The White Vinegar Solution That Keeps Coyotes Away From Your Yard

Communities across North America are dealing with packs of coyotes living, quite literally, in their backyards. New neighborhoods pop up where they are already making their dens, and they sometimes stay in the area, learning to adapt to life among humans. They're also entering urban areas more frequently, looking for readily available food in trash bins and pet food bowls. When hunting, they catch small prey like squirrels and chipmunks — which may or may not be a bad thing depending on how pesky they are around your home. Still, they can pose a threat to some pets and, on occasion, to small children, especially during mating season when they display more aggressive behavior. 

Naturally, these hazards make their coexistence with people and the pets we love much more of a concern. Using white vinegar to keep them at bay is one solution local authorities and pest management experts recommend for dealing with the problem of coyotes entering residential yards. Since coyotes have sensitive olfactory receptors that help them hunt their prey and detect threats, strong scents can either attract or be off-putting. Standard white vinegar is repelling to the coyote's nose due to the strong odor it emits, and it can also help mask the scent they leave behind when they mark their territory. It's also straightforward to use for this purpose.

One way you can use vinegar as a coyote repellent is to mix equal parts of vinegar and water and spray it in areas where you've seen coyotes entering your lawn or where they might seek food, like around trashcans. However, knowing what vinegar can do to your grass and other plants is essential since it's also an eco-friendly weed killer. Spraying it on cement surfaces or fencing around your property can be a safer bet, and you'll have to remember to refresh the scent after rain showers to keep it pungent.

Another alternative is to put vinegar in small jars, buckets, or bowls and place them around the perimeter of your yard. You can also soak rags with vinegar and leave them where coyotes will run across them. Again, there's a chance vinegar will kill small areas of vegetation with spillage, so keep that in mind.

All these methods of using vinegar to thwart coyotes will require frequent replenishment. Buying large jugs of vinegar at your local warehouse store is an alternative to make it a more economical choice as a coyote repellent. As a side benefit, other critters like raccoons, skunks, and possums don't like the scent of vinegar either. So, if you regularly use vinegar to keep your house clean, you may already have just what you need to keep a bevy of problem-causing wildlife out of your yard.