound of a crying baby or a wounded animal – but very much louder! If you simply can’t take it anymore, below are some ways to get rid of the coyotes in your backyard.

Remove food Sources

  • Feed your pets indoors and be sure to not leave pet food outside at any time.
  • Keep your garbage cans sealed tightly at night or bring them into the garage to prevent foraging by the coyotes in your yard.
  • Ensure proper waste disposal as well to keep your rodent populations down. They are a major food source for coyotes. Get rid of the rodents
  • Remove all cover vegetation - grasses, bushes and trees, and keep your environment clean and bare. This way, there’s nowhere for the critters to hide out.
  • Clean up all fallen fruits and seeds from under your trees


Practice Exclusion
Build a fence. A properly constructed fence will keep coyotes out once they have been expelled from your yard, or as a preventive measure. Incorporate a strong wire mesh or pickle strips in your fence and make it tall; tall fences work best because coyotes are mostly able to jump over short fences. They are also good diggers, so it is best to build your fence to extend below ground level by a few feet or put a layer of concrete around the fence. Otherwise, set up an electrified fence with thirteen strands around your corral to protect the sheep from coyotes. Also set up bright lights to illuminate the corral.



Live Trapping
Trapping is another effective method in coyote control. You will need latex gloves, soap, an attractor or bait - this can be a piece of meat, coyote urine or a coyote gland, and a trap with a jaw that is 6 inches wide. The jaw can either be smooth or can be made of rubber. Wash the trap and be careful not to leave any human scent on the cage or the fox will not go near it at all. You may even boil it and thereafter handle it with gloved hands. Place the attractor around the trap and place it over a dug hole big enough to contain the size of the coyote. What to do with a trapped coyote? Relocation of coyotes is subject to local laws in different states, so before setting the trap, you must get in touch with your local wildlife control department to find out your options in this regard. You may be required to euthanize any trapped coyote as well. You may also decide to shoot the animal and dispose of the carcass with utmost care. If any of this is too much for you, get in touch with a wildlife professional to do the job.

Lethal Means
1. Shooting – a lot of people go out shooting coyote especially in the country side. Do this only if you are able to get a good aim and/or are sure of getting a good shot at the animal. Then of course, you have to deal with the ensuing mess. This is not a humane method as the chances of getting a good shot to do the job at once is slim. 2. Lethal trapping – use a snare kind of trap to kill the fox but be careful so your trap does not kill the neighborhood pets instead. A common lethal trap is the body grip trap, this is a large and powerful trap that will cave in on the coyote when it triggers the trap, squeezing and crushing it to death. 3. Poison – lay poisoned bait around for the fox, but again this is dangerous as untargeted critters and pets may find the bait before the fox. Before going on to kill any coyote, you must find out what your local laws say about it as many have been penalized for using one inhumane method or the other. Most importantly, stay safe and hire a professional to do it.

How To Get Rid Of Coyotes In Your Yard
Coyotes are not comfortable around humans so there shouldn’t be a good reason to find them in your yard. However, a coyote that’s hungry and finds some source of food available will try to get it. The kinds of food that may attract a coyote can be trash or pet food that you may leave outside. So the first step to getting a coyote away from yard is to get rid of the food source. If you have pet food outside, then move it inside. And you should not leave the garbage outside overnight because that will not only attract coyotes, but other wildlife as well. If you do have a problem of a returning coyote, you should consider a fence with an outward slant because that will make it harder for a coyote to get in. If a fence is not slanted, then some coyotes will be able to climb. Some people like to see the wildlife in their yard. However, if you’re like many animal lovers, you own a pet and it can soon become the coyote’s next meal. That is why it is so important to keep the coyotes out.

How To Get Rid Of Coyotes In Your Shed
A shed provides adequate shelter for a coyote. So in some places, it is actually common to come across one of them. You should never try to remove the coyote yourself if one has gotten into your shed because a coyote can be defensive and may attack. Coyotes, like many wild animals, can carry rabies which is a mortal disease. To get the coyote out of your shed, open the door and stand away from the entrance. Making some noise will help scare the coyote away. Once the coyote is away, you should make sure that there is no other entrance to your shed that you may not have noticed before. If there is, you should close it. If you have a dog, that would be a good source for the noise you need. But make sure that the dog is large enough so that it may scare away the coyote. Remember not to keep anything in your shed that may be a food source for the coyotes. There are not many traps big enough to trap a coyote, plus releasing them may be a bit dangerous for someone without the experience. If you don’t want to risk confronting a coyote, you should call a local wildlife management agent or animal control. Read the guide Ways to Remove Coyotes from Sheds or Porches.

How To Get Rid Of Coyotes In Your Chicken Coop
A chicken coop is one of the biggest coyote magnets that you can have. If you raise chickens as a business, you should take every precaution against coyotes. This is another time when keeping a dog is very effective against coyotes. You have to be sure that your dog is trained not to attack the chickens themselves. You can also install a fence around the chicken coop so that the coyote cannot get in and the taller the fence, the better because a coyote that’s hungry and sees a chicken coop will try everything within its power to get to the chickens. Some people believe that an electrified fence is necessary when in fact all that you need is a tall fence. You can also install a motion sensor outside of the chicken coop so that when a coyote is near, a light will go on. This will make the coyote too nervous to come close. You can also use a motion sensor that triggers a sprinkler system and that should work as well if not better than the light.

