Coyote alert

Wow, amazing that there haven't been any attacks yet. BTW Worcester is the second largest city in MA.

Worcester issues alert after surge in coyote sightings
WORCESTER, Mass. -- Officials in Worcester have issued a coyote alert after about two dozen sightings of the animals over the last six weeks.



http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/local/BO71085/

We have coyotes living all around our property. No big thing. I only hear them at night and sometimes see their eyes when hitting them with a spot light. Only a few times have we seen them during the day. One walked across my driveway about 15 feet from me. I think we both were surprized.

We used to have them all the time in SoCal. Again, never heard of any problems with them either. They like trash nights.

Coyotes have been a common sight here for as long as I can remember. It is not uncommon to see 2-3 on my way to work early in the mornings. I can walk within 30-40 feet of them sometimes and they don't bother me and I don't bother them...

To keep things in perspective...

Over 300 people have been killed by domestic dogs in the U.S. between 1979 and the late 1990s (Humane Society of the U.S., reported in Tracking and the Art of Seeing, Paul Rezendes, second edition, 1999, p. 194). This means that your family dog or your neighbor's dog is ten times more likely to kill you than a mountain lion and hundreds of time more likely than a coyote attacks.

I can understand that, if you live in a rural area, were I grew up all kinds of animals were common place. Worcester (btw pronounced Wuhster regular accent or Wuhstah regional accent) is a large city you usually see only two legged animals. Very unusual.

Los Angeles has had them, right in the middle of the city, forever, with no end in sight...

All things considered, I would rather face and deal with a four legged animal then a two legged animal...

The two legged animals??

Around here the only coyote's to worry about are the ones that are halfbred with dogs. Bigger, tougher, no fear of man.

"...The two legged animals..."


Nope, most of those tend to either drop their loads and turn back south in San Diego, or bypass L.A. for the central valley, and farther north. I am talking about the four legged critters, they roam he city ever night (and many days)...

Interesting. I didn't know that the could interbreed. That's a little scary.

I live about 5 minutes drive from FR 2N76 (Angeles National Forest). My most recent sighting was Tuesday night. I've been hiking and backpacking for a long time but have not heard of or experienced any problems with agressive behavior let alone an actual attack.

Unlike wolves, coyotes are actually fairly small and typically scrawny. They really don't want to mess with a full sized adult. Pets, however, "go missing" all of the time and coyotes are the usual suspects. Probably not good to let small children wander around alone after dark, but most folks wouldn't do that anyway.

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:aNa98mS16LsJ:www.sdcounty.ca.gov/awm/docs/coyoteattacks.pdf+coyote+attacks+california&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&client=firefox-a
http://www.varmintal.com/attac.htm

Two links to coyote attacks.

89 in California alone.

They do attack adults.

The Humane Society of the United States is a lobby group with
goals similar to PETA. They do not operate even 1 animal shelter
though they take in millions. They are not the same as your local
animal shelter though would like you to think so.

PETA euthenizes (is that spelled right) nearly every animal they 'rescue'.

I lived in Seattle in 2000 and a buddy of mine lived in the Queen Anne neighborhood, which is just north of downtown. He liked to go out on his porch at dawn (or, "the light gray part of the day," as we called it) and drink his coffee. One morning he watched a coyote trot right up the center of Queen Anne Blvd. His neighbor's yappy dog came out to bark at it, and the coyote killed it and took it along without breaking stride.

They're everywhere.

One got stuck in a Subway sandwich place in downtown Chicago last summer. They took him out to the suburbs to dine on the small children there. :-)

They're all around. They do eat a lot of rodents ... and similar small dogs (JUST KIDDING!!!).

Good info, thanks. One should note that the study was for the period 1978 - 2003, approximately a quarter century. Of those 89 attacks, only 18 were on adults (I include a 17 y.o. girl as an adult in that count) which is less than one per year in a large and populous state. Attacks on adults are still quite rare, particularly in the wild. Of the 89 incidents, only two adults were in the wild (Reds Meadow near Mammoth) and were bitten in a single attack. One attack in the wild in a quarter century isn't much.

Children are clearly a different matter.

+ 1 on the P&T episode...it brings out some truths that are truly disturbing.

The people to head up PETA think owning pets = slavery and liken pet shelters to Nazi concentration camps...truly sick people.

