Oklahoma lies near the heart of the coyote’s original plains range, and its 786 records span the state’s full breadth, from the mixed-grass prairie around Woodward County through the wooded crosstimbers of Cleveland and McClain to the southeastern bottomlands around Red Slough Wildlife Management Area.
Built for open country
A coyote makes its living on rodents, rabbits, and carrion, shifting to insects and fruit when they come into season, and Oklahoma’s patchwork of prairie, shrubland, and farm country suits that flexible diet end to end. Public grasslands such as Fort Supply and Packsaddle wildlife management areas hold notable records, but the county map runs well beyond them, into the counties that hold Tulsa and Oklahoma City.
Quieter in the heat
Reports run strongest in the first months of the year and again in early fall, and thinnest in midsummer, when pairs are raising pups in dense cover and daytime heat pushes activity into the night. Even in peak months a coyote is usually a brief shape crossing open ground at a distance; tracks and night howling are the far more common encounter.
Status in Oklahoma
NatureServe lists the coyote as SNR, Unranked, in Oklahoma, but the species is native to the state and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous.
Full species profile
