Counting Coyotes

Tricia Cook for Bold Visions Conservation

One fall day while living in the skinny oxygen of the southwest Colorado mountains, I was conversing with a longtime local and our conversation turned to coyotes. I don’t recall why we went there, but we did and more specifically, to the apparent absence thereof. He missed hearing the coyotes sing and it made him sad so many had been killed.

It turns out, he told me, another longtime local had taken it upon himself to rid the one town county of its coyote population. His kill count so far for the year was upwards of 70 coyotes, he had bragged to anyone who would listen. The coyote killer crowed of his hatred for coyotes, that he wanted to see them gone from the topography and that oh by the way, he had also been selling the pelts. (Hatred apparently not preventing him from financially benefiting from the dead coyotes.)

After the winter solstice, I walked down the road to a neighbor’s gathering. Once there I started up a conversation with another neighbor (here in this small hamlet all are neighbors, after all) and somehow our conversation turned to coyotes, how he wasn’t hearing them much anymore and that he missed their presence. I told him of the resident coyote killer and that he could now surely count on an increase in the number of marmots and various other rodents found in his woodpile during the fair months. And I already knew firsthand how much he hated marmots in his woodpile.

Simple Fact: Coyotes help control rodent populations. In a BIG way. Nature’s checks and balances.

Another Simple Fact: Killing coyotes disrupts their social structure and encourages breeding. In many cases, hunted coyote populations can actually increase.

Another neighbor and I were having a sit-a-spell in the too-dang-warm mid-winter sun. She lamented about not having heard the coyotes sing in a very long time and that she missed them terribly. I shared with her all I had learned about our local coyote killer and she became visibly distraught. Reality is a bitter pill.

A while back before my stint in Colorado, I lived for a time in far northwest Montana, snuggled in between the Cabinet Mountains and the Clark Fork River. I lived in an old log cabin plunked into stretch of breathtakingly gorgeous inland rainforest. Every day I watched myriad wildlife right outside the old creaking door, sometimes right there on the splintered porch. Like the time I awoke at 4am to a gangly moose calf tap-dancing on the porch’s weathered wood, ‘Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal…’ 

During my time in far northwest Montana, I watched –and sometimes this was face-to-face-awfully-close-for-comfort watching– black and grizzly bear, cougar and coyote, elk, moose and deer, fisher and pica. I listened to a particular wolf pack sing in the wee hours. It was heaven.

But I will tell you what, around those parts folks are really into killing things and that was hell.

I did a little substitute teaching at the all-ages schoolhouse the next town over, and I quickly grew weary of listening to kids talk about killing critters. Talk of shooting crows just to watch other crows land near the dead crows, and then shooting those crows too. During rifle season, talk of trying to give away an animal they had just shot because their freezer was already full. Talk of not being able to give away the meat because everybody’s freezers already seemed to be full. And yet folks just kept right on killing things. Late season tags, truthfully poaching, was big there, too.

At this point, folks were not trying to feed their families, they were bored and didn’t know what else to do. Here, hiking the phenomenally scenic trails and majestic mountains without a gun and without the sole purpose of killing something is unthinkable.

After my wolfish looking dog, a mostly white shepherd-husky mix, was nearly shot on three separate occasions for looking wolfish while hiking in USFS trails with me, I knew I needed to leave while we were both still breathing: just too much intent on killing.

And don’t even get me started on Whitehall Montana’s current coyote killing contest: cruel and unconscionable. Disgusting. Sick.

Legally and ethically taking an ungulate for meat –if you eat meat which, I do choose not to– and participating in the entire arduous process should be honored. It certainly bests the misery inflicted on factory farmed animals. But taking it upon yourself to wipe out an area’s population of coyotes just because you like to watch them die (the Colorado coyote killer actually said that) and want them gone? No!

Killing coyotes is not an act borne of duty or heroism, it is senseless and cruel and selfish. It is an act that neither benefits a balanced ecosystem nor the soul of any town for that matter. Coyotes play an important role in supporting healthy ecosystems and their haunting yodels accompany our dreams.

Last night I looked out into a darkness lit from a waxing moon. I looked out just in time to watch as a coyote darted off into a nearby snowdrift. This morning as I walked my dogs, I listened to coyotes yodel. I stopped and yodeled back. I watched as one coyote and then a second, moved off cautiously into the wild beyond. Sometimes they slowed and posed as shadows, other times as creatures ancient and mysterious.

 Stay safe! Live long! I called out to them, remaining in place and watching, until like ghosts, they vanished.

Howl Out Loud for Coyotes!

Let the following list of proprietors, businesses, and community members sponsoring Whitehall, Montana’s current coyote killing contest know that celebrating and promoting cruel and senseless killing does not belong – Coyotes Belong!

·       Murdoch's Ranch and Home Supply

         855-232-9104 | customerservice@murdochs.com

·       Ranch Land, Inc.

406-287-3849

·       C Kountz Fence Company

        406-287-5673

·      Shot Gun Construction

406-490-1834

·      Kristi and Keelan Wilson

Kristi’s Kiddie Korner Child Care, 406-490-0178

Antler Construction, 406-223-4332

·      Toni and Eddie DiDomenico

(Unable to locate and confirm public contact information)