A midnight float on a lazy river can yield prime pelts for the stealthy hunter. Float along with the author and his son as they take us on a winter night’s hunt.

By David Hart

With a single shot from his .243, my 12-year-old son not only had his first Virginia coyote, he was $50 richer. We were in Prince Edward County, Va., one of more than a dozen counties in the state that offer a cash reward for a dead coyote. The state legislature gave individual counties the freedom to institute bounties in 1999, about the same time coyote numbers were creeping upward and more farmers were losing livestock to predators. The move was (and still is) controversial, and critics - including some state wildlife biologists - say bounties are nothing more than money flushed down the toilet.

Cash reward for dead animals is hardly a new concept. A variety of wildlife has had a price on its head as early as the 17th century when the first white settlers arrived in North America. According to a historical timeline of wildlife management and conservation in Pennsylvania, authorities offered a 15-schilling bounty for wolf in Pennsylvania in 1685. In 1907, Michigan placed a price on the heads of sparrow (2 cents), starling (3 cents), rat, and crow, which earned a reward of 10 cents each. Those were eventually repealed. The Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) ultimately banned all wildlife bounties in 1966, but not before paying out tens of thousands of dollars on everything from crow and porcupine to stray cats and dogs. In 1921, according "100 Years of Conservation," a history of the Commission by Joe Kosack, the PGC spent a whopping $128,269 on bounties and encouraged its employees to kill anything that was destructive to small game animals. North Dakota had bounties on wolf, rattlesnake, magpie, gopher, fox and coyote until 1961. The state paid an estimated $2.2 million between 1897 and 1961.

Despite a trend to eliminate bounties, many localities still pay them. Some Virginia counties pay $75 for a coyote. A handful of Minnesota counties pay for gopher and ground squirrel; some Texas counties pay $20 for coyote; and the Louisiana Department of Fish and Wildlife pays $5 for a nutria tail.

Do they work? The short answer is "no," at least not if the goal is to reduce a species' population. Despite a veritable war on coyote, they are as abundant as ever. Officials in Colorado instituted a bounty on coyote in 1915 in an effort to exterminate them. The people of Colorado blamed coyote for livestock depredation and for decreasing deer and antelope populations. Nearly 1.88 million were shot, trapped or poisoned between 1915 and 1947, according to the Colorado Division of Wildlife's Web site. Despite the effort, coyote are flourishing in Colorado today and expanding their range throughout the country.

That's not to say professional predator or nuisance animal control won't have any effect. In some cases, concentrated and intense predator control can indeed help a variety of game and non-game wildlife increase populations. Coyote, for example, are the primary predator of pronghorn antelope and plains mule deer. A study in southeastern Oregon found that predation, primarily by coyote, accounted for 91 percent of antelope fawn mortality. A study in Montana found mule deer fawns had a 90 percent mortality rate - again, coyote.

While they don't necessarily harm overall populations in regions with growing or stable numbers of ungulates, coyotes can play a devastating role in regions where deer and antelope populations are well below carrying capacity levels. Michael Bodenchuk, the United States Department of Agriculture's state director for wildlife services in Texas, says controlling coyote populations through hunting and trapping can have a profound effect on deer and antelope numbers. He took part in numerous studies that examined predation when he worked in Utah.

"When the prey base is depressed, coyotes can take a huge toll on mule deer and antelope fawns. There is also a cumulative effect. Studies have shown that when coyote take a high percentage of fawns, mountain lions shift to adult deer, particularly females, which depresses the population even more," Bodenchuk said. "In general, coyote control - when done properly - can more than double pronghorn fawn survival. In one unit in Utah, mule deer fawn survival went from nine percent to 42 percent after intensive coyote management."

His agency only recommends predator control in areas that meet three criteria: Deer or antelope herds are at 60 percent or less of the management objective; fawn survival is low; and those deer or antelope herds below management objectives are either stable or declining.

Removing a few coyote at random throughout the year will likely have little effect on game populations, he adds, because coyote have a 60 percent annual mortality rate with or without limited hunting. In order to have an impact, it's vital to remove either 70 to 80 percent of the entire population or the right coyote at the right time. It's also critical to maintain a high level of predator management for several years in order to have a lasting impact. Researchers working on the National Bison Range in Montana found that antelope fawn mortality increased substantially only a few years after coyote control efforts stopped.

"We recommend that control efforts focus on known fawning grounds when coyote are establishing breeding pairs and breeding territories in the late winter, Bodenchuk said. "It's these breeding pairs that are responsible for the highest levels of fawn mortality because they have litters to feed and fawns provide an easy food source. The breeding pairs that prey heavily on fawns are also teaching their pups to hunt for fawns, so we are hoping to shift coyote behavior away from eating fawns."

