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Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Jamie Kazlauskas and Jarred Walters' dog, Bodhi, was surrounded by coyotes on a recent hike.

Jamie Kazlauskas, 19, and her boyfriend, Jarred Walters, 20, were hiking on a Thursday afternoon in early October when they encountered unexpected company.

The couple's dog, an English mastiff and pit bull mix named Bodhi, had run ahead of them on the couple of hundred wooded acres in Blacksburg's Ellett Valley owned by Walters' family.

"We heard barking that wasn't his," Kazlauskas said. "There was growling and we heard the leaves rustling. We looked down and saw these coyotes surrounding him and they started to fight."

From what she could see, and based on her memory of the carcasses her father brought home from hunting, the three animals surrounding Bodhi were coyotes, Kazlauskas said.

"My boyfriend didn't have a gun, so he picked up a big stick and beat it against the trees to draw their attention away from the dog," Kazlauskas said. "They looked up at him and started barking. He yelled at me to climb up in this tree stand about 15 feet away. So I climbed up there and just sat so if they did come up there they couldn't hurt me."

Walters was finally able to scare the coyotes away, and they ran farther up the mountain, barking. Bodhi limped toward his owners with a gash in a back leg, as well as puncture wounds and claw marks all over his body. Walters carried him down the mountain to their truck and they took him to the Blacksburg Animal Clinic, where doctors stapled the wound in his leg and put him on an antibiotic, Kazlauskas said.

Coyotes have been in Montgomery County since the late 1970s, said Mike Fies, a research biologist with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. They're thought to have migrated from the Midwest and are increasing statewide in Virginia, he said.

Though coyotes prefer semiforested or open farm and pasture lands, those lands are being developed and more and more coyotes are showing up in urban areas statewide, as well as in Montgomery County.

"As the population expands and continues to expand, there's more potential interaction with humans," Fies said.

His department works with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services to reduce coyote predation in Virginia, though the federal department is mainly responsible for coyote removal and trapping, he said.

Chad Fox, district supervisor of USDA Wildlife Services in Christiansburg, estimates that his office receives between 200 and 300 calls a year from homeowners and farmers concerned about coyote predation.

For example, in fiscal year 2006, 242 sheep, 54 calves and 73 goats were verified killed by coyotes in Virginia, Fox wrote in an executive summary document on the status of the Virginia Cooperate Coyote Damage Control Program. The program was started in 1990 to prevent coyotes from attacking livestock and to remove them if they become a problem. Three hundred eighty-seven were removed from farms that received USDA assistance in 2006.

Though most attacks are on livestock, Fox said, pets are killed from time to time by coyotes.

His advice is to keep pets on a leash or in a pen, to keep outdoor cats inside and to keep cat or dog food bowls in places available only to pets.

Livestock attacks can be prevented by secure fencing and guard animals, such as llamas, he said. Attacks on humans are rare but can happen when coyotes are diseased or fearful in an urban area, he added.

Because coyotes are considered nuisance animals in Virginia, they may be hunted on any day of the year except Sunday. Seventeen counties in Virginia currently have bounties on the animals.

The Montgomery County Board of Supervisors considered a bounty in 2005, when several farmers complained about coyote predation, said County Administrator Clay Goodman. Supervisors contacted Fox for more information, and he discouraged a bounty.

"Preventive coyote removal is effective at certain times of the year based on biology and behavior of coyotes," Fox wrote in a memo to the board. "Bounty systems rarely if ever achieve this attention to detail."

Fies also discourages bounties.

"They don't work. They've been around for 150-plus years out West, and there's not a single documented case of a coyote bounty resulting in long-term reduction of coyote problems," he said. "It's basically a waste of taxpayer money, and it sends the wrong message to the public that they're doing something to reduce coyote numbers when they're actually not."

He added that it would be hard to reduce a coyote population because of the coyote's "density-dependent reproduction" cycle. Females may not breed one year but then decide to breed the next if the population is down.

Giles County is the only county in the New River Valley to have a bounty, which it adopted in 2000. Carcasses are cashed in for $25 each.

From July 1, 2006, to June 30, 2007, there were 109 coyotes turned in, said Rhonda Tickle of the Giles County administration office. Giles County deputies examine the carcasses brought in and send a form to the administration office for approval, said Chief Deputy Steve Vinson.

"I think the people who collect the bounty feel that it's successful because they're being paid," he said "However, the truth of the matter is any hunter or farmer who's out and sees one, and who has the means available, is going to take care of the coyote whether there's a bounty or not."

Franklin County has had a coyote bounty since July, said Faye Hicks with the Franklin County Animal Shelter.

Animal control officers tag the animals and the hunter earns $25.

"It has helped very little," Hicks said. "We maybe get one a month. My opinion is that it's [the coyote population] far out of control. The bounty's not even going to touch it in terms of bringing it under control."