Speaker 1: From the city of presidents, it’s the all about Quincy podcast. This is your host, John Melley. Join me as we explore the history, hidden gems and highlight the businesses with great stories that I’ll tell the tale like Quincy, Massachusetts is a great place to live.
Speaker 1: Hey, there is John, how are you Thanks for spending some time with me. I do appreciate it. Welcome to this episode of the all about Quincy podcast, where we are discussing coy wolves. Yes. A mixture of coyote and Wolf. My guest today is going to explain why that’s, what we’re seeing all around town. My guest today is John Way. He is an expert in coyotes wolves, coy wolves, smart guy knows a lot of stuff. And the reason I had Jon on the show was that I’m seeing all kinds of stuff on social media. And I think nextdoor.com and facebook.com and Instagram from the Quincy police department and other things about coyote sightings around the city. And, I’ve seen them, myself walking my dogs up at Faxon park. I know they’re in the cemetery as well. And so I thought, you know, there’s a lot of folks talking about coyotes and questions about them, and I thought let’s get a pro on their show.
Speaker 1: You see what I did there I did a little rhyme before we get to my interview with John. I just want to invite you to reach out and contact us. Just go to allaboutQuincypodcast.com. Enter your first name and email address. Let us know what you think about the show. What would you like to talk about I’ve got a lot of cool stuff coming up. October is national pizza month and I’m interviewing pizza shop owners, pizza restaurants around the city to celebrate national pizza month. So that’s coming up. Those shows are in production. Reach out to us, let us know what you’d love to hear about. Just go to all about Quincy podcast.com, upper right-hand corner, click the contact us button. Just give us your first name, your email address and what you’d like to hear about any comments or feedback, all this that the other thing reach out. We’d love to hear from you. All right. So let’s go talk to the coyote expert Jon Way.
Speaker 1: Well, as I said in the beginning of this episode, my guest today is Dr. John Way, who has his bachelor of science from UMass Amherst, his master of science from the university of Connecticut stores and his doctorate from Boston college. And the reason why I have John on the podcast with me today is that as I’ve said in previous episodes, I have a couple of dogs. I walk around a Quincy with them. We spent a lot of time up at facts in park, and I know there are coyotes in facts and park, but other dog owners talk to me about coyotes. And I saw coyote today, or other people will be talking about that. They saw a coyote running down the street in the neighborhood, and I thought, you know what There’s an awful lot of interest in coyotes. Let’s get someone who’s an expert on coyotes. And so John, through the power of Google, I found you and I found out you’re a fellow UMass grad. And so I said, I want to talk to this guy, how are you today
Speaker 3: I’m great. Thanks. Thanks for having me, John.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s great to have you here. It’s a topic that a lot of people that I meet walking my dogs, Zoe and Quinn, around the neighborhood and in facts and park in particular, and also see a lot of talk about it on, are you familiar with the app nextdoor.com
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I’m not engaged in it too much, but I certainly know it. Yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So there’s a lot of people talking about coyotes. There’s a mixed bag of conversation. There’s all watch out for coyotes and there’s coyotes. They’re everywhere. They’ve been with us for years. Don’t worry about it. They’re more afraid of you than you are of them. And so I thought let’s get an expert here to talk about coyote behavior, and just anything that you can tell us about coyotes in an urban setting,
Speaker 3: Eastern coyote that we have living here, not just in Quincy, but all of the Northeast from essentially kind of the New Jersey, mid Atlantic area, all the way up into Southern Canada. So that would include all the Northeast, including Maine and New Hampshire is actually technically a coyote Wolf hybrid. the ant the animals about, 60 to 65% coyote, which would be kind of the Western variety of coyote. And then roughly 25, maybe 30% a Wolf. And interestingly, there’s two different wolves native to the Northeast. And this Eastern coyote seems to have both some gray Wolf genes and some Eastern Wolf genes. But the bottom line is it’s about 25 to 30% Wolf, meaning that the genes found in this Eastern coyote about 25 to 30% of it is not found in Western coyotes. Then the other interesting thing is they have about 10% dog DNA and the men we’re not, not really quite sure how dog DNA got into a wild animal because typically a domestic animal doesn’t do too well if it’s back across to the wild, but quite clear, quite clearly, they were able to survive.
