It tipped the scales at but 32. For the last twenty years or so the South's coyote population has been expanding at a howling rate. The spread of the diminuitive wolves has been nothing short of phenomenal. The coyote population exploded. Within a little over ten years, hunters were killing close to 50,000 annually in Mississippi alone.
Biologists estimate that for every coyote killed, there are at least ten more still at large.
Like their cartoon counterpart, southern coyotes will eat almost anything with food value, from the farmer's watermelons mentioned above to persimmons. But, like most canines, they are primarily carnivores. One typical coyote stomach contained an assortment of items ranging from grasshoppers to cotton rats to the hoof of a fawn. Their eclectic palates have done little to ingratiate these relative newcomers with southern hunters, and they are blamed for almost everything except bad weather and the high cost of shotgun shells. Quail hunters and rabbit hunters, especially, have laid the scarcity of their game at the feet of the crafty coyote.