Arkansas holds 247 coyote records reaching from the Ozark highlands, where Ozark National Forest and Benson Creek Natural Area lead the named places, down through the Ouachitas at Ouachita National Forest and out to the farmland counties of the Delta plain. Few large mammals in the state read as evenly spread as this one.
Forest ridges and farm edges alike
The coyote is a generalist that hunts mice, rabbits, and insects and takes fruit and carrion when they come, so the pine and hardwood ridges of the interior highlands suit it no better and no worse than the crop fields and pasture edges of the lowlands. Sylamore Wildlife Management Area and Hobbs State Park hold records alongside suburban-edge counties like Washington and Benton. People who share ground with coyotes here mostly know them by sound, a yipping chorus rising from a creek bottom after dark, rather than by sight.
A late-winter chorus
Reports run in every month but crest in February and March, the heart of the coyote’s breeding season. Pairs are traveling and calling more then, and the group howls that advertise a territory carry a long way through leafless woods. The year’s pups arrive in spring and stay close to the den through summer, when reports thin to their lowest.
Status in Arkansas
NatureServe ranks the coyote S5, Secure, in Arkansas, and the species is native to its Arkansas range. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state.
Full species profile