Speaker 3: And, now they kind of breed true. So it’s not like we have Western coyotes, wolves and dogs currently breeding. This is what made the animal around a hundred years ago, maybe 70 years ago, as I got to the Northeast. And then we kind of have this animal breeding with each other, but there are certainly a bigger animal. they’re more robust, they’re bigger basically in every direction and every dimension, excuse me than a Western coyote, but they’re also a little bit smaller, not surprisingly than a Wolf. And so where the term coy Wolf comes from. And I just wrote a book and it’s, it’s freely online. If anybody’s interested in it. I have a website, Eastern coyote research.com. And I have a section in the book section on the website called coy Wolf book. And it describes a lot of what we’re talking about here today.
Speaker 3: And I made it as an ebook to make it more accessible than my typical print books. So that’s just kind of a real basic to the animal. A lot of people get confused when they hear the terms, but essentially coy Wolf is a synonym for the Eastern coyote. We have living here in Massachusetts and all of the Northeast for that matter. a lot of people get confused and they say, Hey, we have coyotes around here, but I saw this big animal. Was it a coil And you’re kind of saying the same thing because the animals in Quincy are those hybrids. Most people in the Northeast call them coyotes. But if you look anywhere else in the country, besides the Eastern United States, especially the Northeast, the United States, these animals look a lot different. And that’s because Western counties are a lot smaller. They don’t have the Wolf genes that these Eastern Kyrie or coils have. So the toy Wolf kind of comes directly from that. it doesn’t change what the animal is in what we’re going to talk about, but it does just kind of, it is an important point because I get that question quite frequently in many different areas is, is, is this animal equivalent for they’re all coils here in Massachusetts Most people just call them Eastern coyotes or simply coyotes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s what I do. I say, oh, there’s coyotes.
Speaker 3: Exactly. So it’s good to just know their background because for instance, we used to have cougars here in Massachusetts, believe it or not. Unfortunately I love them. They got killed off and out west they’re most commonly called mountain lions, right in many parts of the world, cause they live all the way down to the Southern tip of Argentina. They’re called Pumas, especially in kind of Spanish speaking areas, Pumas common. And then they’re also called Panthers or Florida Panthers in Florida, but that’s all the same species which are also called cougars or mountain lions. So, you know, it’s really not too surprising that in the animal that has such a range and then this hybrid might be called something else besides just coyote. So Eastern coyote, coy Wolf coyote here in new England, that’s kind of referring to the same creature. So we have
Speaker 1: Koi walls that are, when we see what we call a coyote in Quincy, Massachusetts, it’s really a coy Wolf. Genetically tell us about their typical behavior. And if somebody sees a coyote or a coy Wolf, what do they do What’s their typical behavior Do they hunt at night You hear these things. If you see a skunk or a raccoon during the daytime, you should be concerned because they, that’s not their normal behavior pattern. What’s a typical behavior pattern for a coyote here in the Quincy area.
Speaker 3: First of all, they’re very successful around people. That’s kind of obvious. And a lot of people get confused by that, but where you have natural habitat and then even in suburban areas, those are actually really good habitats. And suburban areas actually is really good. Wildlife habitat. You have a high density of prey. In fact, you generally have more prey animals in some suburbs than you do in wild areas. And it’s not just because of lack of hunting, although that’s part of the reason human hunting that is there’s also, a lot more food for those animals. People don’t think so, but our backyards have all of these plants that are deer height, as opposed to the forests that have, you know, 50 to a hundred foot Oaks. Even though those certainly provide food for deer, no question about it, but especially animals like rabbits and turkeys that do really well with this mixed habitat.
Speaker 3: And so where you have an abundance of prey, you typically have predators that do pretty well too. So we’ve had fishers move into this area. Black bears are moving east by the year when I was at UMass, they were mostly in Western mass, 20 years later. They’re now well-established in central mass and starting to reach Eastern mass as a population, not just as individuals which do get here regularly. Obviously I don’t recommend feeding animals. That’s not a good thing. You want to keep them wild, but even just in our normal habitat structure, without feeding them, we provide a lot of food for these animals in terms of natural habitat. Natural. I kind of have my air quotes out because sometimes natural is humans cutting things down and having vegetation, but basically provide a lot of vegetation for animals like deer rabbits and typical Eastern coyote and other predator foods.
Speaker 3: And so that’s kind of the first setting of the stage is we provide a lot of food for prey. And then of course, if there’s a lot of prey, we provide that food for the predators that might eat them. Of course, like Eastern coyotes. The other thing is Eastern coyotes are super successful around people and it might be for reasons that we don’t think of they’re actually super successful around people because they avoid us. They do well near us, but they also typically avoid us. And people might say, well, I see them all the time. Statistically, they’re really avoiding us. And some of the ways that they avoid us are kind of through questions that you asked me. the first way that they avoid us is even if you see them during the daytime, all the animals I’ve ever studied in the wild are more active at night than they are during the daytime.