How To Get Rid Of Coyotes In Your Garage
It is not very common to find a coyote in your garage, but in areas where coyotes live, they will sometimes see a garage as a shelter. The reason why it’s not very common to find a coyote in your garage is because of the proximity to humans. Coyotes will for the most part avoid humans at all costs, but if you keep items the coyote may want, like food or trash in the garage, they will come in. Give the coyote one exit and make noise from the other side to scare it away. Do not stand by the door; instead try to make the noise close to a window. Coyotes are feared by people but they serve a purpose and in fact can keep other pests under control. That is why it’s important to try your best not to harm them. If you get rid of coyotes, then you will have other pest infestations that will thrive without the coyote present. When removing coyotes, the most important thing is safety both for you and the animal so take every precaution.

How to Get Rid of Coyotes


In terms of coyote removal, you have a few approaches to think about. Just a quick look on the internet will give you masses of ideas on how you can get these creatures out and keep them out. We’ve found methods that include ammonia-soaked rags, mothballs, light and sound devices, water sprinklers, and much more. These CAN all work, although many of them simply don’t, but they’re not advisable for long-term relief. Repellents and other deterrents may encourage the creature to leave for a short spell, but once the repellent or deterrent has been removed from the equation, the coyote (or other wild animal) is free to come back, as and when they like.



That’s the thing with deterrents and repellents; they don’t actually solve the problem at all. And, in some cases, they can even add to it, causing further concerns and conflict.

Instead of looking at ways that you can deter coyotes, you’ll have a much better result if you look at excluding them instead. Most homeowners just don’t relish the prospect of getting up close and personal with a vicious animal like the coyote, so that generally puts trapping out the window. Also, with trapping, you then have the dilemma of what to do with the beast once you’ve captured it. (If you even manage to capture it at all.) You will need to check the laws in your local area to see what the right approach is in that case.

Exclusion works because you are essentially locking them out of their own home once they leave. It’s a process that many wild animal removal experts would take for bats, allowing all bats to be safely removed and re-homed without too much human intervention, and also without any of the animals being harmed.

To exclude coyotes, you could need to watch them for a while to figure out their pattern. The closer that these animals are to human habitats, the more they will become nocturnal. Coyotes that are left “out in the wild” that face little to no human interaction are often spotted hunting for food during the day, but highly-populated areas generally turn them into more night hunters.

Once you have watched the coyote(s) for a few days, you will learn what time they leave to look for food, and also roughly what time they can be expected back “home”. It will also tell you how many coyotes you have to deal with, although you will need to bear in mind that there could be more youngsters in the den. If you know that you have just the one coyote, or adults with no children, you can wait for them all to leave before sealing up the space they once inhabited. If you do this without making sure all coyotes are out, and there are no babies in the den, you run the risk of locking one or more of the animals in. This will inevitably lead to their death. This is even more so the case if you have locked a mother away from her young — the young will more than likely die.

There are a lot of things to think about when it comes to getting rid of coyotes, and the threat of physical attacks can’t be ruled out. Although these are generally shy creatures, they are becoming braver with every paw they step closer to human civilisations. They are having to adapt to become more human-friendly, learning to take scraps from back yards and trash cans, as well as making use of food that people actually leave out in the yard for wild animals. If you leave it out, the animals will come running. You can’t be upset when you find yourself with a Disney-style woodland creature scenario on your hands. Except these ones aren’t going to help you do your housework like they do in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

When getting rid of coyotes, or any form of nuisance wildlife, you must first investigate WHY the animal has become a problem in the first place. In many cases, the culprit is food. There is food readily available on your land, and that's what attracts them and then encourages them to stick around.

Next to food, shelter is the next common feature that wild or nuisance wildlife will be looking for. A mother will be looking for a cosy spot to bring up her young, or an entire colony, group, or pack of animals will be looking for a winter spot to keep them safe from the harsh, cold temperatures.

If you clean up your land, you’ll go a long way to eliminating both of those things. Piles of debris and brush cleaned up will eliminate burrowing animals from digging down, and modifying bird feeders, etc. will ensure that you're not attracting smaller critters which could, in turn, lead to attracting in the larger predators behind them.

By far the best way to get rid of coyotes is with exclusion and preventative measures. Add fences to stop the beasts from getting in, and clear up after yourself so that they won't have a place to look for food or hide out. Repellents are deterrents are generally a waste of time and money, although you may find that you have some luck using them in conjunction with preventative methods and exclusion approaches.

Of course, you could always hire in the professionals. That's what they’re there for. And, in many cases, you’ll find that it’s actually cheaper to hire in the experts than it is to try and do the job yourself!

Go back to the Coyote Removal page, or learn tips to do it yourself with my How to Get Rid of Coyotes and Best Ways to Repel Coyotes guides.

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