Coyotes
They continue to get a bit too acclimated to civilization. Glenn notes a kid in California was attacked by a coyote. Says Glenn:
And the advice from experts in the article is stupid: “Authorities dissuade people from hunting renegade coyotes themselves and suggest that they instead make noise or throw objects to scare them from neighborhoods.”
I dunno, if you’re making the noise with one of these, that’s fine advice.
Though the one I shot behind my house met his demise via Ruger 10/22. He wasn’t too far away and a 40 grain to the brain won’t spook your neighbors.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Sounds like a job for Les Johnson.
May 12th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Using a bow or crossbow to hunt coyotes is legal even in CA urban areas, and at night with the permission of the land owner.
Just buy a $38 hunting license.
May 12th, 2008 at 11:40 am
And the same webpage that tells you how to lawfully hunt ‘yotes also runs the bunnyhugger’s paens about how the ‘yotes are just part of the biosphere, and have their place.
That’s the problem with hippies … they teach animals that humans ( themselves ) are food, and then we normal folks have to re-educate entire species the hard way.
May 12th, 2008 at 11:54 am
I have been discussing them at The Sentinel as well and am hoping to make a comprehensive list of Virginia Counties offering bounties.
If someone can get some cash for doing a public service, they might as well take it.
May 12th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
They’re considered “varmints” in these parts – no license required.
May 12th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Well…that’s because they are part of the biosphere. They didn’t land from space ships yesterday. Because in our infinite wisdom we’ve removed their major competitors and predators, they’re running rampant and as such we have to try to check their populations.
May 12th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
“Because in our infinite wisdom we’ve removed their major competitors and predators…”
I don’t think it’s “infinite wisdom” to prefer that your children and live stock not be eaten by black bear, wolves, and cougars. I believe evolutionary biologists call it survival of the fittest. Coyotes are running rampant because suburbs are far more hospitable to them than rural areas and suburb (and city) dwellers tend not be able to stomach the hunting and trapping required to keep them in check. But we haven’t removed their biggest competitor. We ARE their biggest competitor. We didn’t land from space ships yesterday either, you know.
May 12th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Holy strawman, Batman! Cause yeah, that’s what I was saying…yawn…and we all know wolves eat peoples children all the time. The reality is we haven’t really given much thought to where and how we sprawl, but then people bitch and moan when they buy into suburban sprawl and are confronted by the animals that used to live there too. I certainly don’t have a problem with plinking an aggressive animal that’s targeting a child or a domestic animal, I just think it funny that people are surprised that coyotes are running rampant because, as you pointed out, the only predator they have left is us.
May 12th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
And for the record I don’t think our host is bitching, he’s lighting a flame thrower in the darkness. I’m referring in the larger sense to people that live in formerly wild areas who get all freaked out when there are spiders and ants and groundhogs and yotes and whitetail that have the temerity to show up in their subdivision.
You don’t have to be a patchouli wearing birkenstock nerd to understand why it might make sense to coexist rather than destroy sometimes.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
If only because getting all the corpses out of the way can be time-consuming.
Coyotes aren’t, on their own, bad. Animals don’t have the capacity to be automatically bad. They’re great for getting rid of a lot of smaller critters, and nature does need predators like them, or you end up with rats and gophers everywhere.
The problem is animals that associate humans with food, rather than associating them with an animal that’d kick their tail.
May 12th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
they are smart though, a couple of weeks ago we were driving across the installation and watched a coyote look both ways, let traffic in both directions go by, then crossed the road. me and the guy i work with were doing double takes, looking at each other and back at where we’d seen the critter, then asking did we just see what we thought we just saw (seed?)
May 12th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Too bad they are not very tasty.
May 12th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Look at dailycoyote.blogspot.com. It’s about a pet coyote who considers himself junior to the human’s kitty-kat.
A real sweety, he seems to be. Some human will prolly kill him.
Some coyote in Kali, who really does need killin, prolly won’t be killed, and will eat some stupid human’s stupid kid.
This is one of the many reasons why I drink.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:24 am
This is thanks to the same dipshits who feed the ponies down at Assateague State Park here. They’ve survived just fine since that Spanish galleon crashed in the 1600s….but they need your marshmellows and Wonder Bread. Fuckin idiots. Every year ponies have to be destroyed because they become too acclimated to humans.
No accident that the coyote problem is in Cali–do gooders thinking coyotes need or even benefit from humans feeding them.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:48 am
I’m with Sebastian-PGP. I don’t mind the critters in my front yard — not just coyotes, but deer, foxes, racoons, etc. too. That’s why I live in a “village in a forest”. They’re not after pets here. We had an exploding rabbit population.
I do worry about rabies. When they start coming up peoples’ decks maybe there’s something wrong with them.
BTW: My village may be urban sprawl but it’s 158 years old urban sprawl, designed by the same guy who designed Central Park in New York. It happened to be in the route of Burlington-Northern Santa Fe so post-Civil War Chicagoans could get to their summer homes in about 20 minutes.
May 13th, 2008 at 3:14 am
We have coyotes in the neighborhood, heard them yipping nearby the other night. However, we don’t tend to get many critters (furry type) in our yard. Might have something to do with the Mastiff poop.
OTOH, we have had bark scorpions in the yard which are automatically targeted for death.
May 13th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Sebastian- PGP
I know the high poulation of ponies at Assateague. Horses will steal as much food as possible. BUt I have not heard of the ponies getting destroyed and I visit Assategue MD side a lot. Could you please validate that statement?
I you mean that the ponies colic and have to be put down, I can understand. But these ponies are not vacinated for anything including rabies according to park officials. They have no predators other than cars and speeds are so slow that is rare. Generally the only thing that stops their numbers is starvation in the winter time.
May 15th, 2008 at 3:05 am
Associating humans with food? Hey, guys, I live in Southern Florida, and there are still people here who, against all common-sense warnings and nasty laws, feed ‘gators!
Wild predator mammals are scary enough, but sometimes they can have a fellow feeling for humans, as does my kitty.
Reptiles? Yikes! They’ll bite yer head off and eat you, in cold blood!