Speaker 3: So if you look at, if you look at it, statistically, you might see them during the day and I’m not including animals that get habituated to people. It’s never a good idea to feed wild animals, especially predators that could potentially harm people because then they can, a lot of animals don’t change their behavior, but a lot of animals will change their behavior. I’m talking more about the animals that are behaving naturally feeding on natural prey items. Like I just mentioned, they’re typically active at night and I’ve just found over the years, but it just seems easier for them to be active night, to avoid people. And for instance, go through your neighborhood wherever you live. If it’s urban, suburban drive through your neighborhood or walk through your neighborhood and look at all the front bushes in your neighbor’s yards. Well, those front bushes you might laugh at during the daytime saying that’s not wildlife habitat.
Speaker 3: Who’s going to live there besides maybe a rabbit under there, but at night nighttime, I’ve seen coyotes literally hide behind those bushes as cars drive by. And then when the cars go by, they kind of go right back into the neighborhoods, right back into hunting for usually wild prey. And in the terms of a coyotes mind, a wild prey might include a unleashed cat that’s left outside, especially at nighttime. Cause because they know that how would they know the difference The one thing they do know is cats are typically found near human residences, but I’ve lost some chickens. I used to raise chickens and I’ve lost some to coyotes that I let roam and they never get into my pen. But when I let the chickens free room, it’s kind of like the coyotes know the chickens are near their house, but they know it’s somebody’s pet or just a wild animal that lives only near people’s houses, you know, from their perspective.
Speaker 3: Right So there, there are these animals that do really well in their people because we provide them perfect habitat and they utilize that. They’re typically on these small Woody patches during the daytime, in these urban or highly urban areas, they largely avoid people there. There’s absolutely no question. They’re scared of people. Any animal that you tell me is old. The minute I trap them and put a radio collar on, which gives me the ability to track these animals, they are always just terrified of people. I mean, literally going in the bathroom on themselves, having their, having their ears back cowering, it would be like you or me walking down an alley, I’m in a big gang going by us. Are you going to confront the gang and puff up your jacket Are you going to kind of look the other way and almost pretend that you’re smaller and don’t see me, please.
Speaker 3: Don’t see me. And it’s not figuratively. It’s literally the impression I get when I’ve studied these animals over the years. And then when I track them, it’s very similar. You know, they’re much more bold that night. And I think a lot of that reason is they’re comfortable because most people aren’t active at night and they know where people are active at night and it’s easier for them to avoid people. of course they’re predators. And so they have to travel quite a bit. They can move up to 10, 15 miles a night, which is hard to even fathom until you actually watch them do it in an urban area. And you’re like, holy smokes. Literally a coyote from Quincy could take the railroad tracks into Boston. Certainly south Boston, get some food there. Let’s just say that park in south Boston that used to that’s a golf course now in a park used to be in, it’s pretty close to Quincy. Obviously. Let’s just say that was the open cap dump. I think it used to be years ago, a coyote family could easily take like railroad tracks or some highway into that area of south Boston feed and then be back in the marshes of Quincy the next morning on a regular basis. I mean, that’s how much they travel. I’m not saying there is a packing Quincy doing that cause I haven’t tracked them there. But just to give you a perspective,
Speaker 1: It’s just an example.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, so they move quite a bit, but largely they’re avoiding people, but in the same sense to kind of contradict myself a little bit because they’re, they’re an animal of contradictions. They also have to be seen because of the way they move. So even though they’re largely avoiding people because of this movement and because of their food requirements of a predator, they are often seen as they’re traveling, especially where people aren’t bothering them, they might be more active to travel in the early morning or later evening when it’s still light out when people are still active, even though they’re mostly avoiding people, but they’re mil for the most part is to kind of fulfill their, requirements, their biological requirements while, while avoiding people as best they can. And I mean, the numbers are kind of proved by the statistics. You know, if, if one or two coyotes bites people a year, like what happened in Arlington and on Cape Cod Provincetown this summer where there were two separate bites and in each place, that is an extremely abnormal event.
Speaker 3: And meanwhile, nationwide, a couple dozen people are killed by our, our beloved dogs every year, a thousand people per day go to the emergency room from dog bites. So not just a scratch that, you know, oh, I’ll just, you know, put a bandaid on it. But something that requires an emergency room visit a thousand people per day, just in the United States go to the emergency room from dog bites and somebody might say, oh yeah, there’s a lot more dogs and coyotes, but coyotes essentially live in every community in north America, at least that the United States besides Hawaii. So, and I venture to say that if you have a bike, you could, if you don’t live, if you live in a high-rise in Manhattan or something on a bike ride, you could get within Audi range, within an hour or two, that’s how many calories there are. Even if there might not be as many cavities as there are dogs that he’s lived throughout, pretty much most of the human populated north America except Northern Canada and Northern Alaska. So it’s an interesting and very successful animal. And it’s become even more interested in the Northeast when you get this bigger kind of hybrid animal. But, but essentially they’re doing the same thing regardless of that hybrid background.
