“It’s open season on coyotes year-round, and there is no bag limit,” says Charlie Killmaster, an ironically named DNR biologist. In 2017, the DNR accumulated nearly 200 carcasses. Hunters are invited to present up to five “kills” per month from March through August, and at the end of each month, their names are entered into a drawing for a lifetime hunting and fishing license. The Department of Natural Resources prefers not to use the unsavory word “bounty.” Instead, they call it the Georgia Coyote Challenge. Last year, concerns prompted state officials to launch a program to trap or kill more of the animals. Likewise, as coyotes have become increasingly active here, their ululations are striking outsized fears among metro Atlantans.Ĭoyotes have been documented in every county in Georgia ( one often sighted in Piedmont Park was nicknamed “Rusty”). This phenomenon is called the Beau Geste effect, after a novel in which French Legionnaires propped up their dead along the wall of a fort to appear greater in number. You think you’re hearing a giant pack when there probably are only two or three.

You may not see them, but you definitely hear them.Ĭoyotes can have a hair-raising, three-octave howl with hiccups of yipping, and they modulate their vocalizations in a way that makes their groups sound larger.

Coyote sounds at night