Coyotes eat almost anything they can catch, find, or scavenge. Their core diet is small mammals — mice, voles, rabbits, ground squirrels, and gophers — supplemented by deer (especially fawns and winter carrion), birds, snakes, insects, and a surprising amount of fruit. In cities and suburbs they add garbage, compost, fallen birdseed, pet food left outdoors, and occasionally unattended small pets. This dietary flexibility, more than any other trait, explains why the coyote (Canis latrans) now thrives from remote deserts to downtown Chicago while most other large predators have retreated.
Biologists describe coyotes as opportunistic omnivores, and stomach-content and scat studies across North America back that up: researchers have documented well over a hundred different food items in coyote diets, with the exact mix shifting by region, season, and what happens to be abundant that year. A coyote in rural Kansas, a coyote in the Adirondacks, and a coyote in Los Angeles can eat three very different menus and all do perfectly well. Below is a closer look at what actually makes up the coyote diet, including the part that matters most to readers of this site — how much deer they really eat.
The Core of the Coyote Diet: Small Mammals
Across most studies, small and mid-sized mammals make up the bulk of what coyotes eat — commonly somewhere around half to three-quarters of the diet by volume, depending on region and season. Voles, deer mice, cotton rats, pocket gophers, and ground squirrels are staples because they are everywhere and easy to catch. Rabbits and hares are the classic coyote prey: cottontails in the East and Midwest, jackrabbits in the West, and snowshoe hares in the North can each anchor local coyote diets, and coyote numbers in some regions even rise and fall loosely with rabbit populations.
A hunting coyote works alone for prey this size, using a fox-like “mousing pounce” — ears forward, a stiff-legged leap, and a pin with the front paws. One coyote can catch dozens of rodents in a night of good hunting, which is why many farmers and ranchers quietly appreciate the species even while keeping a close eye on it around livestock.
The rodent-and-rabbit foundation also explains the coyote’s daily rhythm and range. A territory-holding pair patrols a home range of roughly two to ten square miles in most habitats — smaller in food-rich suburbs, larger in desert country — and structures its nights around the spots that reliably produce: hayfield edges at dusk, brushy fence lines, pond margins, and, in town, the unmowed margins of parks and retention basins. When rodent populations boom, coyote litters run larger the following spring; when drought or hard winters knock prey down, litters shrink and young disperse farther. Few predators are so tightly and transparently coupled to the small-mammal economy beneath them, and few benefit so directly when suburbia’s lawns and brush piles push rodent numbers up.
Do Coyotes Eat Deer?
Yes — deer are a genuine and important part of coyote diets, in two very different ways. The first is fawns. In late spring and early summer, newborn white-tailed deer fawns spend their first weeks hiding in grass, and coyotes are among their most significant predators. Fawn-survival studies in the Southeast and Midwest have repeatedly identified coyotes as a leading cause of fawn mortality in some study areas, which is a major reason deer managers pay so much attention to them. Deer face a long list of predators beyond coyotes, which we cover in our full guide to what eats deer.
The second is carrion and winter predation. Coyotes readily scavenge road-killed and winter-killed deer, and a gut pile left by a hunter rarely lasts a night. Healthy adult deer are usually too large and too dangerous for a single 25-to-40-pound coyote, but in deep snow, or where larger eastern coyotes hunt in family groups, coyotes can and do kill adult deer — particularly animals that are old, sick, injured, or bogged down in drifts. Eastern coyotes, which carry some wolf ancestry, are noticeably better at this than their smaller western cousins, though they still hunt nothing like true wolf packs do (see how wolves hunt for that comparison).
Plants, Fruit, and Insects
People are often surprised to learn how much plant material coyotes eat. In late summer and fall, fruit can become a major food: wild berries, persimmons, apples, prickly pear cactus fruit, mesquite beans, and even watermelon from farm fields all show up heavily in seasonal scat studies. Grasshoppers, crickets, and beetles are eaten in quantity when they are abundant, and coyotes will dig out yellowjacket nests for the larvae. Grass appears regularly in scats too, likely aiding digestion much as it does for domestic dogs.
What Coyotes Eat Season by Season
| Season | Primary foods | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Spring | Rodents, rabbits, ground-nesting birds and eggs, newborn fawns | Pup-rearing season; adults hunt intensively and cache surplus food |
| Summer | Rodents, rabbits, insects, early fruit, fawns (early summer) | Insects and berries can dominate scats by mid-late summer |
| Fall | Fruit and mast, rodents, rabbits, carrion from hunting season | Persimmons, apples, and gut piles are heavily used |
| Winter | Rabbits, rodents under snow, deer carrion, weakened deer | The season when deer matter most, especially in the North |
What Urban and Suburban Coyotes Eat
Diet studies of city coyotes — including long-running research in Chicago and Los Angeles — show that even urban coyotes mostly eat natural foods: rodents, rabbits, fruit, and insects. But human-associated food is a meaningful slice, and it is the slice that causes nearly all conflict. Garbage, compost piles, food waste, pet food left on porches, birdseed (which attracts the rodents coyotes hunt), and fallen backyard fruit all draw coyotes into yards. Outdoor cats and very small dogs are occasionally taken as well; it is uncommon in the context of the overall diet, but it is devastating when it happens, and it is the main reason wildlife agencies urge people never to feed coyotes or leave attractants out.