Speaker 1: Interesting. Yeah. I have, honeybee hives in my yard. And so I had a game camera set up in my yard just to watch them at night. All of a sudden this thing comes along, trot through the yard at night and I’m thinking it’s not a Fox. What is that And it’s got this big, long bushy tail. And I’m thinking, I think that’s, that’s bigger than a Fox. And then it’s like, there’s gotta be a coyote. And then right down the middle of the street, I saw this guy and my dogs went nuts. They, their noses went up in the air and they just started barking inside the house. And I looked and there’s this coyote running down the middle of the not running, but kind of like that little bouncy trot that they have. And then one morning it was, I don’t know it was up, it was after sunrise, but the sun certainly wasn’t high in the sky, but, we’re walking through Faxon and I see this thin coyote just trot across this open parking area, it looked over and it was like, yeah, I know I’m going this way.
Speaker 1: And it just, just moved on into the woods. But then I hear people talking about, well, we were walking down this path and then this coyote appeared and we started to make a lot of noise and stuff like that. You explained that the, the incidents of human interaction with coyotes and actually getting harmed by one is extremely low. But if somebody were to come across a coyote with their dog or something like that, are there any behaviors that people should take or any precautions that people should take or just make a lot of noise and it’ll probably run away or they probably see you long before you see them and they’re just not interested.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It’s a great question. And you, you almost kind of sit the couple of the sessions. I’m going to say you kind of suggested there. first of all, they certainly you, most of the time, not always, certainly, but, but most of the time they kind of know you’re coming. Most people, including kids are pretty loud and they don’t even know what half the time. And, and usually they can smell people most of the time ahead of time. So certainly coming across one in making noise doesn’t hurt. and it’s, it’s a good idea. In fact, one of the biggest suggestions out west, cause I visit Yellowstone. I’ve written quite a few books on my trips to Yellowstone national park, one of my favorite areas in the world. And, I always carry bear spray, which is essentially a high form of, of pepper spray or mace that I carry when I hike out there and, and really kind of applies.
Speaker 3: It applies to coyotes too. The more noise you make, if you’re scared of them or nervous of them, the, the better it can be. I’ve had some scenarios on Cape Cod where I’ve had animals bedded down, especially in the summertime, the summertime, it gets dark so late that I can almost just tell the animals are getting itchy, to get up and get going. They often just kind of wait for it to get to that dust corpuscular time, which you know, in June and July isn’t until 8 15, 8 30. Yeah. And I’ve had a few, I’ve had a few scenarios where, and I mean this literally where I’ve almost had to knock on people’s doors to tell them what I’m doing. So they don’t call the police where there’s kids jumping on trampolines. And I have the animals signal off the wall. Like the flipping thing is under the trampoline and it’s really, it’s 50 yards away, probably in this patch of woods.
Speaker 3: And it’s very predictable. The animal doesn’t do much movement. I, I w I go find another animal. I come back right before dark and sure enough, right at dark, they get up and leave. And of course that’s when most kids, especially, or people in general are generally going inside because, you know, you’re losing light. It’s hard to see. And the animal gets active. And even if the kids were still on the trampoline, they probably would still get active around them. And they would just go out kind of the back way of the woods that they came. But I’ve had variations of that, just dozens and dozens of times of animals being right near human activity in these small patches of wood. Usually these small patches of wood are really thick, like a lot of briars or marshy like habitats that clearly people don’t go in and the coyotes can smell that the people don’t go into even these, like maybe one acre, really small process of land that even a urban place like Quincy has plenty of those areas remaining remaining, and they get active.
Speaker 3: So clearly, you know, most galleries are doing that and avoiding people and doing what you kind of, how you described it, you know, they’re out and about, but you come along and they just go the other way and where people aren’t killing them in urban areas, they kind of disregard us as another object and they’re not going to get more dangerous. They just aren’t as willing to use so much energy to run away from us. It might be equivalent out in Yellowstone where there’s lots of bison and bison weigh 2000 pounds, at least the males do, and they can harm humans and even predators pretty easily. Cause they’re just such big, massive animals. And I’ve seen many instances, not just coyotes, but large gray wolves, some of the largest wolves in north America in that Yellowstone area, because of all the food that they eat in the wild.
