Coyote problem, suggestions wanted
 

I saw a coyote pup and its mama (or dad?) at a house that no one lives in. Someone's been putting canned food in petfood dishes in their carport. The pup crawled into a hole under the driveway, so I'm guessing that's this family's den.

At first I thought it was a fox and cub, and took a photo of mama from a distance after she ran to the side of the house, near the back. Got home and took a better look at the photo and yup - it's a coyote, for sure. Too big to be a fox. Ears too long, neck too long, tail not bushy enough. So positive it's a coyote.

Very cool to see, but not very cool to have in this residential area, especially considering that someone is intentionally feeding them, which makes them grow accustomed to humans and lose their fear of us. That spells danger for humans.

What to do? Is there even an "animal control" like there is up north? It's not a domesticated animal, it's not a bird or gator. They don't need rescuing.

But someone with authority needs to find out who's feeding them and make them stop doing that. And possibly the coyotes should be captured and euthanized or relocated.

Who though? The police? Animal control? Community standards? The local rec center? A wildlife conservation organization? The Lady Lake Town Hall? Who do you even report this stuff to around here?

If Lake County…..
Corrected

https://lakecountyfl.gov/animal-shelter

If Sumter County……
Animal Services | Sumter County, FL - Official Website

The link you posted for Lake County is in Illinois.

Try this to see if they can help;

https://www.lakecountyfl.gov/animal-shelter

I would contact Florida Fish & Wildlife 888-404-FWCC (888-404-3922)

As you stated, up north they won't do anything unless they attack...person or domesticated animal.....or if they're visibly sickly or mangy. I know some have posted links to animal control...id be interested to see if they deal with it any different other than speaking to the owner/renter or neighbor that's feeding them. No different up north or here....theyre displaced from development. We've seen them in/around downtown Boston restaurants and residences... so even urban settings are a source as a result. Pretty resourceful

I didn't state that. But actually up north where I'm from (the semi-rural suburbs of New Haven County, Connecticut) if you see a coyote, it's because he's about to try and eat one of the chickens in your back yard, or is running away from a bear. The usual response to the chicken-poaching issue would be either give your really big, protective, scary-looking farm-dog a treat for protecting his farm and killing the coyote, or shoot it yourself with your shotgun. The response to the bear issue would be to bang some metal garbage can lids really loudly to scare the bear off and let the coyote continue running to someone else's neighborhood. I'm guessing neither option would go over very well around here in the Historic Section of The Villages.

Animal Shelter has no interest in wild coyotes unless someone reports that one of them tried to attack a stray dog.

I just checked the Florida Fish and Wildlife website. They refer people to commercial nuisance animal removal services, which you have to pay for.

So I guess the only thing I can do (which I was hoping to avoid) is contact the Lake County Sheriff's office and file a complaint against someone I don't know and can't identify, and give them the address of the house where the coyote den and the multiple pet bowls filled with canned food is located. Feeding coyotes is illegal in Florida.

Thanks.
Corrected.

Having lived in Arizona, amid lots and lots of coyotes, you do nothing. Nothing except talk to that neighbor who is feeding them. Or have the police do it, either way get him/her to STOP DOING THAT.

Coyotes don’t bother people, in fact they don’t even come out much during the daylight hours. They do get rid of a lot of pests and other critters that we don’t want.

They have grabbed dogs here in the Villages on a few occasions. Usually smaller ones like Chihuahua mixes.

Coyotes gotta eat. Canned food or hunt for whatever they can catch. You decide. (I suggest you let them hunt. Don't let them get used to the idea that humans provide food, canned or on a leash).

The Coyote is not the problem. The person feeding them is.
I would remove the bowls of food, leave a note with my address in their place telling the feeder where they are available for collection, then when the feeder comes for them, just say stop feeding, or I will report you.
They then have the chance to stop before the law gets involved.

It's illegal to feed wild animals in Florida. Just like an alligator, when wild ani.als are attracted to people, bad thing happen.

DON’T feed them

Hard to understand what the feeders are thinking. Maybe they mean to help out a stray cat but ended up helping coyotes? Either way not a smart move.

If you're seriously interested in stopping it, just put up a game camera and catch them in the act. People quit doing all kinds of dumb stuff when they know someone is watching. The day my neighbor quit using my rental property's yard for her dog's latrine was the day she noticed she was on camera. I got a hilarious video of her noticing the camera while the dog was doing its business, and then her coming back with a trowel to pick up a week's worth of poop.

