Coyote Hunting Vermont, Laws, Regulations, Season, & License Info

Coyote classification & license in Vermont

What is the classification of coyotes in Vermont?

A fur-bearing animal, named in the statutory definition:

Fur-bearing animals: beaver, otter, marten, mink, raccoon, fisher, fox, skunk, coyote, bobcat, weasel, opossum, lynx, wolf, and muskrat.¹

The Fish and Wildlife Board’s furbearing species rule repeats the same list.²

It is also small game, because Vermont’s small game definition is a catch-all rather than a list:

Small game: game birds, except for turkeys; game quadrupeds, except for big game; furbearers; and other wild animals.³

And it is not game. This is the sentence that does the work on this page:

Game: game birds or game quadrupeds, or both.⁴

Game quadruped: caribou, elk, moose, deer, gray squirrel, rabbit, and black bear.⁵

A coyote is not on that list and is not a game bird. Three consequences follow, and they are set out under hunting hours, suppressors and legal implements.

One caution before you lean on that too hard. The scoping cuts both ways here, exactly as it did in Colorado. Being a fur-bearing animal is what puts the coyote inside the Board’s furbearer rule — which is where the dog permit, the trapping season, the snare ban, the poison ban and the broadhead standard all live.

Are coyotes protected in Vermont?

No. The furbearing species rule gives the coyote no closed season and no bag limit for hunting:

Coyote · By hunting · No closed season · No limit

Hunting/Taking Coyote without the Aid of Dogs · No closed season

Hunting/Taking With the Aid of Dogs · December 15 through March 31 · No limit⁶

Trapping is the exception: that is a dated season, the fourth Saturday in October to 31 December.⁶

Is a hunting license required to hunt coyotes in Vermont?

Yes. Vermont requires a license to take any wild animal:

Except as provided in sections 4253 and 4254b of this title, a person shall not take wild animals or fish without first having procured a license therefor.⁷

A hunting license is the residents’ route:

A hunting license shall entitle the holder to take wild animals, other than fish, except by trapping and for those species that require a separate big game license.⁸

Resident hunting license: $28.00 for one year, $134.00 for five. The combination hunting and fishing license is $47.00.⁹

The landowner exception is real and it is generous. A resident owner of land, their spouse and their minor children may take wild animals on that land without any license at all:

A resident owner of lands, his or her spouse, and their minor children may, without procuring a license under this chapter, take fish from the waters therein, shoot pickerel, and take wild animals or wild birds therein subject to the provisions of this part.¹⁰

A non-resident landowner gets the same exemption on their own Vermont land, with one condition: it does not apply if the land is posted under any provision other than the safety-zone section.¹⁰

The prices above are resident prices. For a non-resident the cheap small game license is the right one, which is the reverse of New Hampshire next door — see non-residents.

Is hunter education required?

Yes, unless you have held a license before. Vermont attaches the condition to the license itself, and it accepts four different proofs:

A resident or nonresident hunting license, combination fishing and hunting license, or archery license may be issued to any person, provided that the applicant prior to issue first presents: (1) a certificate of satisfactory completion of a Vermont hunter safety course… or (2) a certificate of satisfactory completion of a hunter safety course… in another state or a province of Canada which is approved by the Commissioner; or (3) a hunting license… issued for this State or any other state or a province of Canada and valid for any license year; or (4) other satisfactory proof that the applicant has previously held a hunting, or combination hunting and fishing license.¹¹

The course itself is free — the statute says so in terms: “No fee shall be charged for a course of instruction provided under this subsection.”¹¹

Can a non-resident hunt coyotes in Vermont?

Yes, and the cheap license is the right one — which is the reverse of the answer next door in New Hampshire.

Vermont sells a non-resident small game license at $50.00, and the footnote on the fee table spells out exactly what it buys:

Small Game Licenses: Entitles the holder to take small game, furbearers and other wild animals (except big game) by any lawful means other than a trap.⁹

A coyote is both a furbearer and small game, so the $50 license covers it. The full non-resident hunting license is $102.00 and buys you big game as well.⁹

There is no resident small game license in the fee table; a Vermont resident buys the $28.00 hunting license.⁹

One non-resident trap for the dog hunters. Non-resident coyote dog permits are capped at ten per cent of the previous year’s resident issue, to a maximum of ten. See hunting with dogs.