Speaker 3: And when a bison comes along, they do pram bison, but usually the ones that they can actually bring down, but healthy bison will literally just ignore wolves and wolves will be traveling in a, in a line and they’ll come across bison or bison herd. And just like you or me hiking on a trail, they have to essentially go off the trail to get around the bison. And then they get back on the trail to continue on their path. And they’re, they’re largely avoiding them. And I think that’s what coyotes often do, especially at nighttime with people in cars is, you know, they know that there’s lots of humans where they live and they’re kind of avoiding us, but also trying not to alter their lives too much so they can meet their biological needs. So, so making noise and, and, you know, being aware and if you carry things like air horns, even sticks and rocks to just kind of throw at animals that might get near, that can make a big difference.
Speaker 3: That’s with people. When you add dogs to the mic mix, especially when you’re walking dogs at night, they can get aroused in different regards to dogs. First of all, dogs and coyotes are just natural competitors, just like out west wolves and coyotes are wolves kill coyotes that try to eat their food. The coyotes kind of just naturally see, you know, a close relative like the dog as competition in something that they generally don’t like. I do hear reports of Katie’s playing with dogs and stuff. And I think that has to do with young coyotes that are kind of on their own. They’ve either left their family or are in their parents’ territory. And they’re just kind of on their own. That’s what I typically think of. But I think when you hear of coyotes playing with dogs or vice versa dogs playing with Kylie’s, you’re probably talking about younger coyotes that are willing to do that because most older coyotes are guarding territories and they don’t want, they don’t want non coyotes or non dogs in their territory.
Speaker 3: So one of the most important things to do with dogs, and I know it’s a leash law, obviously in a place like Quincy, especially, but leashing dogs can be one of the most important things you do with them. Leashing dogs just literally prevents that interaction from happening unless coyotes physically come, you know, within whatever five feet of you, which is just extraordinary, extraordinary, rare. So obviously we’re not worrying about that on a daily basis. And I think putting coyotes in perspective, they are a predator living near us, but just like we can get into, you know, bad things happening to us with other humans or, or cars while we drive. it’s, it’s just really, really rare obviously for those events to happen, same thing with coyotes, doing something negative towards us. But with dogs, I do have this instant kind of arousal. And even though they generally avoid dogs and I’ve recorded many instances where they often avoid dogs, they often, you know, have confrontations with them as well.
Speaker 3: And especially at nighttime, when people are walking dogs at night, you know, coyotes are much more bold for all the reasons we just talked about. Mainly because most people are inactive and they’ll come into neighborhoods though travel and, you know, human dominated areas more than they will during the daytime. And just keeping dog’s leash is really important. In the later part of the summertime unleashed dogs, near coyote sites where coyotes raised their pups can often be fiercely defended. I’ve seen coyotes, mostly avoid people for most of the year. And then in the, in the late summer, June has been, especially July and August when coyote pups are more active, I’ve seen coyotes aggressively confront dogs. And almost every time it’s been in a place like a golf course or a cranberry bog here on Cape Cod where, dogs are unleashed because people are walking them and coyotes immediately confront them.
Speaker 3: And then, you know, obviously there might be some type of negative interaction there, whether it’s an attack or just a, just a confrontation. And sometimes that even happens with dogs being leashed, where the people say, gosh, these two or three Kyries confronted me. I turned around and I say, let me guess what happened You had your dog leash, you were doing everything right. And the coyotes followed me and it was really unnerving, but then all of a sudden the Cody’s just stopped and turned back around. and I continued on my way and I say, it may say, yes, that’s exactly what happened. And I say, well, there’s no question in my mind that you were at, what’s called a rendezvous site, rendezvous sites or above ground den sites that the pups use when they’re not using dens anymore. They only use dens for the first couple months of life.
