A lot of times when you have two coyotes that are young running with each other they will both be males, sometimes a pair of females but most times I have seen them be males. Last year I was killing 7 males to one female here so then in February a couple of young ranchers told me that they saw a pack of five coyotes running together, I told them I figured they had a female in heat and four males they laughed at me and said yeah right, the father-in-law who I had worked for, for a long time said I bet he's right. He called his friend with the helicopter and was talking with him and asked if he would fly for them the next time he was out, He was going out the next day to fly for another guy so said he would come by. They got on all five of them on a flat open snow-covered pasture and got four out of five, three males and one female the next morning one of the sons-in-law shot a lone male when they were out feeding. I have often seen three coyotes running together, normally an older female and one of the years female pups with a male, but I have seen it be a yearling male pup and helping raise the pups when they were born. A lot of times I have seen the yearling female also have a litter of pups and a couple of times both litters were born in the same den. So much of it depends on the prey base they will have bigger litters if they are well fed and tend to have another helper coyote with them, to help raise the bigger litter. I have found that the amount of available food governs the litter size more than the population of coyotes, but then the population is governed by the available food so when the food base is down you end up with fewer coyotes but as the number of predators are lower than your prey base goes up as it goes up then the predators become better fed and then have bigger litters .