See also is a hunting license required — the license rules there, and the exemptions and add-ons that go with them, apply to you too.

Season, hours & limits in Vermont

What is the season for coyote hunting in Vermont?

Open all year on foot. Three and a half months with dogs, and only if you drew a permit.

The Department states the general answer in one line: “There is no closed hunting season on coyote. Coyotes may be hunted at any time under natural light.”¹²

“At any time under natural light” is doing two jobs in that sentence — it grants the whole clock and it takes back the light. Both halves are covered under night hunting.

The 2026 digest’s quick-reference table declines to print a coyote season at all, sending the reader to the website instead.¹³ The Board rule is the authority, and it is unambiguous.

What is the bag limit for coyotes in Vermont?

No limit, hunting or trapping.⁶

What are the legal hunting hours for coyotes in Vermont?

Any hour, day or night — and the reason is the classification.

Vermont’s legal-day rule reads:

A person shall not take game between one-half hour after sunset and one-half hour before sunrise unless otherwise provided by statute or by the rules of the Board.¹⁴

“Game” means game birds or game quadrupeds. A coyote is neither, so the sentence does not reach it, and the Department’s own summary confirms the result: coyotes “may be hunted at any time.”¹²

The 2026 digest sets it out the same way in its hunting-hours table — raccoon gets “any hour within hunting season,” coyote gets its own row pointing at the website, and everything else gets the half-hour rule.¹⁵

Two hard exceptions to “any hour”:

With dogs, the clock comes back. The furbearer rule imposes shooting hours on dog hunters that the general law does not impose on anyone else: “Legal hours for taking coyote with the aid of dogs: One half hour before sunrise until one half hour after sunset.”¹⁶

Without a light, the practical hours are shorter than the legal ones. See night hunting.

Sunday hunting is legal in Vermont. There is no Sunday prohibition in Title 10 or in the Board rules, which is worth knowing if you have driven over from Maine or Massachusetts, where it is banned outright.

Can you hunt coyotes during deer or big game season?

Yes. Vermont imposes no closed period on coyote hunting during any deer, bear, moose or turkey season, and no coyote-specific orange requirement.

Vermont does not require hunter orange at all, for any species. The digest is direct about it, and about why it says so anyway:

Hunter orange is not required by law in Vermont, but wearing it might save your life. Almost all of Vermont’s hunting-related shootings could have been prevented if the hunters had been wearing hunter orange.¹⁷

Wear it in the sixteen-day November rifle season regardless.

Night hunting in Vermont

Can you hunt coyotes at night in Vermont?

Yes, and no permit is required — but you must do it on natural light.

There is no night season in Vermont because there is no closed season and no legal-day limit on a coyote. The Department says it in six words: coyotes “may be hunted at any time under natural light.”¹²

That makes Vermont unusual in New England. Maine runs a dated night season, New Hampshire runs a three-month one behind a landowner permit filed with a conservation officer, and Vermont runs neither — the night is simply open, all year, to anyone with a license. What Vermont takes back instead is the equipment.

Can you use artificial lights for coyote hunting in Vermont?

No. This is the flat prohibition on the page.

The statute is written against any wild animal, which is the category a coyote cannot escape:

A person shall not intentionally throw or cast the rays of a spotlight, jack, or other artificial light on any highway, or any field, woodland, or forest, in order to spot, locate, take, or attempt to take, spot, or locate any wild animal. However, a light may be used to take skunks and raccoons in accordance with rules of the Board.¹⁸

The raccoon carve-out is the whole exception list. The Board’s rule extends it to a treed raccoon and to raccoon dog training, and to nothing else.¹⁹ There is no coyote equivalent anywhere in Title 10, the Appendix rules or the digest.