Speaker 3: So about the age where you might bring a dog puppy home from a breeder, they’re pretty, they’re pretty much not sleeping in Benz anymore. They’re sleeping above ground. And the parents in the offspring of the parents that are helping ruins and pups get pretty protective of them. And so very often they’ll turn back around, walk back to that rendezvous site where the pups are like nothing ever happened. And the people are like, what just happened And that’s exactly what happened. They were kind of escorting the dog or dogs away, even with the people nearby, you know,
Speaker 1: Trusting you tell me this story because I had a neighbor come to me saying he was going to call me because he was, he walked his dogs at night. I live near a park and he said that all of a sudden these coyotes came and they followed them all the way back to his house. Interesting. And he knows that I have a couple of dogs. This is, I got to call John, but he saw me the next day. And he told me all about it. And I said, geez, that’s kind of scary. I mean, you know, they follow you back to your house, but what you’re saying is that there’s a likelihood that maybe that park or someplace close to that park, might’ve been what you call a rendezvous site,
Speaker 3: certainly possible. You know, obviously I’m not going to have a specific zone on all that, but, there’s a, there’s a good chance. and then there’s also kind of something that happens in the, in the mid-winter they breed around roughly mid January to maybe early February. That’s when they breed. And then, a little over two months later, they have good birth of course, in the spring, which would be usually late March, early April is when the birth around here then. So during their breeding season, they also seem to get a lot more territorial where the males are sticking with the females, not letting other males into their territory. And some of the pups are now almost one year old. And usually a coyote pack is about three or four animals, which would be a couple of pups that stick around to become young adults with their parents.
Speaker 3: and they’re traveling these territories. And that’s the other time of the year where you often hear about dog confrontations. Is there just a little bit more kind of aggressive towards other canines And, you know, usually that’s other coyotes, but obviously dogs kind of fit into that mix. And, they just seem to be kind of, you know, something seems to kind of set them off sometimes. And especially at night, they kind of keep their eye and they just want those animals away. And if you have a more German shepherd type looking animal, you obviously have this animal that might look a little bit more wild than another breed of dog. and it just seems like, especially when the dogs leash that they do that, but there’s usually not an actual confrontation, which is definitely unnerving. I, I certainly feel for the person, especially not knowing what’s going on.
Speaker 3: but usually usually that noise being made and the dogs being leashed usually prevent those interactions. But, but I do agree walking an animal escorting you right back to your house is a little bit extreme. I would think that not knowing the area that you know, once get into the neighborhood and you leave that park, the animals would feel more secure and then turn back around and go do what they’re doing. So to follow them that far it’s certainly I would agree is, is, is unusual in, in a little bit beyond. And, you know, I would recommend yelling, making noise and doing that even while you’re walking dogs, just so they certainly know it’s gone because there’s no question they key in, on dogs during a lot of this. And it’s very rare, at least I haven’t heard of too often for these animals to actually follow up people without dogs.
Speaker 3: And then unfortunately, when that happens, there’s almost no question people in the area are feeding them. And that’s that, that seems to be obviously what’s occurring in almost all these attacks we’re hearing about. And certainly in the province town one, the Cape Cod national seashore Rangers had to put down a coyote that went after a little kid and people were feeding them. And I don’t have any personal experience with that recently, but people were from what I hear were clearly feeding Cody’s in that area. And most of the time, even when you feed them and do everything wrong, they stay pretty wary around people, but obviously not every single one does that. And certain animals become used to that. And then they become reliant on people in aggressive towards people and not, not feeding them in the first place is important out west. The motto is a fed bear is a dead bear because once you start feeding bears, they start keying in on that. And with coyotes, you can almost kind of say the same thing
Speaker 1: Occurred to me while you were saying that, what about trash night Some evenings people will put their trash cans out the afternoon before. And it’s always a challenge cause I have a couple of dogs that have a good chunk of hound in them. And so they sniff everything anyway, but on trash night, it’s even more of a challenge. And I’m wondering if the same thing holds true for coyotes that, oh yeah, it’s Wednesday night in Quincy. So let’s go troll around for like, you know, the Buffalo wing bones that somebody throughout they scavengers like that, or are they looking for live prey and, and taking care of it that way
Speaker 3: I think that in a place like Quincy trash night would be more affected by, raccoons maybe, and then possibly by coyotes raccoons, I think certainly would key on that, but they also certainly would probably know that it probably is the best thing in the long run for, for avoiding confrontations in, in garbage, everywhere with animals would be to bring food, bring trash out, excuse me at, at, in the morning after, you know, right before they come. So that’s probably the best thing to ultimately do is to just bring your trash outside in the morning. I don’t think they go into dumpsters as much as an animal like raccoon would. I don’t think they typically do it because one of the impediments is they’re not going to really be able to open up garbage cans, like a raccoon, you know, the raccoons have these pliable hands like you and I do. Yeah. Dexterous. Exactly. So, so while they might do it, I would think other animals like raccoons and maybe even possums might do it a little bit more,
Speaker 1: A really cool experience that you’ve had in your research.
