Pest or pest control? Coyote interactions with cattle and Richardson’s ground squirrels

Coyotes (Canis latrans Say, 1823) are ubiquitous across Canadian grasslands and have been implicated as causing millions of dollars of damage each year by injuring or killing cattle (Bos taurus Linnaeus, 1758). Gaining insight into the behaviour of coyotes in proximity to cattle may mitigate these costs. We hypothesized that coyotes obtain direct (e.g., killing calves or scavenging cattle) and indirect (e.g., hunting native prey) benefits from cattle pastures. We further hypothesized that cows respond defensively to coyotes. We conducted 58 focal observations of coyotes from May to August in southwest Saskatchewan and recorded activity, prey species, distance from cattle, and the response of cattle to coyotes. Coyotes hunted native prey more often than they interacted with cattle. Coyotes were often within 100 m of cattle when hunting Richardson’s ground squirrels (Urocitellus richardsonii (Sabine, 1822)), their most common prey. Coyotes scavenged from cattle carcasses (N=5), occasional..., , # Data from: Pest or pest control? Coyote interactions with cattle and Richardson’s ground squirrels

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.83bk3jb67](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.83bk3jb67)

## Description of the data and file structure

Data files for Jackson, S. M., Miller, M. P., and Lingle S. Pest or pest control? Coyote interactions with cattle and Richardson’s ground squirrels. Canadian Journal of Zoology.

This dataset contains multiple data files:

File 1: Focal_Coyote_Observations.csv - This file contains data for focal observations of coyotes.

File 2: Cattle_Herd_Observations.csv - This file contains data on the presence of calves within herds of cattle.

File 3: Coyote_Cattle_Interactions.csv - This file contains data on the response of cattle toward coyotes. 
### Files and variables

#### File: Focal_Coyote_Observations.csv

**Description:** This file contains data for focal observations of coyotes. We used these data to run signed-rank tests on the amount of time coyotes spent o..., ,