Coyote
June 21, 2007 by montucky
On a hike today, as I was nearing Sacajawea Peak I caught a glimpse of motion quite a distance ahead of me on the trail and just had time to get the camera into action to catch this guy. I sure wish I could have gotten closer, but he didn’t get that big by not being alert and cautious.
I got three shots of him, all hand-held at 12X, then cropped them to give a good look at one truly beautiful coyote. It was obvious from the scat he left laying around that he has been eating mostly rabbits (I have seen quite a few Showshoes in the area), and he’s in an area remote enough (about 5 miles from the nearest road) to be quite safe from humans. He has a good life.
The first photo I’ve posted is the original size at 12X. The next is a crop of it, then the next two are just cropped versions of the other two shots. My wife was a little spooked by the last one: that is an intense look!
At first he was so fluffed out I thought he was a wolf then rechecked your photos and your right totally a coyote. You grow them big over there! I’ll attempt to get a shot over here but they are pretty small here in comparison. With snow shoes do you get Canadian lynx over there?
This guy is in prime condition. That’s the way a coyote is supposed to look. I was so pleased to see him looking that good! I wish I could have gotten a shot of his tail as he left: it was huge and bushy.
If there are still Lynx around here close, they would be up in this area, and I’ll bet there are. It’s almost impossible to get up there in the winter though when their tracks would be visible.
When I was a kid, one came into the garage here one night and in the morning was lying under a deer we had hanging up in there, but I haven’t seen any in years. I know there are still quite a few in the Bob Marshall area and up along the Yaak river.
I’ve seen more showshoes this year than usual. I’ve seen them nearly everywhere I’ve been including places I’ve not seen them before. I consider that to be good news too.
I love these guys! I know some people don’t hold them in the highest regard, but they’re excellent at what they do, which is surviving. Beautiful too - both the animal and your shots. You were lucky to get that close, I think.
Very lucky! I was really embarrassed to see that he was so much more alert than I was though. It’s a wonderful feeling to me to see a critter like that in a truly wild setting and to think that his life up there is still about the way it would have been a thousand years ago.
That’s another reason why I’d like to see the Wilderness Bill, HR 1975, passed to protect this and other parts of the wild country.
wow!
seems like you’ll be able to put some sort of book together this winter. the diversity of your photo subjects is really great!
thanks for sharing all this with us!
The diversity is strictly luck, but the chances of seeing different animals is directly proportional to the amount of time spent in the outdoors and the remoteness of the areas visited. I know from experience that if one spends a lot of time visiting wild country he will see nearly every species of critter that lives there (but camera range is another issue).
Boy he is one healthy coyote, the ones around here all look like the one from the roadrunner cartoons, great image and subject Terry.
Yes, he’s a beauty all right. That’s the way they should look when they live in wilderness. Still, I wish I could have gotten just a little closer.
Hey Friend
Beautiful wolf . . .
Last night sitting on my porch reading, a raccoon came out from underneath. It didn’t really seem very big until one kit crawled out and another and another . . . Five small fury bags of joy. So small and so cute. Just five feet away. I didn’t move and she looked around every which way, unafraid. I turned my head and she ever so slowly she crawled back into her den.
Each year a new family joins me . . . One year it was a family of foxes, how the pups did play.
Keep hiking, keep sharing.
Dan Hanosh
Dreams Are Yours To Share
A raccoon family! What a treat! I’ve seen a few in the general area here, but none close. We have foxes just up the road a bit but haven’t seen any kits this year though.
[...] First up is a Montanan who is returning home to Montana, blogging From The Front Porch. Raising Country Kids is a heart-warming blog, and delivers just what it says. The Montana Business Blog is chock full of business-related entries. Some funny stuff going on over at Fancy Rants. The Radwood Chicken Experiment is the story of seven chickens in Missoula. Yes, I am serious. Montana Outdoors has some great pix of the outdoors and the critters. My favorite: coyote! [...]
When I was a kid, we used to go on a family fishing trip every summer into a very remote area north of Montreal - about four hours of dirt roads north, to be exact.
One year when I got up early in the morning, the cook silently motioned me to follow him through the kitchen. He pointed to a bucket right outside the back door … which was full of baby skunks!
By design or desire, I was the only one of the family that got to see them.
I bet those were cute little fellows! I enjoy all of the encounters with animals, although cub bears, moose calves and probably baby skunks could become big problems if the mothers are close by!
Thanks for the visit!