Speaker 3: Yeah. you know, it’s bittersweet as, as I talked to you about this because I did research for a number of years and just with all my findings in publishing, I, I came, a ride to mass wildlife, mass, Massachusetts fish, and wildlife for the people that give you permits to do the research. And so for the past 10 plus years, I actually have not been doing research, which involves trapping, putting radio collars on and then track tracking them in the wild coming up with essentially all the findings that you and I have talked about here today. so it’s, it’s bittersweet because while the same agency allows people to kill them at will for six months a year with a hunting license, I’ve been repeatedly obstructed for my work. So it’s real frustrating. Cause when, when I tell you these stories, I just have to reinforce before I tell you some of the anecdotes that you want to hear, that you need permits to do all this.
Speaker 3: And even with a PhD degree in affiliation with university researchers, wildlife agencies are really often special interest based and nationwide. They have a real bias against predators and it it’s real frustrating. and so I’ll kind of leave it at that if they want to learn more and might be angered, why I’m not actively doing research, they can go into my coil book. And to say that I provide a timeline of exactly what happened would be an understatement. And one of the, one of the first carnival researchers that has been obstructed that has actually spoken out and kind of explain the research obstruction, it’s kind of like, you know, the, the church and the state stuff and scandals that you read about in those, I’m kind of one of the first researchers coming out. So a lot of people don’t know how to help me because wildlife agencies have such power over our collective wildlife resource.
Speaker 3: And the first part of my book coils talks about the animals. So if you want to learn about coy wolves and why they’re called coils and how they behave in the wild, it’s a lot of what you and I have discussed in kind of pictorial detail. the second part is more about the politics associated with wildlife management and how and why a lot of things are unjust. So I, I just wanted to point that out because, not to kind of just toot my own horn of what’s happened to me cause it’s real disappointing to not be actively doing my work, but to answer, answer all of your questions, I need to go through this permitting process that even when I got permits again from universities, they still denied me for really fraudulent reasons. But, some of the work I’ve had has been fascinating because I’m from the town of Barnstable where I’ve done most of my work here on Cape Cod.
Speaker 3: in, in, in the politics aside I’ve, I’ve, I’ve seen some really cool things. I also had a companion site on the north side of Boston. I work with a teacher, Dave from Revere high school who was actually still at Rivera high school. And so we did a pilot project in a companion study in the Revere area, which would include Everett Malden, Melrose in, in those towns and cities around him, including Revere. but most of my work took place in the town of Barnstable where I’m from. So it was really amazing to do this work and hopefully I will be doing this work eventually again, kind of amazing do the work where you grew up and find some of the things that I’ve found in some of the coolest things I’ve found was that animal that used to sleep near trampolines, lived in Austin Ville and he and his pack would take the Osterville Drawbridge across, to get to the mainland of Austin, which means that the people on oyster harbors, which is one of the richest places on Cape Cod richest, places in the country that, you know, that have multi-million dollar houses, it’s this private island and the people on this private island used to think that six or seven counties lived on that private island.
Speaker 3: And the minute I had them radio collared, I realized that that was about 20% of their territory and they were leaving the private island every night, or coming back to the private, private island most nights as well, not every single night, but most nights, and going back and forth between the mainland of Osterville to that essentially that island that, that, that Drawbridge island. And it was amazing to look at how these animals would cross the road. They would literally, obviously the drive Ridge would have to be down to begin with. So it’d be like a road, a road that we could drop drive over, but I became so used to their patterns that I would just drive to this bridge once I got a good location of where they were beforehand. And then I would just wait and sure enough, the radio signals would get really loud, no matter what direction they were coming.
Speaker 3: And it was just amazing to see three or four animals often at night, sometimes one or two, but three or four animals traveling over this bridge and then go down the bridge. And I knew exactly where in the bridge they would go on and off to not be on the road for a super long period of time. Oh, fascinating. Yeah. Those were pretty amazing. But let me just give the listener one final thing if I may, is that a cure Yeah, of course. Yeah. One of the things that was, was super impressive was just how much they moved that night and knowing where I was exactly. Cause I grew up in this town, I ran track and cross country. So I, I, you know, I appreciate having to run that far. It was just how much they would move. Like for instance, they’d be deep in Hyannis at calmness beach one day, one moment.
Speaker 3: And then two hours later they’d be leaving Hyannisport and they’d be in Centerville by Kragle beach, which is one of the most popular beaches on Cape Cod where lots of tourists go to in the summertime, they’d be traveling on the beach on Craigo beach, but then they take a detour and they get kind of into the suburbs. And let’s just say, I gave up tracking them at one in the morning. I wake up the next morning at five or six to try to get them, you know, as they’re finishing up their daily movement. And all of a sudden I have them in a completely different part of central, like maybe up by burger king, which is at exit six on the mid-cap highway. And if you are like from the area and you think of starting a comma speech going to Craig will beach, then moving through a lot of those neighborhoods of Centerville and ending up somewhere near exit six, you’re just going to be like, there’s no way an animal did that regularly.
