Development and testing of seven new synthetic coyote attractants

Available evidence indicates that effective coyote attractants are blends o f volatile substances. Typically, attractants are a combination of biologic al substances such as fermented glandular materials, urines, and rotted mea ts. Although effective, these attractants have several distinct disadvantag es. Among these is the possibility that they are unnecessarily complex sind variable and, thus, difficult to replicate from one batch to the next. Alt hough attractants containing a few reagent grade materials are available, t he chemicals selected and their concentrations are not derived from actual attractants. For this reason, commercially available coyote attractants wer e analyzed with the intention of developing relatively simple synthetic alt ernatives. Purge and trap headspace analysis with gas chromatography/mass s elective detection was employed to identify the volatile components of know n conventional and synthetic attractants. All identified compounds were gro uped according to chemical functionality, and one compound from each functi onal group was chosen to represent the group. Using only these representati ve compounds, seven synthetic attractants mere formulated. Bioassays with c aptive coyotes (Canis latrans) were conducted to compare behavioral respons es elicited by the seven new attractants, a currently available synthetic a ttractant, and a control. The results indicated that the attractants elicit ed significantly different behavioral profiles.