The Department applies it to coyotes in terms:

Artificial lights and sighting devices that project a beam of any kind of light are prohibited when shooting at a coyote.¹²

Note what that sentence does that the statute does not: it reaches sighting devices, not just spotlights. Read it before you fit anything to the rifle.

Can you use night vision in Vermont?

Not answered in Vermont law, and the Department’s phrasing is what decides it in practice.

The words night vision, thermal and infrared appear nowhere in Title 10 chapter 113, nowhere in the Fish and Wildlife Board’s furbearing species rule, and nowhere in the 2026 digest.¹⁸²²⁰ The only prohibition that could reach an optic is the artificial-light statute, and that statute is about casting rays.

So the line falls where the light does:

• A passive image intensifier, throwing nothing, is not casting the rays of an artificial light. Nothing in the statute reaches it.
• An infrared illuminator — which most affordable digital night vision needs to see anything — is a device projecting a beam of light. Invisible to you is still light, and the Department’s own sentence covers “a beam of any kind of light.”¹²

Treat an IR illuminator as prohibited. That is what the Department’s wording says and it is the reading a warden will apply.

Can you use thermal in Vermont?

Thermal is the one optic the light rule cannot touch — but Vermont has never said so, and that gap is worth taking seriously.

A thermal imager is wholly passive. It emits nothing, casts nothing, projects no beam. Held against the text of the artificial-light statute it is not prohibited, and it is not prohibited anywhere else either — the word does not appear in Vermont’s hunting law.

What makes this a genuine open question rather than a clean yes is that the Department’s own summary bans “sighting devices that project a beam of any kind of light,” which is an equipment sentence rather than a statutory quotation. It is the only place in Vermont’s published material where an optic is addressed at all. Thermal falls outside it on any ordinary reading of “project.”

If you are going to hunt Vermont with thermal, ring the Department first — 802-828-1000 — and get the answer for your unit rather than relying on this page’s reading of a statute that predates the technology by forty years. This is the one answer here I would not want a reader to take on trust.

Are there specific weapons restrictions for hunting coyotes at night in Vermont?

No night-specific weapon rule exists, because Vermont has no night season to attach one to. Every restriction under firearms applies at 2 a.m. exactly as it applies at noon.

The one that bites after dark is the laser sight ban. Vermont prohibits laser sights for hunting outright, at any hour:

Laser sights are illegal for hunting.²¹

That is the digest’s flat statement, and it sits directly beneath the artificial-light statute on the same page — the Department reads a laser as a projected beam. An illuminated reticle that throws no light forward is a different thing and is not addressed.

Firearms, ammo & suppressors in Vermont

Are suppressors allowed for coyote hunting in Vermont?

Read this one carefully, because the permission is written for game and a coyote is not game.

Vermont starts from a general prohibition on using a suppressor anywhere in the state, and then lists five exceptions:

A person shall not use a gun suppressor in the State, except for use by: (1) a Level III certified law enforcement officer or Department of Fish and Wildlife employee…; (2) the Vermont National Guard…; (3) a licensed manufacturer or a licensed importer…; (4) a person lawfully using a sport shooting range; or (5) a person taking game as authorized under 10 V.S.A. § 4701.²²

Exception (5) is the hunting exception, and it points at a section of the wildlife code that says:

A person taking game with a gun may possess, carry, or use a gun suppressor in the act of taking game.²³

Both sentences say game. Vermont defines game as game birds or game quadrupeds, and a coyote is neither.⁴⁵ The definitions section applies throughout Part 4 of Title 10, which is where § 4701 sits.

So on the face of the statutes, taking a coyote is not within any exception to the suppressor prohibition. The penalty for using one outside the exceptions is $50 for each offence.²²

Nobody has published an answer to this. Vermont Fish & Wildlife’s 2026 digest reproduces § 4701(d) word for word under the heading “Machine Guns & Autoloading Rifles & Suppressors” without addressing which species it covers,²⁴ and the Department’s coyote guidance does not mention suppressors at all.¹²

What to do with that. The conservative reading is the one the text supports: leave the can at home for coyotes in Vermont, or ring the Department on 802-828-1000 and get it in writing for your situation. Both provisions took their current form in Act 165 of 2022, which is recent enough that the scoping may simply not have been considered.²²²³

What firearms are allowed or restricted for coyote hunting in Vermont?

