Our early Sunday morning drive to camp had just started and I was on the lookout for deer. There were plenty to be seen, too - coming out of the woods again and starting to show themselves regularly in grassy edges, grazing. But the sighting that had me slamming on the brakes was the coyote feeding on some road-killed varmint. I've hunted all my life in the eastern United States and spend a lot of time in the woods in general. Still, a coyote was something I had never seen in the wild.
Readers call all the time to report coyote sightings, even in the city limits of Charleston.
Hunters in recent years have killed a number of these elusive yet abundant creatures. Twenty years ago, there were few coyotes in West Virginia, or anywhere else in the East for that matter. Today, they're plentiful. Coyotes now can be found in every county of West Virginia. It was only a matter of time before I finally got to see one.