Expand the night-vision hunting season for Kansas' top varmint? I'm rooting for the coyotes.

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27-04-2025

A coyote surveys the terrain around the author's campsite. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector)
Find yourself a patch of land away from city lights just about anywhere in Kansas, and you will hear them. Sit down on a good rock and wrap yourself in the cold and dark, especially during a new moon in winter, and they will eventually begin to yip, yowl and yap. Their cries will grow in intensity until you might think yourself surrounded, subject to imminent attack, although you are likely as safe on the prairie as in your own bed.
What just sent a thrill down your spine is the cacophonous song of the coyote. These 'song dogs' are among nature's best survivors, an adaptable omnivore that has been with us since at least the last ice age. They are present in every state except Hawaii, are blamed for killing farm livestock and snacking on suburban house pets, and have been the target of unsuccessful eradication attempts for the past 200 years.
The latest campaign in the war on coyotes came April 24, when the Kansas Wildlife and Parks Commission voted 5-2 to extend the night-vision hunting season from the current three months to seven.
During the meeting, held at Fall River in southeast Kansas, the commissioners acknowledged various conflicts over extending the season but declined a request from Wildlife and Parks secretary Chris Kennedy for more time to study the coyote problem.
The new season would be Sept. 1 to March 31, excluding some firearm deer seasons. Currently, the season is limited to January, February and March. The extended season would not take effect until after the new regulation passes statutory and legal review and is officially adopted.
Night vision hunters typically spend thousands of dollars in rifles, scopes, and thermal optics. Their gear resembles tactical military gear, and that may be part of the appeal. We'll get to this Zero Dark Coyote pretend combat presently, just as we will recount the story of a coyote named Rattlesnake.
In places like Kansas, where the myth of the frontier seethes just below the cultural surface, the coyote is not just a predator but a living symbol of the dichotomous desire to both hold the wild and to tame it. For First Peoples, Coyote often represents the Trickster, the entity who alternately brings creation and chaos. For ranchers, the coyote is a profit-eating pest to be eliminated by any means available. For romantics, the animal represents wildness, rebellion and cunning survival. We see ourselves in the clever and grinning countenance of these nocturnal ramblers.
Coyotes have been watchers on many of my outdoor adventures, but my best memory comes from a night some years ago sleeping on a sandbar on the Arkansas River far below Wichita. I had been kayaking the river for a book project and, retiring to my tent after miles of paddling, the coyote yips seemed like the voices of old friends. Their night song spanned the centuries, at least in my imagination, to a time before the plow broke the plains.
From the moment white settlers came to Kansas, coyotes were targeted for extinction because of real and suspected depredations. Rabbits and mice are the primary foods for coyotes, but just about anything can become a meal of opportunity — garbage, crops, livestock, the occasional toy poodle. Coyotes generally don't attack human beings, although when cornered or trapped they can be dangerous, just as any wild animal can.
In 1916, the Kansas Supreme Court took up the case of a coyote in a Wichita zoo that bit a child.
Four-year-old Bessie Hibbard had been taken by her parents to the zoo at Riverside Park, where she put her hands in a cage containing a coyote on display. The animal bit and scratched her hand and arm. Bessie's father sued the city for negligence. The state Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling and found in favor of the city, saying officers and agents of the city were not liable for damages while performing official duties. A dissenting justice, Judson West, said the coyote cage was a 'most malignant and excuseless' nuisance which afforded zoological specimens the opportunity to 'dine upon the children' of visitors.
I'm with West.
For decades, beginning around 1900, the state attempted to eradicate coyotes by poison, firearms and paying bounties on their hides. When I was a kid, I remember some of my friends getting $2 per pair of coyote ears, paid by the county. I was a hunter in my youth, and always in need of money, but I never shot a coyote. I have since given up hunting, believing it immoral to kill wild things for money or sport. Your results may vary.
Perhaps the biggest change in the state's approach to coyote management was the result of one man, F. Robert Henderson, a specialist who worked 27 years for the Kansas State Cooperative Extension Service. Henderson, hired in 1968, educated livestock producers across the state about the myths and realities of coyote predation.
'Not all coyotes kill livestock,' Henderson said in his memoir, published in 2016. 'It is a learned thing on the part of the coyote. … I found out that generally ranchers hate coyotes.'
He also learned that most people who set out to kill coyotes end up thinking that killing indiscriminately is not the answer. Instead, you have to eliminate those animals that have learned to kill livestock, and the best way to do that is by trapping.
In the 1970s, Henderson set out to make an educational movie about coyote control. Lacking funds, he used a Super 8 movie camera and wrote his own script. The star of the film was Rattlesnake, a coyote the Henderson family had raised as a pet — something, the author cautioned, that 'is not a good idea for you or the coyote.'
Rattlesnake became the film's star because he would attack livestock when given the opportunity, a drama Henderson created with the help of a local rancher. It all seems a little bloody now, but I think the point of the staged scene was to show Rattlesnake running away when a pickup truck approached. When the film was shown, Henderson recalled, 'Kids would first feel sorry for the calf, then cheer when the coyote got away.'
