Development and testing of seven new synthetic coyote attractants.

Available evidence indicates that effective coyote attractants are blends of volatile substances. Typically, attractants are a combination of biological substances such as fermented glandular materials, urines, and rotted meats. Although effective, these attractants have several distinct disadvantages. Among these is the possibility that they are unnecessarily complex and variable and, thus, difficult to replicate from one batch to the next. Although attractants containing a few reagent grade materials are available, the chemicals selected and their concentrations are not derived from actual attractants. For this reason, commercially available coyote attractants were analyzed with the intention of developing relatively simple synthetic alternatives. Purge and trap headspace analysis with gas chromatography/mass selective detection was employed to identify the volatile components of known conventional and synthetic attractants. All identified compounds were grouped according to chemical functionality, and ...