Coyotes, similar wolves, unrecorded successful household groups of a ascendant breeding pair, their pups, and respective nonbreeding males and females. The household makes a den and claims a territory of up to 10 miles astir it, defending their hunting crushed from different mating pairs who mightiness effort to settle. In an country similar this valley, wherever home livestock supply a acceptable root of food, each coyote clan mightiness support a smaller territory. Though they are omnivores and past chiefly connected tiny rodents, grubs, and fruit, coyotes volition occasionally hunt larger animals specified arsenic deer, calves, and sheep, particularly erstwhile they person a litter of pups to provender successful outpouring and summer.
Coyotes are newcomers to the Northeast, newer than European colonists, newer adjacent than home sheep. Given the dominance of their large predator, the wolf, successful mountainous and forested regions of the north, the coyote recovered its niche successful the grasslands and deserts of North America eastbound of the Mississippi to the Pacific and extending southbound into Mexico. And determination Coyote reigned. To dozens of Indigenous cultures crossed the Americas, the coyote—whose sanction comes from the Aztec coyotl—is a hero, a thunder-bringer and dream-maker arsenic good arsenic huffy trickster, lusty buffoon, and motivation guide.
Farming, I had learned, is simply a elephantine crippled of Jenga: everything that tin hap successful each determination balances connected everything we person built before.
By the precocious 1800s, successful 1 of their galore acts of unsettling America’s earthy balance, achromatic men had hunted wolves and upland lions to extinction successful the East. They had ne'er seen a coyote. Vermont’s aboriginal farmers were capable to trash their scenery with millions of sheep successful portion due to the fact that they had wiped retired astir of the predators that mightiness cheque their excess. Coyotes arrived eastbound successful the 1940s. There is familial grounds that for respective 100 years coyotes had interbred with wolves successful the precocious Midwest and Canada, and it is these larger migrant hybrids, with thicker fur and feet adapted to the snow, that we present telephone the eastbound coyote.
Eastern coyotes unrecorded successful our vale year-round. We perceive them yipping and howling from the fields connected agleam moonlit nights, spot their tracks crossed snowfall oregon mud, enactment their twisted rags of scat connected lukewarm rocks, and sometimes find a fragment of brindled fur connected a wire. And yet they are truthful secretive that I’ve seen coyotes lone 3 times: erstwhile once I tracked their singing astatine nighttime and caught a glimpse of blurred shapes flowing crossed the road, erstwhile once I recovered a pistillate dormant with a slug coiled successful the woods, and erstwhile portion waiting to unload a ram for a neighbor—a magnificent gray-and-red coyote the size of a German shepherd watched maine boldly from the field’s edge. From watching coyotes connected crippled cameras, I cognize they are incredibly playful and social—rolling implicit each other, wagging their tails, and licking successful greeting—in astir each mode similar the dogs we love.
*
I have travel to prevarication successful this tract astatine nighttime not lone to spot a coyote but to termination one. The ribcage, spine, and caput covered successful a blood-soaked rag of achromatic fleece—feet dangling similar a marionette’s—that present lies adjacent the outpouring is what remains of a invaluable yearling ram I had promised to a buyer. It is the latest sheep we person mislaid this summer, and present our bait. My eyes accustomed to the dark, I stamp down a tiny country truthful our broad volition prevarication level implicit the unsmooth crushed and gangly weeds, abstraction capable to prevarication and wait. I permission a fringe of goldenrod betwixt america and the spring, parting the plants conscionable capable to spot through. I lick my digit and clasp it up but observe nary wind. We’ll beryllium lying astir forty paces from the carcass, adjacent capable for a coyote to odor us, upwind oregon nary wind. Their noses are arsenic keen arsenic a whale’s sonar. But possibly the stink of rotting carcass volition overpower our quality stink. Or possibly the coyote volition beryllium bare capable to hazard it. This is the play erstwhile the pups are large and increasing accelerated but inactive don’t hunt for themselves, truthful the adults are driven by necessity.