Like the kids, Henderson's sympathy was with the coyote.
'Wild animals do get into situations where they create losses and cause people to have loss and worry,' Henderson wrote. 'This is true, always has been and probably always will be.'
The actual number of cases is likely far fewer than generally believed.
Henderson's memoir, appropriately called 'Coyotes Go to Heaven,' is a sprawling and folksy account of his life, and that of his wife, Karen, from 1933 to 2016. Henderson recounts, among other things, hunting with Kansas Gov. Mike Hayden and the influence of environmental ethicist Aldo Leopold on wildlife conservation.
Henderson died in 2024. He was 91.
I was thinking about Henderson as I reviewed the video stream of the Wildlife and Parks Commission voting to extend the night vision hunting season for coyotes. I hadn't known much about Henderson until a few weeks ago, when a friend suggested I check out his work. I'm glad I did, because Henderson seemed like somebody I could have been friends with.
I don't presume to know what Henderson would have thought about the expanded coyote season, but I can tell you I find it disturbing. The kit — night scopes, thermal optics, and typically an AR-15 style rifle — seem more suited to urban warfare than recreational hunting. I suspect that playing war is the point for some. I don't mean this mockingly, but hunting requires skills that are also useful in combat, something that novelist, soldier, and big-game hunter Ernest Hemingway knew well. But for all his faults, Hemingway did his hunting in the light.
Coyotes are officially treated as a non-game species, according to the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, but they are 'regulated and managed' as furbearers. As a non-game species, they can be hunted during the day year-round, and there is no bag limit. In 2021, a three-month night vision hunting period was introduced, ending March 31. With a hunting license and a special $2.50 permit, hunters can use artificial light and thermal imaging equipment.
This year, 7,310 night vision permits were issued, according to Laura Rose Clawson, chief of public affairs for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.
'Coyotes are an important recreational species in Kansas,' Clawson said in an email. 'About 30,000 hunters spend about 200,000 days total hunting coyotes in the state. Most of this is the result of traditional (non-night-vision) hunters and methods.'
Clawson said there were alternatives to hunting for controlling losses to predation, including penning livestock at night, removing carrion, having guard animals, and fencing.
'However, coyotes do sometimes prey on livestock,' she said, 'and in those cases, lethal removal of the offending animal is often the most effective solution.'
About 4% of cattle losses and 11% of lamb losses were due to coyotes, she said, citing figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Trapping is an option, but that is also lethal. The animals are destroyed after being trapped because relocation isn't viable.
In public hearings on the night-vision season held last month in El Dorado, Junction City and Hays, a total of 58 individuals attended. Thirty-eight were in favor of an expanded coyote night-vision season, Clawson said, while 10 were opposed. Another 10 were neutral or did not complete the survey.
'I'm concerned I don't have as much biological data on the coyote population as I'd like to have,' Kennedy, the Wildlife and Parks secretary, said during Thursday's meeting. He also wanted 'to make sure we're not hunting any wildlife population in the state to extinction.'
Kennedy suggested postponing the vote on extending the night vision season, but the commission proceeded. There was, however, some concern. One member expressed worry about how hunting is perceived by the public. Another acknowledged that previously a wildlife biologist had told the commission that even a yearlong season would likely have no effect on the coyote population. The discussion preceding the vote was largely about conflicts with other hunting seasons, the added burden on game wardens and other law enforcement, the best month to hunt coyotes (January) and the importance of night-vision coyote hunting to the state economy.
Guided night-vision hunts are a big business in Kansas, with operators charging up to $1,800 per night. The coyotes are lured in by electronic rabbit distress calls. The operators, of course, claim they are doing landowners a favor by killing the animals.
Perhaps. But I doubt the accelerated killing of coyotes will do much to deter livestock predation because it doesn't target the offending animals. The animals killed by the night-vision hunters are being promised rabbit for dinner, not lamb. You don't kill all dogs because some have learned how to get into the chicken coop.
Nature is indeed 'red in tooth and claw,' as Alfred, Lord Tennyson poetically observed in 1849. But we shouldn't be. Night-vision coyote hunting seems offensive in the same way as buffalo slaughters in the 1870s or rabbit clubbing during the Great Depression.
There must be a better way to control coyotes than shooting them.
Coyotes have expanded their range and tripled their numbers since the 1980s, but it's not the fault of the animals. Humans created the opportunity by destroying habitat and by reducing the coyote's chief rival, the wolf. The harder coyotes are hunted, either in calling contests like the ones held in Kismet or by night-vision seasons, the larger their litters.
They have learned to exploit our trash, our livestock, and the habitats we create. They have become America's most successful predator because we have helped them become so.
As author Dan Flores noted in 2016's 'Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History,' their strength is their uncanny adaptability.
'In one of the myriad ways humans and coyotes eerily mimic one another,' Flores wrote, 'like us coyotes are a cosmopolitan species, able to live in a remarkable range of habitats.'
The current night-vision campaign to control the coyote population, like past hunting efforts, is doomed to fail. It may provide recreation for those who like military-grade kit, but it is ultimately a pseudo war against ourselves.
I'm rooting for the coyotes.
Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.