Here we go again .
ALERT !!! The big bad coyote's are out there . It's time to freak out . Watch out they will eat your kids . Something must be done . Why isn't the government doing something to protect us .
Please , give me a break !

I'm not sure if it's still the case around here but you used to be able to shoot them without limit and turn in the pelts to the government for $5 each.

Handyman,

I was waiting for that, I'm surprised it took so long for someone to say it.

I saw the article and thought it was typical media alarmism/hype. The thing is that people who are not familiar with wild animals read these kinds of things and automatically assume the worst.

Not to say that coyotes are not dangerous in the wrong situation, say to pets and small children, and I did think such a large amount of sightings in a large city was peculiar.


Blitz

In California, some years ago (60's?), they'd give you a box of ammunition per "x" number of pelts so you could go out and get a few more of 'em.

But remember, PETA says it's "not nice" to hunt or trap coyotes even if they are one of the most widely distributed animals in N America.

Coyotes are expanding their range all over the US. Where once rare, they now thrive.

I hope the next president takes it seriously, or we had all better learn Spanish.








oops, wrong coyotes.

Coyotes are very common here in SoCal, both at my ranch in the desert and right here at my house in suburban Orange County. They are very intelligent animals, and quickly become accustomed to humans. They like to eat trash and small pets. They are generally not a danger to humans, though I wouldn't let my kids play with them.

I used to like to see them trot across the pastures at the ranch early in the morning or in the evenings. They sounded pretty cool at night. They were never a problem to any of the horses or cows, though I didn't let my dogs run loose when they were around. Unfortunately, there's been so much construction nearby they've kind of moved on. Too bad. I liked the coyotes better than some of my human neighbors.

Kevin B.

And people wonder why the forests are in such bad shape...

There are way too many deer - far more than before westerners colonized the US. So many deer are tremendously destructive. At my weekend cabin we have a severe juniper overabundance vs. oaks and other trees due to deer. Junipers hog water, are fire problems, and inhibit other trees from growing.

The cause of all this is lack of predators. Killing off mountain lions in particular removed the primary control on deer population levels, though coyotes and such do their part too. Remove coyotes and mountain lions, and a few decades later the deer are seriously modifying the forests to the point of increasing fire hazards and removing tree populations other animals and birds need.

Related: there are many deer near my home and it is common to find a herd of eight in my front yard at night, and they often rest in the brush in the back yard at night. The neighbors won't hear of population control, even though I warn them we're going to have a dead Bambi in every back yard to explain to the kids when we have a bad dry year and too many deer... Re-introducing coyotes might not be a good idea but it's clear that not having them has negative effects (I've long since given up trying to grow shrubs in front of the house or putting out any of salad plates for the deer to eat).

Don't need to reintroduce coyotes. I read (but can't find the source now) that they are the only animal in North America to increase their territory once Europeans got here. Don't know how they will be at controlling the deer population, but the rabbit population will go down.

A coyote pulled a 3 year old by the sleeve of his jacket a few years ago in Whitehorse Yukon. No harm done thanks for the kid's mother being vigilant. Cougars are another matter. I don't leave my cats outside at night anymore

I'll get real worried when I start seeing deliveries from Acme Anvil Corp...

lol!

Dang, beat me to the ACME reference...

been a while since I've been out on coyote kong patrol. Always lots of fun to blow on a whistle, watch em come running in like it's their hood and all that, then smack them at 200 yards with a 55 grainer.

Yotes are a menace. They are impossible to control and interfere with proper conservation and wildlife management practices. At best you can hold them in check if you are diligent about it. They are slightly more desirable than cockroaches only because of their pelts.

As far as deer go, increase the number of hunters hunting them if you want to control their surplus population. In most states west of the Mississipi there aren't usually enough to go around, so they set bag limits and antler restrictions and so forth to keep the herds from dwindling. Out east here the hunting population isn't as intense so their regs are a lot more relaxed, if you can find property to hunt on that is. If I had me a place to hunt here in Florida worth a darn, I could possess up to 4 dead deer at any one time. The price is right, but I haven't found a public hunting area yet to try out.

Getting to be like that in a lot of places these days.

One of the problems in the Northeast is that the deer live in residential neighborhoods, and there are restrictive rules on hunting them. I've been told that I can kill one in our area, but only if I use a bow shot within and at an animal on our property. I understand one neighbor did so a year ago. So, we have lots of them that come into our yards and reproduce unchecked by predators.

