Development of chemical coyote attractants for wildlife management applications

Abstract

Coyote attractants are inherently variable because they are usually derived by mixing and fermenting complex biologically dericed substances. We designed the present study to adress this problem. We collected volatiles by purge and trape headspace analyses from 33 commercially available attractants, and analyzed the trapped odors by gas chromatography with mass selective detection. We then statistically evaluated chromatographic peak area data to produce recipes for seven new chemical attractants. We presented these attractants to coyotes in one-choice tests at the Predation Ecology and Behavioral Applications Field Station of the USDA-APHIS-WS National Wildlife Research Center near Logan, Utah. Our results indicated that there were both seasonal and sexual differences in stimulus attractiveness. We also found that several attractants were more effective than Fatty Acid Scent (FAS), a commonly employed coyote attractant. A field trial to evaluate the effectiveness of new candidate attractants is planned.