Coyotes also concentrate in those areas where deer and antelope gather in the late winter, typically areas with the best forage. Essentially, they'll keep the animals away from that forage, making them even weaker as they go into the spring-fawning season, he adds. Big-game animals aren't the only ones that benefit from intense and sustained coyote control. Studies have found that sage grouse, pheasants and even Mississippi sandhill cranes and black-footed ferrets - both endangered species - get a boost through predator management. Biologists found that captive-raised black-footed ferrets returned to the wild have a 30 percent survival rate in areas with no predator control compared to 80 percent survival in areas where coyote numbers and other predators are being reduced.

The predator/prey relationship is far more complex for game birds, and coyote are just one of many factors that influence populations. Bodenchuk was involved in sage grouse recovery efforts and found that coyote control by itself had little effect on sage grouse numbers. Ravens and crows take a heavy toll on eggs, and foxes, skunks and other predators all play a role in sage grouse populations as well.

"Habitat is very important, also, but predators can be so abundant, they essentially cancel out the effects of good nesting and brood-rearing habitat. In order to increase game bird populations, in some cases, it's critical to control predators," notes Bodenchuk.

Generally, however, the two go hand-in-hand. Researchers who looked at predation on bobwhite quail in North Carolina determined that without suitable habitat, predator control had little effect on boosting quail numbers. Another study in Texas found that even with intense predator control - primarily bobcat and coyote - quail numbers did not increase. In that study, researchers removed a total of 227 cats and coyote from 3,800 acres over 18 months. Researchers with Delta Waterfowl have doubled or even tripled nest success with ground-nesting ducks through intense predator management efforts, but Delta manager of conservation programs, Joel Brice, said shooting the occasional skunk, coyote or raccoon would likely have no effect on overall duck numbers. "When you take out just a few nest predators, others fill the void pretty quickly," Bryce said. "We were able to increase nest success through intense, long-term predator control on large areas around nest sites. In those areas with the highest nesting success, we had a trapper setting traps every day for four months throughout the nesting season."

In many areas under heavy predator control, Brice said trappers took upwards of 300 animals, including skunks, raccoons, foxes and other furbearers. But even with such intense, prolonged effort, half of all duck nests still got eaten by something.

"We can't get all the predators. We can't legally remove some, like raptors, and others just get past our trappers," he said. "If we put that much pressure on predators, it's unlikely that taking just a few over a 6 square-mile area will have any effect at all."

In other words, there is a substantial difference between professional predator management and incidental take by recreational hunters, whether through incidental or intentional harvest. Recreational hunters and trappers likely won't take enough animals - even with a cash incentive - in the form of a bounty because government agencies simply don't offer enough money to create a high interest in hunting specific species.

Prince Edward County, Va., animal control officer Ray Foster disagrees. He's convinced that a deer hunter in his jurisdiction would probably pass up a coyote if it didn't have a price on its head. "I bet a guy would rather not shoot a coyote if he wasn't going to make any money on it because he's afraid of spooking a deer," said Foster. "If there's $50 on the line, a lot more deer hunters would be willing to take that shot and worry about getting a deer tomorrow." Indeed, nearly all of the coyote turned in for a bounty in Prince Edward were turned in during the state's seven-week deer season. However, there are far more hunters in the woods then, and the county only has a small number of trappers and predator hunters, Foster said. Also, the county only allots enough money for 50 bounties.

Even if they did help, bounties create another potential problem - fraud. Who knows if a coyote turned in for money in one county wasn't actually killed in another county, or even a different state? Sampson County, Ark., ended a beaver bounty program after county officials decided they couldn't prove that beavers brought in for money were actually caught in the county. Foster said fraud is a very real possibility where he works, and even though hunters who turn in coyotes are required to sign an affidavit swearing they are not committing fraud, he said it could happen. He said one resident turned in eight at once, and although it raised suspicions, Foster paid the man $400.

The next question, then, is did he hunt those coyote because of the bounty or because he loved the challenge of outwitting one of the most cunning animals in North America? There's no telling if bounties actually increase hunting pressure or if those killed would have been taken by hunters anyway. Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist John Young said he's convinced bounties do encourage hunters and trappers to get outdoors.

"Whether or not they actually help reduce predation on livestock is anyone's guess," he said, "but with fur prices as low as they are, a bounty can get more people hunting and trapping, and that's always a good thing."

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