Someone feeding coyotes.
 

First of all, thank you for noticing this and taking pictures. And it can be dangerous if you have cats or dogs which we do not. However, I would call the animal control and the village's district office to see what they can do about it being as it is in the villages. Thank you for this post.

First of all, thank you for noticing this and taking pictures. And it can be dangerous if you have cats or dogs which we do not. However, I would call the animal control and the village's district office to see what they can do about it being as it is in the villages. Thank you for this post.

TwoBills has the best advice. Take the bowls. I would add to the note you leave, explain why you have taken the bowls. Let them know they have been feeding coyotes & if they happen to have been hoping to feed cats, then their plan has backfired. Tell them you have pictures. People are remarkably reasonable when you give them a 'why'. If your note is friendly & has a helpful tone, by the time they arrive to collect the bowls, they will probably be agreeing with you wholeheartedly. Maybe leave the bit about the cats being lunch for the in person conversation. You're a good writer, it will work.

There's some information and videos on how to deter coyotes here:

Coyotes | FWC

Feeding a coyote is illegal according to the site. it's possible your neighbor doesn't know that or as others have said, they may be feeding a stray cat and didn't realize they're feeding a coyote. They might even think the coyote is a stray dog or something

"The FWC has several rules that prohibit feeding wildlife, including bears, coyotes, foxes, raccoons, pelicans, sandhill cranes, bald eagles, alligators and crocodiles. "

"Coyotes were added in June 2015 by the FWC to the list of wildlife species in Florida administrative code (Rule 68A-4.001) for which feeding is prohibited. "

https://myfwc.com/media/16673/inform...-penalties.pdf

When you leave the note, you may want to leave this printed so they know they are breaking the law and there are penalties!!!

Call the Town of Lady Lake Clerks office they can direct you to the proper entity.

The OP stated that the home is not lived in. I wouldn't recommend walking onto private property and removing anything without permission. You dont know if the home is possibly occupied by squatters or somebody mentally ill. It could be as benign as food for a cat or stray (still not wise), but plenty of options previously posted here for agencies to address without compounding the issue

that's a good place to start. i know OBB probably hates to call the police on people, but really, wherever i go i see signs saying not to feed, disturb or molest (lol) any wildlife, esp gators. maybe try calling the sheriff's office & asking what to do in such a case? :shrug: they may start by patrolling the area, maybe even catch someone in the act?

I disagree that coyotes don't bother people. I had one chase me in Ocala when I was out for a morning walk. I did nothing to provoke it.

OBB, CALL fish and wildlife!
I believe there is a law against feeding wildlife in Florida.

We had a similar problem with a Neighbor who insisted on feeding ducks on our retention pond, much to our dismay.

We complained to her and she said that she wasn't feeding them junk.... that she was buying 50# bags of good grains from a feed store. Imagine!!!
She totally po-po'd all of the reasons we expressed on why she should cease doing it.

A former law enforcement neighbor learned of it and informed her that it was against the law to feed wildlife in Florida.

She stopped immediately.

She moved. Ducks are still conditioned to go there.

The ducks still go up into her yard after 1.5 years, but her yard only now. Before, it was all yards.

That brood of coyote are totally displaced, thanks to an uneducated neighbor who doesn't know better than to put food outside, most likely for feral cats.

Keep an eye out for the one who's feeding... that's the real menace!

This isn't my neighborhood. I was just taking a walk in an area I don't live in, enjoying the landscaping and getting some exercise. The house is abandoned. The person living next door to the house came out and questioned me as to why I was stopping and taking pictures, so I told her. She's the one who explained that she's seen a woman walk up the hill (the street is a hill - again - exercise) and put the bowls down with cat food in this abandon house's carport.

I told her she should just take those bowls and throw them away. Every time she sees them. Maybe if it happens enough times, whoever is putting them down will get tired of having to buy new ones, and stop doing it. No confrontation necessary. And why -should- the woman doing this need to be told who's taking the bowls away? The woman knows it's not her property. She is trespassing onto someone else's property to put down objects that don't belong to the homeowner, filled with cat food to feed animals that aren't hers. If she thinks it's important enough, she can put cat food dishes down under her own carport. She has no business walking up someone else's driveway to put the bowls down in the first place, no matter who/what it's supposed to be feeding.

