Wandering on tangent, IME darker colored coyotes have coarser fur and light colored ones much finer and so softer hairs. I assume that is why light colored ones bring a higher price at fur sales.
A partner and I stalked and he shot a near white coyote southwest of Kamloops, BC. when it was prime in early winter. It was a female, cream white all over with baby fine hair so thick it would not lay down. The thick underfur was even finer and had a trace of pink color. The back was the same white but the tiniest tip of a few guard hairs were black, which made the pelt look like it had a sparse sprinkling of fine black pepper down the center of the back.
I’ve never handled nor seen another coyote fur like it. In Alberta I saw a near white one along the highway but couldn’t shoot it.
I’ve always wondered what the pelt would have brought at auction. It was about the peak of coyote prices decades ago. A collector who wanted to tan or mount it saw it before it was skinned, and my hunting partner took something like $200 (175?) for the unskinned carcass. His wife demanded a steak dinner from the proceeds, with our wives at the best steakhouse in Kamloops. Over the meal we decided that maybe the cost of hunting coyotes wiped out any profit.
