Coyotes hunted by local dogs

Coyotes hunted by local dogs are shown through two connected perspectives: the local systems organized to kill them, and one animal’s evasive flight across the desert. The encounter makes the hunted animal more than a distant quarry in Ben Givens’s recollections. Its speed, use of cover, and abrupt changes of direction shape the action, even as the pack pursuing it ultimately overtakes it.

Local Hunting and Predator Control

The background to the pursuit lies in the work and public reputation of Dale Saunders, Jr., a potato farmer who lived up the river road. Ranchers called on him when lambs or calves went missing. He was known in the orchard country as a trapper, hunter, prospector, and government bounty man, paid to poison Coyotes hunted by local dogs and to gas their pups in dens. His methods included spring-loaded cyanide canisters, leghold traps, and strychnine; his arsenal shows how predator control combined government payment with a range of lethal equipment.

Saunders also presented this work as expertise at the county fair. He sold handmade calls and home-welded traps, and demonstrated a device he called a coyote-getter, designed to deliver cyanide to an animal drawn toward it. His call, he claimed, imitated a jackrabbit caught on barbed wire. If a Coyote hunted by local dogs responded, Saunders said he might shoot it at close range; otherwise, he used a .22-250 Remington rifle. These details locate the pursuit within a wider local practice in which Coyotes hunted by local dogs were treated both as a threat to livestock and as targets for specialized tools and techniques.

Saunders considered his Irish wolfhounds the most dramatic means of pursuit. He displayed them in a chicken-wire cage on his pickup truck and claimed they could leap twenty feet, run four times faster than a Coyote hunted by local dogs, and pursue other large animals. His boastful presentation made the hounds part of a public spectacle as well as working animals. Ben remembers their imposing size and restless power, but does not share the admiration Saunders and some others attached to them.

The Pursuit in the Desert

At night, Ben hears hounds across the hills. His own dogs, Rex and Tristan, first move restlessly, then bolt after a Coyote hunted by local dogs running through the sage. Ben catches only a fleeting view of the animal: it is moving fast, its tail held low and its ears back. He notices that it resembles his own dogs in size and shape, while its longer muzzle and bottle-shaped tail distinguish it. The sight disappears into a dip in the terrain, leaving Ben unsure for a moment whether he has seen a real animal or a deception of the night.

Ben takes up his father’s shotgun and follows. The hounds come into view as a pack racing south over a ridge. Although he cannot identify them at first, their size and rolling, swift gait recall Saunders’s Irish wolfhounds. Ben remembers seeing the same kind of hounds some fifty years earlier. In his recollection, they seem built for pursuit; he associates them with the pleasure of killing rather than with the virtues of companionship that others attribute to them.

The chase leads to a draw thick with sumac and willows. Ben cannot see the animal, but hears the hounds working through the brush and concludes that the pursued Coyote hunted by local dogs has found cover. In his account of what may be happening, the animal stays low while its pursuers try to force it out. The contrast is tactical: open ground favors speed, while dense vegetation offers the smaller animal a place to evade the pack. Ben’s interpretation gives the animal a momentary advantage without suggesting that it can escape indefinitely.

Evasion, Capture, and the Shift to Rex

A Coyote hunted by local dogs suddenly emerges from the thicket close to Ben. On becoming aware of him, it changes direction and vanishes into the sage. The movement briefly breaks the hounds’ line of pursuit, but one clears the draw after it, followed by others. Rex appears among the pursuing dogs, now far behind the pack as it gains on the animal.

The Coyote hunted by local dogs turns to face its pursuers, but the pack closes in and brings it down. The scene marks the end of its evasion: the change of course and the attempt to hold its ground do not overcome the hounds’ speed and numbers. The narrative does not linger on the animal after the pack has finished with it. Instead, the danger shifts to Rex, whom the hounds begin to attack.

Ben rushes toward the dogs. A warning shot makes most of the hounds stop, but one keeps hold of Rex. Ben strikes and kicks at the dog without stopping it, then uses his shotgun against it. The encounter thus connects the fate of the Coyote hunted by local dogs to Ben’s immediate decision to protect Rex: the pack’s pursuit ends one animal’s flight and turns the scene into a crisis for Ben and his dog. The narrative leaves the hunted animal’s life and struggle distinct from the human response, while showing how quickly a chase can draw Ben into direct conflict with the violence he has long resisted.