Myrtle Beach area residents seeing more coyotes. Here’s why there are more of them

Coyotes are not high on the list of animals people like, according to South Carolina Department of Natural Resources Furbearer Project Leader Jay Butfiloski, but despite decades of federal eradication efforts, their numbers have only grown in the United States.

Horry County residents have posted a slew of sightings across social media recently, but Butfiloski said it’s as normal as seeing a deer in the backyard.

“For some time they’ve essentially been everywhere in the state,” he said.

South Carolina’s population has grown immensely in the last decade. Horry County has grown by nearly 18% since 2020 and is on track to reach over half a million residents by 2040. Butfiloski said with more people in the area, there’s a higher probability to encounter a coyote.

Development and clearing of trees may also prompt coyotes to travel through a neighborhood to get to another location, contributing to more sightings. Their population has also grown because of their adaptability.

“All they need is a little bit of green space,” Butfiloski said. “They can kind of eke out a living, sometimes a very decent living.”

Coyotes may thrive in tourist areas, like Myrtle Beach, because of the amount of trash generated that ends as a food source for the furbearers. Other “people-supplied” food sources, like leaving dog food bowls outside or filling bird seed, can keep them near.

“They’re very opportunistic in what they eat, and so they will take advantage of any food that’s put out,” Butfiloski said.

What to do if you encounter a coyote

Just seeing a coyote in a residential area isn’t enough to alert animal control.

Butfiloski said if you encounter a coyote with a small pet, pick the pet up immediately. You can yell and throw things at the coyote to shoo it away, but if it doesn’t move, it is best to slowly back away until it leaves. Do not run from a predator, or it could trigger an escape response.

According to SCDNR’s website, coyotes could potentially carry rabies.

Myrtle Beach Police Department’s Animal Control Unit only responds to wildlife emergencies which are incidents involving wild animals where an immediate danger to public health and safety is present. Officers do not keep track of coyote sightings and haven’t responded to a coyote related emergency recently, Patrolman Steven Trott said by email.

Most coyote related attacks involve someone’s pet, Butfiloski said. Even these cases are rare. SCDNR typically only sees a couple reports involving an attack per year. They are far less common than a report of normal dog bites, he said.

There has never been a coyote-related death in South Carolina, Butfiloski said. Only two coyote-related deaths have ever been recorded in North America, one in the 1980s in California involving a young child and another in Canada within the last 15 years involving a woman who was hiking alone.

If a coyote-related emergency occurs, call a local animal control or SCDNR’s Operation Game Thief at 1-800-922-5431. Myrtle Beach Police Dispatch can be reached at 843-918-1382.

Have coyotes disrupted other animal populations?

Coyotes have primarily caused issues with the state’s deer population. While it still remains at a healthy number, some members of the sporting community have concerns about a declining deer population. Butfiloski said some studies have shown a heavy predation on fawns.

Coyotes have actually started to prey on sea turtle nests, too. Bulfuloski, and other animal experts, theorize this is actually a learned behavior, because not all coyotes have adopted this behavior.

For the ones that do, however, it is thought that they teach this behavior to their young. Whether they have learned when to spot a turtle crawl from tracks in the sand or watch when sea turtles lay their eggs, sea turtle monitoring groups have seen coyotes partake in a sea turtle egg feast.

It is not as common for coyotes to prey on eggs as it is for raccoons to, however.

State initiatives to curb coyote population growth

Because coyotes are not native to the state, first arriving in 1978, a 2016 budget provision implemented a coyote incentive program to encourage South Carolinians to shoot and kill coyotes. Every year DNR employees tag and release four coyotes from each of the four game zones.

Until 2023, the reward was a lifetime hunting liscense, but it is now a $3,000 cash reward.

The program was targeted toward, but not limited to, deer hunters who are the most likely to be seeing coyotes in the woods anyway. Some hunters thought shooting a coyote could run off a deer, but SCDNR created this incentive for them to shoot it anyway.

Over the 10 years, 160 coyotes have been tagged, and 80 of them have been turned in.

Upwards of 25,000 to 30,000 coyotes are killed in the state annually. Including coyote kills that are not reported to SCDNR, that number could be closer to 40,000, Butfiloski said.