I can't put a camera up because it's not my property. I can't ask the homeowner to do something, because it's abandoned, no one lives in it. It used to be a horrible eye-sore with weeds growing up over a foot covering the grass. Someone's been mowing it, but it's still abandoned and uncared for. Hm - maybe the fact that there's a coyote den (a burrow) under the driveway would be a deed restriction violation. Failure to maintain.

BTW the coyote pup really is adorable. I wish I could've gotten a picture of it before it hunkered down in his den.

What were you eating?
Seriously, coyotes that don't associate humans with food, no problem. Coyotes that do associate humans with food may hope you will drop something if treated. Or it may have been rabid. If so, all bets are off

What ever happened to common sense. There sure seems to be a dearth of it these days.

Coyotes are here to stay, much smarter than us, and perfectly willing to go on the dole. Whoever is doing this needs to understand that it is not a good deed. She is causing the creatures to lose their fear of humans which obviously is not good for either the coyotes or the humans.

Feral cat feeding is also out of control. I had a neighbor once whose friend had made arrangements with her to feed the feral cats while he was on vacation. Aaaaaaugh!!! And, you guessed it. He was not feeding those cats anywhere near his own house. He was trespassing and then asking her to do the same. ( I almost chewed the inside of my mouth raw to keep from telling her I thought her friend was a law-breaking whackadoodle and she should not enable him.)

There was also someone around who was building little “cathouses” and sneaked one onto a school playground where maintenance had to tear it down. Teachers on playground duty do not need feral cats to deal with.

Why these people think they are bathed in a special light is beyond me. They are usually trespassing or being bad neighbors but are so convinced of their own kindness. I like animals just fine, but this zealous behavior looks to me like something is a bubble off plumb.

Good luck with your quest, OBB.

Boomer

Coyotes are one of the more CLEVER animals at living in close proximity to humans. Grizzly bears, for example, would NOT be tolerated here. Coyotes would have both advantages and disadvantages in TV Land. They would obviously be eating mice and rats and skunks and possums, which can get surprisingly large. The obvious disadvantage is rabies and danger to small pet dogs and cats. Personally, I like to hear them howl at the moon at night.
......Some local residents seem to think that LARGE GATORS are so COOL and should be feed to get larger. Personally, I think that all gators over 4 feet should end up on a restaurant table. MY opinion is that LARGE GATORS are a much bigger threat than coyotes. I would NOT report coyotes to anyone because they will NOT be simply RELOCATED - just poisoned to DEATH. I don't believe that they are THAT big of a problem and they have some balance of nature benefits.

Maybe Conservation Florida can help? I just googled them other than that I'm not familiar with this organization. I hope they can help. Conservation Florida

Feeding coyotes or any animal bigger than a song bird is probably a bad idea. If you could shoot one with a shotgun in Connecticut, then maybe shooting them in the butt with a BB gun would solve the problem (and require some skill and be a little bit fun). Eventually, they would get the hint and leave.

A good reason to carry bear spray when walking in the early morning when lots of wildlife are active.

Well, if the house is NOT next door, I guess, forget about the BB gun.

My opinion only. Whoever is feeding them needs to be fined and stopped. Why would you euthanize them? I lived in CA and we had coyotes in our neighborhood. People need to respect the wildlife. We are tearing down all their places to live so where are they to go? I used to see them on the sidewalk and in front of my house. In 13 years, there was only one problem that I knew of. No one called for them to be killed. We were in their territory. I don't know about coyotes, but gators are killed, not relocated. They generally come out at night, so use due diligence.

Always quick with the gun. Shame

Not so. I clicked. It’s in Tavares

Heck yeah!! Won’t kill it. Just damage it with a BB in its tissue to cause infection and sepsis!! Oh what fun!!!

Heck yeah!! Won’t kill it. Just damage it with a BB in its tissue to cause infection and sepsis!! Oh what fun!!!

While I truly believe TV should actively remove alligators from the small neighborhood ponds and retention ponds that are not in close proximity to marshes and other habitats where alligators thrive, I sincerely doubt animal control will want to do anything about a coyote. They wander too far and too often. Coyotes are more of a threat to small mammals, like a small dog or cat. Not humans, typically. I have been around them my entire adult life. I have even hunted them, though not successfully. They are very allusive. I'd be more concerned about pesky raccoons or vermin.