Idaho’s 552 coyote records run from the lava beds of Craters of the Moon National Monument, the state’s leading named place with 20, north through the Snake River Plain and the Panhandle forests of Kaniksu and Coeur d’Alene. Bannock, Ada, and Power counties anchor the total, a map drawn over sagebrush steppe, farm ground, and mountain timber alike.
Sagebrush country is home ground
Unlike the states farther east, Idaho was never new country for coyotes; this is native range, part of the open West where the species evolved hunting ground squirrels, rabbits, and mice in sight of distant cover. The Snake River Plain’s shrub flats and canyon rims are classic ground, and Massacre Rocks State Park and the Sawtooth National Recreation Area hold records from the same long history. A coyote here hunts by ear as much as by eye, mousing in open flats at dawn and dusk, and most travelers through that country will hear a group yipping from the rimrock without ever spotting the animals.
A summer swell of young animals
Reports swell in July and August, when the year’s pups leave the den and family groups range together, putting more animals on the move than at any other season. A second rise comes in midwinter around January, the breeding season, when pairs call across the cold flats and a howl can carry for miles on still air.
Status in Idaho
NatureServe ranks the coyote S5, Secure, in Idaho, and the species is native to its Idaho range. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state.
Full species profile