A gun fired at arm’s length, a bow, or a crossbow — and there is no caliber restriction on a coyote anywhere in Vermont law.

The general implements rule, once again, is written for game:

Unless otherwise provided by statute, a person shall not take game except with: (1) a gun fired at arm’s length; (2) a bow and arrow; or (3) a crossbow as authorized by the rules of the Board.¹⁴

For coyotes, the binding version is the Board’s furbearer rule, which restates it for dog hunters:

A person shall not take a coyote into their possession except by killing the coyote by legal means or methods. Legal means includes utilizing a muzzleloader or gun fired at arm’s length; or bow and arrow, or crossbow.²⁵

Two absolute prohibitions apply to all hunting, and both are written against wild animals rather than game, so both reach a coyote:

A person engaged in hunting for wild animals shall not use, carry, or have in the person’s possession: (1) a machine gun of any kind or description; or (2) an autoloading rifle with a magazine capacity of over six cartridges, except a .22 caliber rifle using rim fire cartridges.²⁶

It shall be unlawful for any person to take or attempt to take wild animals while a person is in an aircraft… by use of an UAV.²⁷

Are there any ammunition restrictions?

None for coyotes. Vermont writes no caliber floor, no caliber ceiling, no full-metal-jacket ban and no tracer ban into Title 10 or the Board rules.

The only ammunition rule in the furbearer rule is scoped to a different animal: “A person shooting raccoons during the raccoon hunting season shall use a 0.22 caliber rimfire firearm or a shotgun with #2 shot or smaller.”¹⁹ It names raccoon, so it stops at raccoon.

Archery tackle is the exception, and it is coyote-specific:

Taking Coyote by Bow and Arrow and Crossbow: No person shall take coyote with or without the aid of dogs, with a bow and arrow or crossbow if the arrow or bolt has an arrowhead that measures less than seven-eighths of an inch at its widest point or that has less than two sharp cutting edges.²⁸

Note “with or without the aid of dogs” — that phrase is what pulls the standard out of the dog-permit subsection and applies it to every archer in the state.

Can you hunt using a .22 LR or other rimfire cartridge?

Yes. No minimum caliber applies to coyotes in Vermont.

Rimfire also carries the one express exemption in the hunting rules: the six-round autoloader cap does not apply to “a .22 caliber rifle using rim fire cartridges.”²⁶ So a semi-automatic .22 may be hunted with any magazine, as far as Title 10 is concerned.

Title 13 then puts a second ceiling on it, and this is where people get caught. Vermont’s magazine statute excludes only “an attached tubular device designed to accept, and capable of operating only with, .22 caliber rimfire ammunition.”²⁹ A tube-fed .22 is outside the statute at any capacity. A detachable 25-round box magazine for a 10/22 is not — it is a large capacity ammunition feeding device like any other, and unlawful to possess unless it was lawfully possessed on or before 11 April 2018.

Is there a magazine capacity limit?

Yes — six, and it is the tightest hunting magazine cap in New England.

A person engaged in hunting for wild animals shall not use, carry, or have in the person’s possession… an autoloading rifle with a magazine capacity of over six cartridges, except a .22 caliber rifle using rim fire cartridges.²⁶

Three details worth having straight:

It is a possession offence, not a use offence. The statute says “use, carry, or have in the person’s possession.” A twenty-round magazine in your pack while you hunt with a six is the violation.

It is written against “wild animals,” so unlike the hours rule and the suppressor rule it reaches a coyote without argument.

It applies to autoloading rifles only. A bolt action, a pump or a lever gun is unaffected by it, whatever the magazine holds.

So the AR-15 question has a definite Vermont answer: legal rifle, legal caliber, but you hunt it on a five- or six-round magazine, and a spare twenty in the pack is the offence.

