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Five more coyotes captured at Fallsgrove

Trapper reminds residents to stay off paths in area

Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2005

Click here to enlarge this photo Brian Lewis⁄The Gazette This coyote, whose left-front paw is caught in a trap, weighed in at 61 pounds. She was caught last week in Rockville’s Fallsgrove community, and four more, all smaller, were caught Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

With a snared coyote in the nearby brush and others in the area, should people even be on this path?

Mike Adcock, of Adcock Wildlife Management, a matter-of-fact man who has been trapping coyotes for 26 years in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia, doesn’t flinch with his answer.

‘‘No, they shouldn’t be,” he says.

In fact, he continues, just a few minutes earlier he saw a pregnant woman walking a dachshund down the path.

‘‘It’s an invitation, come and get me,” Adcock says.

He’s on his way back to that trapped coyote, a large female he believes is the leader of the pack of coyotes that Fallsgrove residents have seen stalking some trail users or just hiding out in the brush of the Rockville community. Hired by Fallsgrove Associates earlier this year, Adcock trapped two coyotes in the spring and two last week, and euthanized all four.

Perhaps that’s what bothered the activist Adcock ran into this spring, who he said chased the coyotes around in the early-morning hours to try to keep the animals from being trapped. A hiker also tried to lure him into a fistfight. Adcock backed off for a few months.

Although coyotes have been portrayed as getting into trouble and causing damage, they are not typically aggressive toward people, Ken D’Loughy, regional manager for the Wildlife and Heritage Service, a unit of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources based in Gaithersburg, said in a June interview.

Turning off the trail and walking up the hill toward Fallsgrove homes, Adcock carries nothing but his two and a half decades of experience. No bat, no gun. Nothing but tan boots, blue jeans and a worn yellow T-shirt.

Adcock knows his work isn’t done. He suspects several more adolescent coyotes still live in the Fallsgrove area.

He mentions that some of those other coyotes seem to be hanging around the area where the top dog is trapped. They shouldn’t bother a trio of people, though, he tells a Gazette reporter and photographer.

Up through the brush and past an old barbed-wire fence (the land was part of the 250-acre Thomas Farm until developed several years ago), Adcock reaches a clearing.

The coyote doesn’t look that scary. Almost peaceful, she looks a bit like a German shepherd, lying there with her front left leg stuck in the toothless, padded-jaw trap.

‘‘She’s spent,” Adcock mutters.

He set a few traps in the woods at about 10 o’clock the night before and 12 hours later he found this coyote, which he estimates to be the largest dog he’s ever trapped.

Checking in with Adcock this week, several days after he put her down, Adcock says she weighed in at a whopping 61 pounds. He estimates she was about 5 years old.

That’s not all.

He trapped a young male and a female on Sunday and one more Monday, all weighing in around 30 or 35 pounds and between 18 months to 2 years old. They were more agitated than the one he caught last week, Adcock says. Tuesday morning he caught another young female.

And even that’s not all.

He spotted at least two more and heard a third while rounding up his latest catches. Some in the neighborhood spoke earlier this year of a mother coyote being followed around by a bunch of pups, pups Adcock is pretty sure he hasn’t nabbed yet.

He is checking his traps twice each day and baiting them at night. A lot of people still walk their dogs around there during the day, he says, and he doesn’t want to trap someone’s dog.

Adcock said he expects to be trapping for a couple more weeks. He suggests people keep their pets on leashes on the asphalt path, and adds that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to carry some pepper spray or mace while walking.

He also says the community might want to think twice about the decision not to mow along the trail, as waist-high weeds and grasses provide great refuge for coyotes and other animals.

‘‘A coyote could be right there,” he says, motioning off to the side of the trail, ‘‘and we’d never see it.”