As a child I cannot recall seeing many deer in the area. I grew up in the next town, with acres and acres of woods near my parents house. Now, they are everywhere. This is within 35 miles of Manhattan.

We also have coyotes, which a few centuries ago did not live so far east. Some lived on a golf course Dad was a member at, but is now closed. I read some years ago that coyotes and armadillos were the only animals that had increased their range since people began arriving from Europe. No idea if that is true today.

"...There are way too many deer - far more than before westerners colonized the US..."

Really? I wonder how we know this? Who counted them way back then???

"They are impossible to control and interfere with proper conservation and wildlife management practices."

You got me on that one. It sounded like you meant it (context), but by itself it sounded pompously facetious.

"Conservation and wildlife management practices" is a misnomer. Wildlife management as practiced in the U.S. simply depends on which lobbying group is paying the biggest bucks, and the competition is fierce.

The hunters want to kill anything that will prey on or compete with their deer and elk.

The loggers want to kill anything that gets in the way of clearcutting.

The farmers want to kill anything that looks like it might eat their seed corn.

The ranchers want to kill every predator in the country so they can run their cattle and sheep fifty miles from the ranchhouse without losing any.

The horse people want to kill every burrowing rodent so their horsies don't step in holes and break their legs.

The careless parents want to kill off anything that might go after the kids they can't be bothered to watch.

The people pushing their homes into the wilderness want the views without danger of something that will kill them, their kids, their dogs, etc.

None of that is management or conservation.

Sue

Susan - I think you summed up a lot of what I feel about "forest management". In the end it doesn't resemble a forest, as in a complicated inter-dependant and diverse mix of animal and plant life, so much as an industrial farm with separate 'pens', areas, dedicated to the concerns each lobbying group.

What was open and relatively self-maintaining ecosystem has been squeezed down, Nerfed and regularized into a caricature of an ecosystem. The forests resemble real wilderness about as much as "Frontierland" in Disney World resembles the actual frontier of the 1800s.

Many of the places I used to hike and camp have been made into soulless and barren mono-cultures too depressing to countenance. I can't bear to see what has been done to them and now avoid many of my old hiking trails and camping grounds.

On the positive side coyotes do eat some of the invasive species we have brought with us. Like domestic animals. Go coyotes.

Susan
Well said . You hit the nail on the head .

Yep, pompously facetious would be the appropriate term.

I tell you what does chap my hide, though. Back home they have huge herds of elk that live in an "ecologically sensitive" area that is off limits not just for hunting, but for any human incursion. Now, this herd was introduced by the government quite a few years ago, and they've been multiplying steadily until it's obvious now that there are far too many, and the damage they are doing to the "ecologically sensitive" area is of great concern. So the feds, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the herd needed to be culled down to a more appropriate number. Now you would think that this would mean they would open the area up to a very limited hunting season with restrictions on access and egress to foot traffic only. Not so. Instead, they brought in a number of US F&W agents and took SUVS, 4x4s and helicopters into the area and killed the requisite number of animals. Then they gave some of the carcasses to the local indian tribes and destroyed the rest.

I ask you, how could a bunch of paid government employees driving to a fro cause less damage to an arid shrub and grass covered hillside than a handful of hunters hiking or with a few horses, and why couldn't the meat at least have been given to the local food bank or some such, rather than just burying it? And the worst of it is we paid these clowns to do this.

BTW, some of your statements are throwbacks to the 70s, but there are still idiots out there who think this way, just not the majority anymore, at least from my experience.

Oh yeah, and the farmers who live adjacent to this "ecologically sensitive" area are charging up to $10k for trophy elk hunts on their land, with the state allowing only a restricted number of permits to hunt their land that the farmers get to hand out as they please, because the farmers claim that the elk are destroying their property???? We're talking dryland wheat farmers who are receiving govt subsidy via CRP to grow native grass instead.

And people living in urban areas want everyone elsewhere to deal with the costs (smaller game populations, loss of lumber jobs,
crops, and livestock, threats to children, loss of property
values) just so they can have an idealized rural place to vacation
in or dream about.

Stereotypes are the refuge of bitter people.

Local coyote on his way to eat my neighbor's chickens.

I also have coyotes, raccoons, porcupines and opossums.

