This week in history: Coyotes killed in and around Chicago would ‘roam the alleys and prey upon chicken yards’

In this photo from February 1947, two men toss a coyote casualty over a fence as part of an effort to combat large losses of livestock in Parkville, Mo. | Sun-Times photo archives

As reported by the Chicago Daily News, sister paper of the Chicago Sun-Times:

A May 3, 1941 report about dwindling coyote bounties in Michigan warned that “any assumption that the coyote population is on the wane” based on bounty totals halving from 1940 would be “more or less inaccurate.” What’s more likely, the Daily News reported, is that coyotes have adapted to “man’s habitations” to better “escape detection.”

“Now and then we hear of the killing of one of these animals in suburbs and outlying districts of Chicago, but the coyote is so clever at escaping detection that it can roam the alleys and prey upon chicken yards for years without being seen.”

A comic that ran in the Chicago Daily News on May 3, 1941.

“Michigan’s bounty is $15 for males and $20 for females,” the report explains, and only 103 coyotes were killed in the first quarter of 1941, compared to 209 in 1940 and 298 in 1939.

“But knowing the habits of the crafty coyote, they’d better not assume too quickly that they are ridding the state of this pest,” the Daily News warns Michigan officials.