Interesting fact about coyotes that is starting to become widely acknowledged in some circles: The more you hunt and poison coyotes, the larger their population becomes and the effect on livestock increases. David Quaamen stated, "Destroy coyotes indiscriminately and you destroy nonreporductive adults. You kill mature alpha males and alpha femlales in the six-to-twelve-year-old class, aging animals that are robust enough to maintain the dominant status and their territories but too old to be fertile. In other words, these relatively few individuals hold the exclusive social prerogative to breed, but in many cases no longer exercise it. Kill them and you encourage younger submissive animals to claim dominance and begin breeding. You increase the reproductive rate of the population. Do that and you increase the predation against sheep. Why? Because youg coyotes with newborn pups account for most of the lamb killing. The growing pups need such windfalls of protein. Older coyotes without pups tend to take the easier, safer course, feeding on rodents, rabbits, and other reliable small-item foods."