Indiana’s 397 coyote records touch 65 counties, with Indiana Dunes National Park leading the named places at 20 and Marion, Allen, and Monroe counties carrying the heaviest totals. The spread covers the state’s full range of country, from the Lake Michigan shore through the glaciated farm plain to the unglaciated hills of the south.
Edge habitat from the dunes to the till plain
A coyote needs two things arranged close together: open ground to hunt mice and rabbits across, and cover to rest and den in. Indiana offers that pairing nearly everywhere, in the savanna and wetland mosaics of Kankakee Sands and Goose Pond Fish and Wildlife Area, the wooded ridges of Hoosier National Forest, and the fencerows and drainage corridors threading the central farm counties. The animal works those edges mostly at dawn, dusk, and night, so tracks in mud or snow and a yipping chorus after dark are the ordinary evidence; a clean look at the animal itself is the exception.
January’s howls
Reports crest in January, the start of the breeding season, when pairs call to hold their territories and the sound carries far across frozen, snow-covered fields. Through spring the focus shifts to the den, where litters are born and kept hidden, and the year’s pups do not range widely until late summer.
Status in Indiana
NatureServe ranks the coyote S5, Secure, in Indiana, and the species is native to its Indiana range. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state.
Full species profile