Speaker 3: They would do that on a nightly basis. So that’s pretty amazing. And, you know, to get an impression of that on a daily basis with all the animals was really amazing. And then being able to watch them in the summertime at their rendezvous sites, when they chose choose these open golf courses or cranberry bogs, it was also really special because I got to see them up close, not at night moving, but during the daytime. And when I say the daytime, usually Dawn or dusk, you know, five to seven in the morning and maybe seven to nine at night before it gets dark out. Those were also really neat experiences that, you know, hopefully I can do again, but these rendezvous sites where they raise their pups and the pups learn to, kinda transitioned to being an independent adolescent Cody on their own where some of the unique things, but regular things that you might see if you have animals, radio collar that you, you know, just would be fortunate to see at the right time of the year, which would be the later part of the summer, the early part of the fall, which would be kind of ending right around now.
Speaker 3: But yeah, late September. Cause once you get to October, they start traveling more, even the pups do. And usually by the later part of the fall, assuming that the pups survive, some of them eventually leave and disperse from their parents, whereas a couple might stick around and form that pack, which would average about three or four can be bigger, but three or four seems to be the average kind of pack size. Once when the pups decide to leave before the new pups are born, then the following spring,
Speaker 1: John, as you’ve been talking, I’ve been looking at your website, Eastern coyote research.com. And I have to say there’s, there are some amazing pictures, beautiful pictures of these animals and all kinds of links to the books that you’ve mentioned, the, suburban house. And there’s a new one mud, I mean April and Yellowstone.
Speaker 3: Yup. Yup.
Speaker 1: Eastern coyote research.com. Is there a another site or any of that
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, that’s it. And there, there is a link to my, I have a, my Yellowstone experience.org, but you can get everything that you’re talking [email protected]. Just like you said, the things most specific to our talk is there’s a print book called suburban howls. That’s a little over 10 years old, right on my website there, you know, signed copy if anybody wanted that. but then, the, the thing that I’ve done most recently, that’s probably most relevant to our discussion is that coy Wolf book and that’s actually an ebook. And one of the helpful things with that coy Wolf ebook that’s right on Eastern Cody research.com is not only can you read a book for free if you’re not able to donate Cause I asked, you know, if you’re able to read this, can you please donate to my work But if you’re not able to, you can read it for free.
Speaker 3: But the other thing that’s really advantageous is if you are interested in anything we’re talking about here, whether it’s the politics of why I’m not actively doing research to obviously the animal itself, I provide dozens, if not hundreds of links within the book itself. So you might download the book tomorrow and read it over the, you know, the next week and say, oh, this is really cool. But then go back and say, I want to learn more about this or that. And on the, one of the biggest advantages that a ebook has is I have many, many, many hyperlinks in there that allows people to go to either verify the science behind what you and I talked about. I have every, all my peer reviewed research is in there that verifies the science that you and I talked about or the other stuff like unfortunate. The politics in has happened to my at least research career at the present time.
Speaker 1: That’s great. I mean, I’m looking at me, you’ve got a ton of stuff here on this screen. Yeah. Well, John, you have been very generous with your time. I really appreciate you. You spending the time that you have with us today and your contact information is all found at easterncoyoteresearch.com. That’s where they can download these eBooks, make a donation to your site.
Speaker 3: That’s great, John and I, I appreciate your time as well in the audience’s time for, for listening to me, ramble on for over an hour, but no, everything you said is accurate and and I hope that, folks can get more out of this.
Speaker 1: All right. Well thank you, John. I hope that goes well. And we will keep in touch.
Speaker 3: You bet down. I appreciate the time. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Well, that’s it for this episode of the all about Quincy podcast, I hope you found it informative and enjoyable. Remember, next episode, we’re starting off our pizza episodes. October is national pizza month. And my first guest is Gennaro’s restaurant on Quincy avenue diagonally across from the Quincy credit union. And he’s got some really interesting things to share with us about the science and art of making the perfect pizza. You definitely going to want to listen to that show. All right. If you have a guest that you think should be on the show, any unsung hero business owner historian, we want to know about it. Go to all about Quincy podcast.com, go to the upper right-hand corner, click the contact button, give us your first name and your email address and fill out why you think this person should be on the show. Thanks again for listening. And I’ll talk to you real soon. Take care.