A second, lower ceiling sits outside the hunting law altogether. Vermont’s firearms statute makes it an offence to manufacture, possess, transfer, offer for sale, purchase, receive or import a magazine holding more than ten rounds for a long gun or fifteen for a handgun — with devices lawfully possessed on or before 11 April 2018 grandfathered, and narrow exclusions for tubular rimfire devices, lever and bolt action magazines, and curios.²⁹

Two different numbers, then. Ten is the law of the state; six is the law of the hunt. In the field, six is the one you are measured against.

Calls, bait & dogs in Vermont

Are electronic calls allowed for coyote hunting in Vermont?

Yes. Vermont’s electronic-call prohibition names three species and the coyote is not among them:

[It is unlawful to] Take waterfowl, wild turkeys, or moose with the aid of an electronic calling device.³⁰

The turkey rule repeats it for its own season; nothing extends it to furbearers.³¹

The Department goes further and effectively recommends calling: coyotes “can be called in to close range with a game call that imitates the distress squeal of a rabbit.”³²

Are decoys allowed for coyote hunting in Vermont?

Yes, apart from live ones. Vermont’s only decoy restriction is in the turkey rule, which bans live decoys during either turkey season.³¹ Nothing in Title 10 or the furbearer rule restricts a motion decoy for coyotes.

Is baiting allowed for coyote hunting in Vermont?

Yes for coyotes, and the prohibition is scoped tightly enough to be worth reading:

[It is unlawful to] Hunt or take deer, bear, turkeys or waterfowl with bait³⁰

Four species, and the coyote is not one of them. Vermont also separately prohibits feeding deer or bear, which is a different offence and one you can commit accidentally with a coyote bait pile in deer country.³⁰

The trapping side is stricter than the hunting side. If you are setting traps rather than hunting over the bait, the furbearer rule applies: bait means “any animal, vegetable, fruit, mineral matter, or any other substance capable of luring or attracting coyotes or any other wildlife,” and “all meat-based bait shall be covered at the time that a trap is set.”³³

Can you use dogs to hunt coyotes in Vermont?

Yes — but this is the most heavily regulated coyote-with-dogs regime in the country, and you need a permit that only a hundred people a year get.

Vermont banned the practice outright on 1 July 2022 under Act 165 of 2022, and it stayed banned until the Fish and Wildlife Board adopted a rule in December 2023 that took effect on 1 January 2024.³⁴²

What the rule requires:

Two provisions catch people out:

An unregistered dog in the truck is an offence. Not just an unregistered dog hunting — possession: “No person shall have an Unregistered Dog in their possession (including in a vehicle) while hunting, pursuing, or taking a coyote.”³⁵

You cannot be paid for it, or trade it. “A person shall not advertise, barter, exchange goods or services, or otherwise sell the use of a dog(s) for the purpose of taking coyote with the aid of dogs.”³⁶ A resident applying for a permit in order to let a non-resident dog owner hunt is separately a violation.³⁶

Everyone in the party needs covering. A helper handling, transporting or intercepting dogs is a “Sub-permittee” and must hold a permit of their own or be under the direct supervision of the permit holder.²

Check the application deadline before you plan a season around this. The Department sets it by year and the window is short.

Property, access & methods in Vermont

Can you hunt coyotes from a motorized vehicle in Vermont?

No, and Vermont’s highway rules are stricter than most.

A person shall not take or attempt to take a wild animal by shooting from a motor vehicle, motorboat, airplane, snowmobile, or other motor-propelled craft or any vehicle drawn by a motor-propelled vehicle.³⁷

Three further restrictions in the same section:

Loaded long guns in vehicles are prohibited within a public highway right-of-way, including a magazine or clip in the rifle, and a crossbow must be uncocked.³⁷

Twenty-five feet from the road. You may not take a wild animal by shooting “while on or within 25 feet of the traveled portion of a public highway,” except a Class 4 town highway, where the restriction narrows to the traveled portion itself.³⁷

Never across a road. Shooting over or across the traveled portion of a public highway is prohibited outright, with a narrow exception for pre-2014 sport shooting ranges.³⁷ The digest attaches a fine of up to $1,000.³⁸

A permit exists for hunters with paraplegia or a certified permanent severe physical disability, allowing take from a stationary vehicle no closer than ten feet to the traveled way.³⁷

Is it legal to shoot coyotes on private property in Vermont?

