What can residents do about coyotes killing pets in Charleston? | News

Jill Asmer never expected to start her day with a coyote.

She was walking her golden retriever, Lucky, through the Lowndes Point neighborhood in Wagener Terrace just after 7 a.m. on Sept. 30. A coyote ran between two houses, carrying what Asmer initially thought was a black cat in its mouth.

The coyote stopped when he noticed Asmer and Lucky. After a quick look down, the coyote dropped the animal and trotted down Parrothead Lane.

Asmer said as the coyote ran away, he would look back as if he was thinking about going back and getting the animal he had dropped. A few other neighbors were exercising outside and witnessed the ordeal.

As Asmer and her neighbors got closer, they discovered that the coyote had been carrying the hind legs of a dog. Asmer said it was so mutilated that it was hard to see. It still bothers her.

“It really hijacked my day,” Asmer said. “I can’t get it out of my head.”

This is not the first case of coyotes killing pets, but the Wagener Terrace community has seen it occur more frequently for at least the past month.

On September 19, Alicia Lutz found her cat dead and half-eaten in her backyard. The following Sunday, she found another dead cat in her backyard – not her own.

Since then, Lutz had installed floodlights around her yard to deter coyotes, to no avail. On September 24, she was doing laundry in her garage when she heard something on the roof. She went outside and sure enough, a coyote had climbed from the fence onto the roof of her garage.

Lutz had spoken to a neighbor who had seen a pack of coyotes running away with her cat. Asmer said she has heard that several other pets have been killed by coyotes on Wagener Terrace in recent weeks. Both have spoken to or heard of parents who were afraid to let their children play outside unsupervised for fear a coyote would attack them.

“It almost feels like a killing spree,” Asmer said.

Tommy Dew, who has lived in Wagener Terrace for nearly 20 years, said there have always been coyotes as long as he has lived in the area. What was new was finding disemboweled corpses, he said.

Not a new problem

While coyotes are slowly becoming a bigger problem on the peninsula, they are a major problem throughout the lowlands. There were several coyote attacks on both the Isle of Palms and Sullivan's Island earlier this year. In one case, a man in Mount Pleasant threw a rabid coyote into a dumpster after it tried to attack his dog.

Jay Butfiloski, furbearer project manager for the state Department of Natural Resources, said coyotes are not native to South Carolina. The first documented sighting occurred in 1978.

He said he wasn't surprised to hear about coyotes on the peninsula because they have already been near Isle of Palms, Sullivan's Island and Mount Pleasant, so it's only a matter of time before they reach the peninsula . He added that it is likely that coyotes have been roaming the marsh area that surrounds part of Wagener Terrace for some time. People are only realizing it now because of the surveillance cameras, he said.

Prioleau Alexander, who lives on the edge of Wagener Terrace, said that from his perspective there are two solutions for residents.

“You either have to eradicate the coyote population or live with the problem,” Alexander said.

He had suggested on Facebook that residents with fenced backyards should get a wounded rabbit caller and a crossbow to lure and kill coyotes in their yards, an admittedly unpopular stance.

Alexander understands people's concerns, but said it is only intended for people with hunting experience and only if someone has a fully fenced yard so they can guarantee the bolt won't leave the yard. He doesn't want people patrolling the streets hunting for coyotes.

“There's no way I'm going to go on 'The Walking Dead' and walk down the street with my crossbow,” Alexander said.

People can hire private trappers to install traps on their property, Butfiloski said. Relocating coyotes is against state law. So if a coyote is trapped, it must be “destroyed.”

Butfiloski said there is a coyote harvest incentive program that the DNR created in 2016. Under this program, DNR would trap and tag four coyotes from each wildlife zone each year before releasing them back into the wild. With four play zones, that’s 16 coyotes per year.

If someone killed and turned in a tagged coyote, they received a lifetime hunting license. In 2023, the reward was changed to $3,000. Butfiloski said the program is intended to encourage people to kill coyotes.

It worked: Since 2016, 128 coyotes have been tagged and 65 killed.

Butfiloski said people should not leave small pets outside at night or leave out food. Leaving out food – including bird feeders – attracts coyotes. He also recommended people use a brush to clean any areas that could serve as hiding places for coyotes or smaller animals.

“Food is a big driver for them,” Butfiloski said.

If someone encounters a coyote, Butfiloski said coyotes typically don't want a confrontation with a person, but advises people to treat it like a strange dog.

“Make yourself known. Don’t turn around and run,” he said. “You don’t want to trigger a persecutory instinct.”