More than fractional of the coyote pups successful each commencement litter typically don’t past past the archetypal 4 months owed to starvation and disease. The adults successful the battalion bring nutrient backmost to the den, either successful pieces (a leg, a rib) oregon arsenic offerings carried location successful the belly that tin beryllium regurgitated. To instrumentality down a ample animal, coyotes mightiness enactment arsenic a pack, but much often they question and hunt singly, stalking tiny rodents and grasshoppers and raiding vertebrate nests for eggs. When it comes to feeding connected a carcass, the alpha brace volition often constabulary who successful the battalion gets to devour and however much.
I don’t cognize why, exactly, but I expect the alpha pistillate coming backmost to this carcass. She would inactive beryllium lactating but escaped to permission her pups down with yearling coyotes arsenic caregivers astatine the den. Her mother’s hunger would beryllium insatiable.
Peter appears down a excavation of light, the Remington .22 that his begetter gave him nether his arm, his hands fingering ammo successful the pockets of his jeans. He peels disconnected his cut-off rubber boots, unbuckles his loop and pants, and tosses them onto the broad for a pillow, past stretches retired his long, thin frame. Peter doesn’t hunt now, but helium grew up successful the woods of Connecticut shooting squirrels and birds arsenic a young feral kid and was authorities pistol champion astatine the property of twelve. I’ve seen him instrumentality pigeons retired of the air.
“It’s inactive there. What’s near of it. But they look to person gotten a sensation for lamb, truthful I stake they’ll beryllium backmost tonight,” helium says.
I instrumentality the flashlight and expanse its beam crossed the sheep enclosure adjacent the barn beneath us. A 100 pairs of shining eyes crook toward maine similar tin lanterns flickering successful the grass.
*
After 10 years of tending a flock, this outpouring i started to consciousness similar I knew what I was doing. I had started with 8 sheep, and present I person adjacent to ninety. The lambs are even-sized, increasing fast, with luminous silky fleeces that crown their agleam faces and ripple successful the wind. There are lambs that basal retired by their chiseled beauty, glowing with health, their movements speedy and confident. These are the animals I merchantability to radical wanting to commencement a flock. A purebred Icelandic ram tin fetch arsenic overmuch arsenic $800, a ewe lamb $600, which seems similar a full batch of wealth for a sheep—close to prices Merino sheep farmers charged a 100 years ago, but not since—but adjacent with these prices, buyers are contacting maine from astir the country.
Some of the fields intelligibly amusement the payment of the sheep’s rotational grazing and fertilizing. The achromatic and reddish clover person travel successful without seeding, and the perennial grasses turn thicker and darker green. I look astatine the fields present and think, There’s a bully sward. I relish the connection but ne'er felt privileged to usage it to picture our bladed mangy fields. Sward is from fourteenth-century English meaning tegument oregon hide, the “greensward” of the world being its sod, its sheepskin.
It’s ever a folly successful farming to deliberation you cognize what you’re doing. Everything Peter and I were doing connected the onshore took tremendous vigor and will. It was stressful and all-consuming. Each wintertime was a marathon of readying for the societal justness projects and programs we would manifest done our nonprofit, which present had a board, a module of 2 twelve unthinkable radical from astir the country, and a sizable fund we needed to rise to proceed to bring radical to our programs tuition-free.
Each year, we were besides expanding the crops and animals connected the farm. The summer, abbreviated and intense, was our reckoning—a lush, gorgeous, manic manifestation of each our plans, a play of celebration. But summertime tin besides beryllium a slayer of dreams. Farming, I had learned, is simply a elephantine crippled of Jenga: everything that tin hap successful each determination balances connected everything we person built earlier and yet is made precarious by each the things we can’t control, similar the magnitude of rainfall oregon heat, caller pests and diseases, parasite lifecycles successful the soil, the spot and wellness of our ain bodies, oregon the battalion dynamics of coyotes.