I have chickens, a dog and some cats. I make it a POINT that that Group A doesn't meet Group B.


"BTW, some of your statements are throwbacks to the 70s"

Do you mean something has changed, or just gotten worse?

Sue

I'd say things are changing, meaning getting better than they were thirty years ago. There are still plenty of people who think as you indicate, but thanks to programs such as the Hunter Education program and such, conservation ethics are slowly taking hold.

I just watched a program on the Outdoor channel last night about a bear hunt on the Quinalt Indian Reservation. Apparently the injuns are getting concerned about what is happening to the environment after their "closed to the general population" program has allowed black bears to propogate to the point where they are now causing over $1 mil a year in tree damage alone.

Apparently too many bears can be a bad thing...

Judging by your post, it looks like 30 years of change has not mellowed your views and ideas of racism....

I have notified the moderators of your post...

That's right out here on the coast. Didn't see/hear that.

OTOH, go a bit further north, and the Makah tribe saw fit to use a machine gun on a gray whale. When I worked among the Chehalis tribe, I kept asking if they had heard what the Makahs were doing with the whale they killed legally, but no one knew. I have a problem visualizing the white bread, hamburger and french fries tribe eating blubber.

Cynical Sue

Actually quite a few of them claimed to eat it, and it is served at potlatch from what I hear, but I think the whale hunting revival was more an assertion of their "limited sovereignity" than it was for environmental concerns. I would consider though that even the Makahs are expected to abide by the limitations imposed by international treaty regulating the taking of whales.

Still, I would much rather see them do it the traditional way, rather than using a big 50 bmg. Apparently they are required to spear the animal from their traditional whaling boat first, then they can shoot it with the 50 to reduce it's suffering and limit the risk of injury to the hunters. Contrary to the old Iron Eyes Cody commercial, not all injuns are environmentally friendly.

LOL

I got a little injun in me as well, though according to my Cherokee/Cheyenne brother if I cut my finger again I will be out of the tribe.

My daughter being half Cherokee also uses the term injun, as does my wife who undoubtedly has some Lakota injun in her, though no record of it exists because back then it was bad medicine to proclaim injun heritage.

I think I started using the term as a reference when one of the old injuns at a pow-wow I was at in Pendleton Oregon used it to refer to all the injuns that were there from all over the country. Now, me being so fair skinned, I won't say what they called me, mostly cuz I forgot how to pronounce it. Let's just say I was danged glad to have my very injun looking daughter with me at the time. We'd sit in the bleachers and the injun women would come around with lunch and offer some to her but not to me sitting there with her, so I knew none of them were thinking I was injun at all, but that's okay. As I told my brother, heritage plays a relatively small part in who we really are. Whether injun or irish or whatever our ancestry is, in point of fact we were all Americans now, and the blood Grandad had running through his veins didn't have much bearing on who I turned out to be, unless I choose to let it. In other words, if you think you are injun, then you are injun. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, it just depends on how I feel at the time I suppose. I try not to let other people define who I am if I can help it. If you see me wearing buckskins and feathers and trying to speak injun then you can figure I am injun at the time, or not.

My daughter figured that out last year while attending a very liberal "Native American Cultural Studies" class. They were having a tough time trying to define her by the color of her skin, asking her how she felt about what someone did to someone else a hundred or so years ago. She pretty much concluded that most of them were just trying to find someone or something else to blame for their problems.

Sorry for the confusion, but any connotation or assumption you make about my intentions is purely subjective, and dictated solely by your own convictions. I've never used the term in a derogatory context, so I don't understand or agree with the basis for your claim.

You can make feeble attempts to be a spin doctor, make up all the stories, anecdote and excuses you want. However I will put this as simply as I can so you might try to understand.

Using the term injun is an extremely derogatory term and is not appreciated by me or a lot of other Native Indians....

That is certainly the case in Virginia. During the 17th century the local Indians were having to hunt more to the west up past the fall line to find deer easily. Hunting in the tidewater region was mostly for migratory waterfowl at that time. The lands since opened up by agriculture have provided a better food supply than the forests. There is a lot more open grassland for grazing plus the opportunities provided by crops like corn and soybean.

The big concern in Virginia over coyotes is livestock losses. Farmers have been taking hits in their sheep and cattle and aren't too pleased about it.

Tom A.

My apologies then for using a word you consider derogatory.

Wikipedia

"you consider" wow thats an apology?

