Published: February 24, 2007 11:02 pm      

Dogs, cats may face increasing risk from coyotes

PORTAGE — Dave Nolan’s dog disappeared in January and Nolan thinks he knows what happened.

He believes his 140-pound St. Bernard was killed by coyotes.

“I left him out for, probably, 20 minutes that night,” Nolan said. “It was cold. Usually, he’s sitting right in front of the front door when it’s time to come in.

“He wasn’t there.”

Nolan lives at the edge of State Game Land 26 outside of Portage. His story is being repeated across the region.

But are coyotes really responsible for the disappearance of pets?

The answer – like the predators themselves – is as elusive as a shadow at twilight.

“I have never had a farmer or landowner tell me they lost a dog or cat to coyotes,” said veteran trapper Jim Griffith of Stoystown.

“I think more cats are taken by fox and mink and great-horned owls than coyotes, to be honest with you,” he said.

A lot of hunters are convinced that coyotes are responsible for a lack of small game, deer and turkeys. But the question of whether they pose a threat to pets is open to speculation.

Reports of coyote attacks on family pets are numerous in this area, but not everyone believes them.

Todd Harteis of Ebensburg, director of District 5, Pennsylvania Trappers Association, said he has been out daily this winter, scouring the snow for signs of bobcats. He’s seen more deer tracks than anything else, plenty of rabbit tracks, and tracks of fox and coyotes in nearly equal numbers.

“If they’re hungry, there is stuff out there to eat,” Harteis said of coyotes. “They don’t have to go onto someone’s porch or into someone’s backyard to get something.

“In fact, I’ve never seen them kill anything. They’re more of a scavenger. But, if a cat wanders out into a field and a coyote comes along, he’s going to eat it. That’s just how it works.”

‘Animal disappears’

A Pennsylvania Game Commission official said the agency is well aware that coyotes prey on cats and that they attack dogs – either as food or to eliminate a potential rival.

Mel Schake, information and education supervisor at the Southwest Region office in Bolivar, said game officers receive such reports from time to time, but his office has not seen any increase recently.

“It’s not that it won’t happen,” he said. “In fact, I can remember the late Arnie Hayden – he was one of the game commission’s experts on coyotes – said if (coyotes) do happen to come into a neighborhood, free-roaming small dogs and cats are certainly at risk.

“I suspect that, when it does happen, the animal disappears and nobody really knows what happened to it,” Schake said.

“It’s certainly something that could happen,” he said. “But we haven’t gotten any increase in reports.”

Making the connection

Bryan Stanczyk of Meyersdale believes the reports.

Among trappers, Stanczyk has a reputation as a coyote expert. While many furtakers manage to take two or three of the wild canines a season, Stanczyk caught 26 this year and has bagged 160 in the past six.

That is why many people in southern Somerset County call him whenever they think they have a coyote problem.

“A lot of farmers will report that they have coyotes, and they have no groundhogs,” he said. “I’ve had farmers tell me that they’ve had coyotes come right to the barn and try to drag their calves off.

“A lot of farmers said that they don’t have cats because of coyotes, that they used to have 20 or 30 cats, and over the period of a summer they don’t have any.”

He said Nolan’s experience is typical.

“A lot of people just have no idea why they disappeared,” he said.

“I hear a lot of people say that they left their dog out to go to the restroom and it never came back,” Nolan said. “A month or so later, their motion detector will set the light off on the back porch, and they see a coyote there that takes off running. They don’t make the connection.”

But, Stanczyk said, he has found evidence of the fate of a number of pets long after the fact.

“In most cases (coyote) dens are hard to find,” he said. “But, whenever you do find them, if you can get into them, in a lot of cases you will find flea collars and dog collars and other stuff like that.”

Stanczyk believes coyote predation on domestic animals rises at this time of year, because this is when the animals have young. That increases their need for food and heightens territorial instincts.

“Whenever they have pups, they’re actually out feeding for the pups,” he said.

“Coyotes generally don’t just den up. They’re an animal that normally roams the woods. They sleep on the ground. Denning comes up in winter, when they have pups.”

‘Haven’t seen him since’

Nolan said he has seen coyotes on his Portage property many times.

“I heard coyotes howling, but they never bothered him before. I have hunted coyotes and trapped for years.

“And by my estimation,” Nolan said, “there were about 15 coyotes within 50 yards of my house that night. I hollered for the dog and went into the woods hollering for him.

“But, I haven’t seen him since.”

Nolan said he found dog tracks leading to a nearby road, where they merged with a number of coyote tracks. He speculated that the coyotes chased the dog from his yard and overtook it near the road.

“The neighbors and everybody was out,” Nolan said.

“We combed these woods up and down trying to find anything. We have found nothing. He was tattooed and had all his tags on his collar ... but we never found it.

“That dog lived here for all six years of his life, right on my front porch,” Nolan said. “He was free to roam, and he never left the yard.

“And, that’s not the first dog or cat that has disappeared around here.”