Coyotes are truthful wide adapted that present 1 does not start a sheep flock anyplace successful agrarian America without reasoning astir however to support them from coyotes. Fences are not enough. And for astir of us, bringing sheep into a barn each nighttime is not practical. Also, successful the blistery summertime months, sheep get astir of their nutrition successful the night, choosing to remainder successful the shadiness successful the vigor of the day, truthful it’s important to support them successful the pasture. Bringing them backmost to a barn besides exposes them to parasites and diseases that physique up successful concentrated areas. The quality of having a grazing strategy is that the animals and the onshore are ever moving together, enhancing each other’s health. But coyotes tin disrupt each those plans.
*
We prevarication connected our mound of tussocked writer supra the hollow wherever h2o springs from the earth, our bait successful beforehand of america successful the darkness, waiting.
There whitethorn beryllium nary carnal that has been much revered and reviled, romanticized and persecuted, adopted and murdered than the coyote.
We are connected our bellies, arms crossed, cheeks resting connected our hands truthful we tin whisper, facing each different and pressed into the blistery grass, dew drenching our bare legs and the effect heads of timothy and orchard writer dropping debased to tickle our necks similar the creation of a persistent and annoying fly. I consciousness thing animate and stirring emergence up from the fell of the world to merge and mingle with my body, drafting maine down and nestling maine nether the drenching metallic of the sky.
We are similar fishermen connected the beach, baited lines moving retired into the waves to lure thing chaotic and unseen, a bare rima from the deep. There is thing to bash but hold and watch, bosom strained with anticipation for a sign, hands acceptable to enactment swiftly with immoderate motion. We are watchers, we are hunters, we are snipers.
I announcement that my excitement is tinged with thing else, not fearfulness oregon doubt…more similar remorse. To hunt a predator feels similar an enactment of malice, of dominance, of ego. We spot ourselves successful the predators of the wild; to devour a coyote would consciousness similar an enactment of cannibalism. There whitethorn beryllium nary carnal that has been much revered and reviled, romanticized and persecuted, adopted and murdered than the coyote.
I privation truthful severely to enactment my caput down, but I don’t privation to screen my ears, truthful I prop my chin connected my hands, my chemoreceptor pressed adjacent to the bitter goldenrod crushed beneath the wool blanket, which has its ain smell—like aged books and sun, musty and comforting, drafting maine into sleep.
The lone portion of maine inactive alert is my ears, my listening muscles crouched and thrumming. I volition my ears to basal ticker adjacent arsenic I consciousness my brain’s gears slip, thoughts mixing with the images of dreams. The electrical throb of cicadas enters my veins similar an ether. Beside maine Peter is already gone, his assemblage drained of each tension, his near manus connected his rifle and his close touching my thigh, fingers twitching arsenic helium drifts away.
Time passes, an hr oregon 4 I person nary idea. Then, my ears prime up the faintest rustle successful the writer from the hollow. I’m instantly alert. A brace of emerald eyes look astatine maine from what seems similar a fewer yards away.
Later, I volition retrieve the look successful those eyes arsenic sad, recusing: “You tricked me,” they say. I volition deliberation of Aldo Leopold, who wrote of sidesplitting a parent wolf, and however watching “a fierce greenish fire” dice successful her eyes was the awakening of his ecological consciousness: “I was young then, and afloat of trigger-itch; I thought that due to the fact that less wolves meant much deer, that nary wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But aft seeing the greenish occurrence die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the upland agreed with specified a view.”
I interaction Peter’s arm, and successful little than a second, helium has his firearm to his shoulder, aims astatine those dependable greenish points of light, and fires. Between the propulsion of the trigger and the crisp ace of the gun, she has vanished.
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From The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life by Helen Whybrow. Copyright © 2025. Available from Milkweed Editions.
