It’s not a bounty, but coyotes now have a kind of price on their heads in Georgia.

A new "Georgia Coyote Challenge" beginning next month offers entrants a chance to be in a monthly drawing for a lifetime trapping, hunting or fishing license.

A 14-year-old south Georgia group headquartered in Hoboken, The Georgia Hunting and Fishing Federation, is the event’s sponsor.

Hunters or trappers can enter up to five coyote carcasses a month into the challenge, which runs from the beginning of March through the end of August, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife Resources Division announced Friday.

"Currently, scientific research suggests that removal of coyotes during the spring and summer is the most advantageous time to reduce the impact of predation on native wildlife," said Georgia DNR Commissioner Mark Williams in a press release.

There’s no reliable estimate for how many coyotes roam Georgia. The reclusive animal can live perfectly well and practically invisibly in cities such as Athens as well as in farmland and forested areas, explained John Bowers, chief of the DNR’s Game Management Section. They are generalists, he said — they’ll make a meal out of what they can find, which might be a stray cat, scraps from behind a fast-food restaurant, or turkey eggs in the woods,

The state’s game managers hope the Georgia Coyote Challenge will get more hunters out during a time of year when hunting activity ebbs to its yearly low.

Deer hunters take about 50,000 coyotes a year, according to the DNR’s after-season surveys, and turkey hunters and others take thousands more without an apparent effect on coyote populations.

But hunters are mainly out during cold weather, not the warmer months when young animals are most abundant and most vulnerable to coyotes.

Because coyotes are not native to Georgia, they can be hunted or trapped at any time of year under state hunting rules.

Wolves once hunted in Georgia, but not coyotes. In recent decades, however, coyotes have been migrating southward and eastward into Georgia and other states which once had wolves as a top predator.

Some people also deliberately introduced western coyotes into the state in the 1930s and 1940s, Bowers said.

Coyotes are now found in every one of Georgia’s 159 counties, he said.

Coyotes sometimes prey on small pets, especially cats allowed to go outdoors, as well as backyard poultry or small livestock. They are also often blamed for attacks on larger livestock that were really perpetrated by dogs.

But coyotes shy away from contact with people and pose little threat to humans, according to state wildlife biologists.

Some studies have shown coyote predation of fawns helps keep deer populations in check, but not everyone agrees about how large the state’s deer populations should be.

A new coyote-wolf-dog hybrid called a "coywolf," has been slowly spreading south and west from the U.S. Northeast and Canada, less shy and perhaps more dangerous than coyotes. One DNA analysis showed the new animal’s DNA to be about 60 percent coyote, 30 percent wolf and 10 percent large dog breeds.

But there’s been no DNA evidence of coywolves in Georgia, Bowers said.

Hunters and trappers who want to enter the coyote challenge can take carcasses to game management offices across the state, where basic information such as location, sex and weight will be recorded. The two nearest Athens are in Gainesville and Social Circle.

The animals have to be submitted during the month in which they were killed. Road-kills, spoiled carcasses and live coyotes are not eligible.

For information, visit the web page www.georgiawildlife.com/hunting/resources/CoyoteChallenge.

Follow reporter Lee Shearer at www.facebook.com/LeeShearerABH or https://twitter.com/LeeShearer