Yes with permission, and the landowner’s own rights are broader still.

Vermont’s damage provision switches the season rules off entirely for a landowner protecting property:

The provisions of law or rules of the Board relating to the taking of rabbits or fur-bearing animals shall not apply to: (A) an owner, the owner’s employee, tenant, or caretaker of property protecting the property from damage by rabbits or fur-bearing animals.³⁹

That reaches coyotes, because a coyote is a fur-bearing animal. A person doing the same work for compensation must hold a valid trapping license if they set a trap.³⁹

Two limits stay in place regardless of who owns the ground:

The safety zone. Within 500 feet of an occupied dwelling or associated building, a landowner may post a “safety zone, shooting prohibited” boundary, and no one may discharge a firearm or take a wild animal inside it without advance permission.⁴⁰

Trespass is trespass. “It is illegal to park or drive on another person’s land without permission of the landowner. You must immediately leave the property when the landowner requests it, whether the property is posted or not.”⁴¹

Can you hunt coyotes on public land in Vermont?

Yes. Vermont’s Wildlife Management Areas are managed for “hunting, trapping and wildlife viewing and photography,” and the state’s WMAs, state forests and the Green Mountain National Forest are all open to coyote hunting under the same statewide rules.⁴²

Two WMA-specific points: permanent tree stands and ground blinds are prohibited on WMAs, with temporary stands allowed without written permission only in stated windows;⁴³ and any commercial activity — including guiding for a fee — needs Department authorization.⁴²

Is it legal to trap or snare coyotes in Vermont?

Trapping yes, in season, on a trapping license. Snaring no — and the snare ban is absolute.

A person shall not take an animal by snaring nor shall he or she possess a snare with intent to use the same.⁴⁴

The furbearer rule repeats it for trappers and adds toothed footholds: “A person shall not use toothed foothold traps or snares when trapping under this section.”⁴⁵

The coyote trapping season is the fourth Saturday in October to 31 December, with no limit.⁶ Vermont’s trapping rules were rewritten wholesale for 2024 under Act 159 of 2022 and are now among the most prescriptive in the country — daily trap checks on land sets, base-plate and swivel requirements, a 6¼-inch maximum jaw spread, padded or offset or laminated jaws, 50-foot setbacks from trails and highways, 100-foot setbacks from parks, playgrounds and schools, and mandatory annual reporting whether or not you trapped.⁴⁵⁴⁶

One reporting duty is worth pulling out of that list, because a coyote set is the one most likely to trigger it. Any domestic dog or cat caught must be reported to a warden within 24 hours of discovery.³⁵ Coyote sets are placed where dogs run, and the clock starts when you find the animal rather than when it was caught — so the report is due on the same check that finds it.

Trapper education is required for a first trapping license, or a previous license from any state or province.⁴⁷ Resident trapping license: $23.00. Non-resident: $305.00.⁹

Is it legal to poison coyotes in Vermont?

No, twice over.

The furbearer rule bans it as a method: “A person shall not take a fur-bearing animal by use of any explosives or, chemical or poisonous mixture,” excepting only a carbon dioxide chamber used to AVMA guidance.⁴⁸

And Vermont banned it in the statute that created the state’s own control program, in a single unusually blunt sentence:

The Commissioner shall develop a Coyote Control Program for implementation in those areas of the State where he or she has determined that predation by coyotes is posing a threat to domesticated animals, deer, and other wildlife. In no event shall the Program use poison.⁴⁹

Taking a fur-bearing animal from a den by cutting, digging or smoking is separately prohibited.⁴⁸

Are there protected areas or additional local restrictions in Vermont?

Yes — and the ones to check are municipal. Vermont towns regulate firearm discharge locally, and those ordinances are not collected anywhere by the state. Check with the town clerk before hunting close to a village.