Well speaking for the Eastcoast Powhatan Nation, you should consider kissing my ass, sport.

Hmmm... Eastcoast Powhatan Nation?

I didn't know such a nation existed. There was a Powhatan Confederation back in the 17th century of which many tribes still exist. I happen to to know several people from some of the tribes (Nansemond, Mattaponi, Pamunkey) who really are fed up with the political correctness shoved down their throats by other "Native American" activists. In fact they have petitioned the Virginia General Assembly NOT to use the term "Native American" in reference to them. Many of them are tired of the cultural cleansing attempted by Western tribes in expunging Algonquin words such as "squaw" from being used under the pretense that they are offensive to every Indian.

Every once in a while some do-gooder activist, usually non-Indian, moves into town to protest something like the local high school football team being called the "Warriors" and using an image of an Indian in their logo. Then the chief of one of the local tribes usally has to tell the complainer to shut-up.

So if I were you, I'd be hesitant to voice the outrage of several independent tribes when you really don't speak for them. Your unwillingness to accept Benjamin's apology really reflects poorly on yourself.

Too many people have a hair-trigger offense mechanism and go into a tizzy when someone offends them regardless of the intent. Benjamin apologized, he intended no offense, that should be all there is to it. It's like there is some sort of racial McCarthyism at play.

Tom A.

+1, excellent post.

I wonder about combining "Sherpa" with "dog"?

With regret, I provide this citation as the context I use the word in, as I note there is more than one definition:

Injun

1812, spelling representing Amer.Eng. colloquial pronunciation of Indian (q.v.). Honest Injun as an asseveration of truthfuless first recorded 1876 (in "Tom Sawyer"), perhaps from the notion of assurance extracted from Indians of their lack of duplicity. The term honest Indian is attested from 1676.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper

That's the problem with Christopher Columbus screwing up and getting his navigation all wrong. Native Americans aren't really Indians and perhaps the real Indians (the ones from India) do take offense at the term "injun". Still, people these days do take offense where none was meant. You can't be offended if you choose to not be offended.

I have taken the liberty to revise the topic of this thread to a more sensitive term.

BTW, watch what you say about Columbus or you will offend those of us of Italian descent. And also people from Ohio.

I'm Italian -- the guy got lost, hit the wrong continent and called it all good. All he had was lemons so he made lemonade.

TomApple
I am glad you are friends with indian peoples and yes the political correctness has gone to far. I am of Pamunkey heritage, and did not identify that because many people have no idea what that is or where they exsist (aka eastcoast). Powhatan is more of a popular term, at least in my circles.
As far as the Powhatan Confederation goes, they are still recognized at local pow wows. Another reason I use Powhatan, because most of the other Pamunkeys I have met are assholes.
My great grandfather walked off the Pamunkey reservation, and settled in the area where I live today, in Virginia. I hunt the same woods that my fore fathers did, and I will speak for whom I please. I am not 100% indian, but I will never be 100% white either. I am proud of my heritage and un-apologetic in that.
But the point I want to make is this was not a issue of political correctness. If someone wants to call an indian an injun, how is it different than calling a Black person the N word?
It IS derogatory, in my mind (Honest Injun, or not). I have no problem accepting Benjamin's apology if I think it is sincere, and he seems to be. No one ever accused me of NOT being a hothead. That will have to be my apology for that.
I would just be mindful of the use of that term, when you don't know how it will be recieved.

doesn't our navy have 'chief' petty officers? and aren't they called 'chief'? i don't see a slur there.




well, now you may offend the afro-american community.

sorry, couldn't resist! this is tongue in cheek and meant to illustrate how sometimes we just can't win for losing.. lol..

whenever i speak to the supervisors of the men who come to work for me it usually comes out "hey boss, when are the boys gonna be here?"

i've never heard from any of the boys that they don't like it - they just laugh. no insecurity there, folks. no offense on my part either.

If you were aboard a merchant vessel and referred to someone as "Chief" or "the Chief," you would be speaking about the Chief Engineer. It is not a derogatory term, in this nomenclature.

The hunters I assume.

The estimates I saw from the Texas Parks & Wildlife department went back a bit more than a century for areas west of the Mississippi, which seems credible to me.

I have always wondered what they based those "estimates" on. I doubt that anyone was keeping records more than 100 years ago. But then I have always been a sceptic...