South Dakota’s 435 coyote records concentrate where the state keeps its big public grasslands: Wind Cave National Park, Badlands National Park, and Custer State Park together account for more than half the total, and Custer and Pennington counties far outpace every other county.
Native fauna of the open plains
Unlike the eastern states, where coyotes arrived within living memory, South Dakota lies inside the species’ original range, and the hunting style that defines it evolved on ground like this: coursing mice and rabbits across shortgrass, digging ground squirrels from their burrows, and cleaning up carrion on the range. Records from Buffalo Gap National Grassland and the Missouri National Recreational River carry that same pattern beyond the Black Hills parks.
A spring-weighted record
Reports climb through April, May, and June, when pairs are denning and then feeding pups and adults hunt more openly; by November and December the counts drop to their lowest, once the year’s young have dispersed and family groups have broken up. Even in this stronghold, most people only ever hear a coyote, the wavering chorus rolling across the prairie at dusk.
Status in South Dakota
NatureServe ranks the coyote S5, Secure, in South Dakota, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