Statewide, the constraints that will actually reach you are the 500-foot safety zone,⁴⁰ the 25-foot highway rule,³⁷ and on WMAs the stand and commercial-activity rules.⁴²

Traveling on foot within the right-of-way of an interstate highway, or crossing its boundary fences, is prohibited.⁵⁰

After the shot in Vermont

Are there regulations for possessing or transporting dead coyotes or pelts across state lines?

Coyote pelts need no tag and may be held indefinitely.

The fur or skins of fur-bearing animals may be possessed at any time unless otherwise provided by this part, rules of the Board, or orders of the Commissioner.⁵¹

Vermont’s pelt-tagging regime covers bobcat, otter and fisher and not coyote, and it is the tagged species that may not leave the state untagged.⁵²

Transport must be in your presence: “Transportation of fish or game is only permitted in the presence of the person who took that fish or game.”⁵³

Do not bring in a live one. Importing or possessing any live wild animal without the Commissioner’s authorization is prohibited, with treble damages available against the violator.⁵⁴

Can you sell coyote pelts, and do you need a fur handler’s license?

You can sell your own pelts. Buying them for resale needs a license.

Anyone dealing in pelts must have a valid Fur Buyer’s License, available from the department’s main office in Montpelier. The licenses are valid for a year, beginning on July 1 and ending June 30 the following year.⁵⁵

Licensed fur buyers must keep records of every purchase and sale of furs and skins and file them with the Department by 30 July following the license year.⁵⁵

And here is the Vermont wrinkle nobody expects. Vermont’s retrieval-and-use law requires most animals to be used — but it carves the coyote out of the use requirement while keeping it inside the retrieval one. See the next answer but one.

Is there a coyote bounty program in Vermont?

No, and the Department has published its position on the idea:

Expensive extermination and bounty programs were common in the past and were responsible, along with habitat loss, for the elimination of some natural predators throughout the United States. These techniques have no place in modern wildlife management, which stresses the importance of all species.³²

What Vermont has instead is § 4833’s Coyote Control Program, which is a targeted departmental response to predation in defined areas rather than a payment to hunters — and which may not use poison.⁴⁹

Are coyote contests legal in Vermont, or can I hunt in Vermont for an out-of-state contest?

No. Vermont banned coyote hunting competitions with effect from 1 January 2019, and the ban catches participants as well as organizers.

(a) As used in this section, “coyote-hunting competition” means a contest in which people compete in the capturing or taking of coyotes for a prize.

(b) A person shall not hold or conduct a coyote-hunting competition in the State.

(c) A person shall not participate in a coyote-hunting competition in the State.⁵⁶

The penalties are real: $400 to $1,000 for a first offence and $2,000 to $4,000 for a second or any offence committed under license suspension.⁵⁶ The digest adds ten points on your license for a first offence and twenty for a second.⁵⁷

On the out-of-state question, § 4716 is scoped to competitions “in the State.” Vermont was the second state in the country to pass one of these, after New Mexico, and it landed a decade before Maryland and Nevada did the same thing.

Coyotes in Vermont

Are there coyotes in Vermont? How many, and where?

Statewide, and the population is stable.

The population of Eastern coyotes in Vermont fluctuates between 4,500 and 8,000 with fewer animals in the population during winter.³²

They are recent arrivals: “The first coyote documented in Vermont was shot in 1948.”³² They now occupy every habitat in the state including suburban areas, with the highest densities in agricultural country — the Champlain Valley especially, where prey is abundant and varied.³²

Family groups hold about fifteen square miles, focusing most activity on a four-to-eight-square-mile core, and they defend it — which is what caps how many coyotes Vermont can hold.³²

These are big animals. The eastern coyote picked up size by hybridizing with Great Lakes and eastern wolves on its way east; in Maine, 22% of over a hundred sampled coyotes carried eastern wolf DNA.³² The Department is explicit that “coydog” is no longer a term biologists use.³²

One thing worth knowing before you plan a control campaign: Vermont’s own guidance says coyotes are density-dependent breeders, so “coyote control efforts are therefore often unsuccessful because they tend to stimulate reproduction.”³²

Are Vermont coyotes dangerous to people or pets?