How Coyotes Hunt and Cache Food
Coyotes hunt mostly alone or in pairs, using superb hearing and smell to locate rodents even under snow. Mated pairs and family groups will cooperate on larger prey, with one animal flushing while another cuts off the escape route, but the choreographed, endurance-driven pack hunts of wolves are not part of the coyote playbook. When food is abundant, coyotes cache the surplus — burying chunks of a carcass in shallow holes and returning to them days later. A coyote’s day typically revolves around dawn and dusk hunting bouts, though animals living near people often shift to fully nocturnal schedules to avoid us.
What Coyotes Eat Compared With Wolves and Foxes
The coyote sits neatly between its two closest neighbors on the food-size ladder. Wolves are big-game specialists that live primarily on deer, elk, and moose, while foxes concentrate on mice, voles, and rabbits — a red fox rarely tackles anything larger than a hare, and as we explain in do foxes eat deer, their deer-eating is mostly limited to carrion. Coyotes cover both ends: rodent-catcher by night, fawn predator in June, and carcass-cleaner in January. Where wolves returned to Yellowstone, they suppressed coyote numbers sharply; where wolves are absent, which is most of the continent, the coyote is effectively the top canid, a role that shapes how boldly it hunts (see what eats wolves for how these predator hierarchies stack up).
Do Coyotes Eat Livestock?
Yes, though far less than reputation suggests. Coyotes are the leading predator of sheep and lambs in the United States and take goats, calves, and free-ranging poultry as well, which keeps them squarely in the sights of ranchers — but predation is wildly uneven, usually the work of particular individuals or breeding pairs provisioning pups rather than a habit of the whole population. Many coyotes live their entire lives beside livestock without touching it, subsisting on the rodents the pastures produce. That is why modern guidance leans on targeted prevention — night penning, electrified fencing, guardian dogs, llamas, and donkeys, and prompt carcass removal so coyotes never learn to associate the ranch with easy meals — over blanket removal, which decades of research show simply opens territory for new, often bolder coyotes. Producers with chronic losses should work with their state wildlife agency or USDA Wildlife Services, which can identify the offending animals rather than punishing the neighborhood’s rodent patrol.
A Diet Built for Conquest
Step back and the coyote’s menu explains the coyote’s century. In 1900, coyotes were a western plains animal; today they occupy every U.S. state but Hawaii, every Canadian province, and city centers from Chicago to New York, and the diet did the heavy lifting. An animal that can live on voles in a hayfield, persimmons in a fencerow, gut piles in November, fawns in June, and discarded pizza behind a strip mall is an animal that no landscape change can starve. Wolves, which need large prey and large territories, were extirpated from most of the continent; the coyote, needing only calories in any form, inherited it. Every food listed in this article is a small piece of that answer — and a reminder that the surest way to manage coyotes around your own home is to manage what they can eat there.
Do coyotes eat cats and small dogs?
Occasionally, yes. Studies of urban coyote diets generally find cat remains in a small percentage of scats or stomachs, so it is not the norm, but it absolutely happens — most often with free-roaming cats at night and small dogs left unattended in yards, especially during the winter breeding season and spring pup-rearing months. Keeping cats indoors and supervising small dogs after dark removes nearly all of the risk.
Do coyotes eat deer regularly?
Seasonally, yes. Fawns are a significant early-summer food in much of the country, and deer carrion is a winter staple, particularly in the North and East. Predation on healthy adult deer is much less common and is mostly limited to larger eastern coyotes working in family groups or taking advantage of deep snow.
How much does a coyote eat per day?
A wild coyote needs very roughly one to two pounds of food per day, though intake is feast-or-famine: a coyote may gorge on a deer carcass one night and get by on mice and berries for the next several. Adults raising pups in late spring must catch far more than usual, which is when they hunt most boldly.
What should I do if coyotes are eating from my yard?
Remove the attractant — secure garbage, feed pets indoors, clean up fallen fruit and birdseed, and never intentionally feed a coyote. A coyote that lingers should be hazed: make yourself big, shout, and wave your arms until it leaves. If a coyote is aggressive or appears sick, contact your state wildlife agency rather than handling the situation yourself.