To people, very rarely. The Department’s framing is that Vermont’s coyotes stay wary precisely because they are hunted: “Most coyotes in Vermont are wild and wary of people because of hunting and trapping.”³²

To pets and small livestock the risk is real, and it is highest in the agricultural valleys where coyote density is highest. An eastern coyote is large enough that an unattended small dog is genuinely at risk.

Rabies, distemper, canine hepatitis, sarcoptic mange and heartworm all occur in the Vermont population.³²

When is coyote mating season in Vermont, and when do pups arrive?

Breeding is February, and the Department ties it to the sound you will hear: “The howl of coyotes can usually be heard on winter nights, especially during mating season in February.”³²

Gestation runs about nine weeks and pups are born in late April or early May, in an average litter of six.³² Pups leave the den on short trips at about two months and travel with the parents through autumn and sometimes into early winter.³²

That puts the breeding peak in the middle of the 15 December – 31 March dog season, and squarely inside the best calling weeks of the year.

When are coyotes most active in Vermont?

Dawn and dusk, with heavy nocturnal movement — “their yapping howls sometimes can be heard at dawn or dusk.”³²

The Vermont problem is that the most active hours are the ones you cannot light. The night is legally open and the equipment is not, so a Vermont night hunter is working moonlight, snow and open ground rather than a scanner and a lamp. February full moons over snow-covered hayfield in the Champlain Valley are the classic Vermont set-up for a reason.

For the full breakdown of season, weather and moon phase, see when to hunt coyotes.

These answers get re-checked before they go stale. The verification date at the top of the page is the record of when that last happened, not decoration.

Anything else worth noting about coyote hunting in Vermont

Vermont is an open state with two closed doors, and both of them are equipment rather than season.

You must retrieve the coyote, but you need not use it — and that carve-out is coyote-specific. Vermont’s retrieval law makes it an offence to knowingly kill a “covered wild animal” and knowingly fail to make a reasonable effort to retrieve it, and covered wild animals include every furbearer.⁵⁸⁵⁹ Ordinarily a retrieved animal must then be processed as food, for fur, hide or feathers, or used for taxidermy.⁶⁰ The exception:

The requirements of subsection (a) of this section shall not apply… (2) to coyote taken by a lawful means other than trapping provided that the coyote is retrieved and disposed of pursuant to the requirements of this subchapter.⁶⁰

So: shoot a coyote and you must go and get it, but you need not skin it. Trap one and the exception does not apply — a trapped coyote must be processed.

And however you dispose of it, § 4925 applies: not along or upon a public right-of-way or highway, not on posted private property without permission, and not where prohibited by state or municipal law.⁶¹ The digest states the same rule in plainer words.⁶²

The other four things to get right:

No light of any kind at a coyote. No spotlight, no laser sight, no IR illuminator. This is the rule most likely to catch a hunter arriving from a permissive state.

Six rounds in an autoloader, and it is a possession offence.

No snares, ever — not set, not carried with intent to use.

No contests, as an organizer or as a competitor.

Two answers on this page are honest gaps rather than verdicts, and both are recorded as such rather than guessed: whether thermal is lawful, on which Vermont has published nothing; and whether the suppressor exception reaches a species that is not “game,” on which the statutes point one way and no agency has spoken. Both are worth a phone call to 802-828-1000 before you rely on them.

Is it legal to own a coyote as a pet in Vermont?

No. Possessing any live wild animal in Vermont requires authorization from the Commissioner:

A person shall not bring into, transport into, transport within, transport through, or possess in the State any live wild bird or animal of any kind… without authorization from the Commissioner or the Commissioner’s designee.⁵⁴

The Board maintains a list of “Unrestricted Wild Animals” that may be held without a permit; the coyote is not on it, and permits under the rule exist for propagation, exhibition, research and rehabilitation rather than for pets.⁶³ Unlawful possession carries treble damages for the State’s costs.⁵⁴

If you have found an orphaned pup, contact Vermont Fish & Wildlife on 802-828-1000 or a licensed wildlife rehabilitator rather than keeping it.

Know something we missed? Contact me and I’ll get it fixed.