"Coyotes attack and Kill Canadian Singer" Topic

We, being moderns, all know that wolves never attack humans – that's all just a myth, right? Wolves, Like Native Americans, are peace-loving and at one with their environment, not like us Pesky Europeans. We all know that, right?

And Coyotes, being just titchy little wolves, are even MORE non-Violent. We KNOW that, too.

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They thought she was a Deer? I will have to try that when I bludgeon my missus to death – 'I thought she was a Coyote, M'lud.'

Pat

Coyotes are nasty SOBs. In Massachusetts, the trapping of coyotes was outlawed several years ago. Now the coyotes have moved into the cities with their population explosion.

In my town, a suburb, last year a coyote attacked a Grandfather and his 5 year old grandson. The 5 year old called for help, but when the police and fire showed up, they could not shoot the coyote as it was too close to the Grandfathers head (trying to get at the grandfathers neck).

A firefighter grabbed hold of the coyote and choked it to death. Ya, wow!

I shoot them on sight when able. I have seen one attempt to attack a doe in my back yard and one of my neighbors cats was taken by a coyote in the spring.

Nasty critters. I kill coyotes on sight. They have repeatedly attacked my neighbor's farm animals and have threatened our horses. One even tracked my daughter one morning when she walked to the school bus stop. An electric predator fence works pretty good keeping them off my property, but it is not 100% effective.

The RCMP have killed one (they have found the body); they are hunting the rest of the pack. The beasts are moving into the wolf niche – starting to operate in packs and becoming quite large.

This is not, in general, a tree hugging province. Lots of people live near that park and I expect they will take some action at least on or near their own property.

Oh, Miss Dion, wouldn't you like to take a nice holiday on Cape Breton Island?

(I was hoping…)

We hear coyotes at night – one of the reasons I try to have my cats in by nightfall

Sorry to hear about it. My condolences to her family.

News last night suggested that wolves and coyotes are cross breeding resulting in a more vicious and less shy coyote

" less shy coyote"?

The coyotes at Ft Irwin/NTC and Ft Bliss any other military base are anything BUT shy.

I suggest we create a new cuisine Coyote on a stick perhaps? Then send them the way of the carrier pigeon

Coyotes are everywhere. We had them in Texas and Missouri and now they are all over Georgia. They usually stay in the brush along creeks and then come up into neighborhoods for pets. I'm all for shooting one whenever the opportunity to do so safely presents itself.

I'm inclined to agree with Allen on the topic of Ms. Dion. Had she received the coyote attention, I might view the beasts with a bit more fondness.

"The coyotes at Ft Irwin/NTC and Ft Bliss any other military base are anything BUT shy."

Over by the 11th ACR HQ area, there used to be a three-legged one that would drop by about 0300-0400 to check the dumpsters (he'd invariably be hopping along as we loaded up the HMMWV to move out to the box). Presumably, this was after his rounds of the nearby housing areas, looking for cats.

The Fort Irwin coyotes have unfortunately become *very* acclimated to man.

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And thus:

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Allen

But maybe she couldn't sing and when she tried it hurt their ears. Don't judge the coyotes until you've heard their side of the story.

And that leads me to wonder WHY the Canadian authorities are trying so hard to kill them so quickly? Maybe to silence them from telling the WHOLE truth. Yup, there's some sort of government conspiracy here. Persecution of un-armed residents of the area who simply chose a different lifestyle. Almost a hate crime.

Ooops….

"It's very unusual and is not likely to be repeated," Bancroft said. Fine, you go out every day and prove it, in the meantime, shoot to kill. A tragedy for the family, my condolonces.

Just bizarre. Every encounter I have had with coyotes (and I have had well over 100) had provided me with a nice view of their hind-quarters as they 'exit stage left'. It is very hard to get a shot at these as they bolt into cover very quickly in most cases.

mjc

I heard our county has resident coyotes. I've never seen one here in deepest darkest suburbia, but I believe it. We've got everything else short of cougars and bears (they just drop in for a visit.) But no wandering cats or rabbits, but that could be the foxes, and I haven't seen them for a year or so either.

I've read is if you see one, you should scare it off (assuming no more lethal method is available), yell, throw rocks, whatever. Don't just walk away. They need their instinct that "the two-leggers-are-not-to-be-messed-with" reenforced.

Maybe the coyotes thought the singer wasn't any good.

Seriously though, I'm sure the family is going through a rough time processing their loss.

By the way, I haven't had to deal with coyotes all that much, so my opinion of them is still favorable to some extent. However, if human lives are at risk, the importance of wildlife cannot supersede the importance of any one human.

CC

the importance of wildlife cannot supersede the importance of any one human.

Sure it can. I can think of any number of people who are much better dead than the least treefrog. The problem is we rarely get to pick who gets eaten.

A girl goes into the woods alone and turns into a snack… was the coyote bad or the girl stupid?
How can people manage to get themselves so outraged over something as natural as that?
Coyotes regularly come down out of the desert behind our house… eat small pets, tip over trash cans… I've never seen one that didn't run away at the site of an adult-sized human. I haven't heard any stories of them ganging up to lunch on school kids waiting for the bus.
The real villain is hubris and overpopulation… stupid people moving next door to animal populations and acting as if the animals are somehow 'evil' for wanting to eat defenseless babies and housecats… people who will 'shoot on site' and then complain when their neighborhoods get invaded by rats and other varmints.

There's nothing particularly sacred about human life… there is something sacred about ecological balance.

Well said venusboys3!

I usually have this argument over Grizzlies. If you are going to be around them you need to get educated and respect the fact that if you mess up, you might well be lunch. So if you don't like the neighbors, don't go in the woods!

I have no issue with anyone shooting a coyote as there's so many of them. Putting a little fear of god into them does them good and keeps them wild.

"Urban animals" cause all kinds of problems. In Helena Montana they developed an Urban Deer population -- they literally got to the point where they would wait at intersections until the light changed before crossing! I kid you not. I don't think they tuned into the lights. I think they came to realize that traffic would stop in one direction if they waited a while.

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There was a 2 year old buck that took a fancy to my mother's garden. They would literally lock horns -- my mom with her broom and the deer with his rack. Kinda funny in a way but not at all 'natural'.

Now they trap a certain number each year and euthanize them. Not sure this is going to solve their problems but . . . who knows!

mjc

When I was at 29 Palms out in the field, the coyote's would run, but then again, we had lots of guns. Mainside was a different story, we had fences to keep the dogs and kids in and keep the coyotes out.

The advice from some coyote experts would seem to be that one should not run from them, but confront them. Perhaps, she ran.

However, she may not even have seen (or heard) them coming – rumours from posts in response to the CBC news imply that she may have been wearing an iPod.

Perhaps, too, the coyotes were rabid.

The real villain is hubris and overpopulation..

So,

Is there too many of me?

Or too many of you?

Hubris indeed.

I remember training up some of my troopers for Air Assault (dope on a rope) school. We were rucking at about 0300 across the desert just north of Macgregor Range (near Ft Bliss) and a pack of coyotes was shadowing is. As we scared up rabbits as we moved through the coyotes would take them down. It scared the heck out of a couple of the city boys. At times they came within feet of us.

About nature, people and coyotes.

In Atlantic Canada, the coyote is an invasive species (we can argue if killing the wolves was a good idea, but they are gone) strongly interbred with wolves, moving into territories where there were few large predators and the human population is actually going down.

This is not like BC where there have always been Grizzlies and Cougars. This is a new pest, one that has only been here for about 30 years. These coyotes are also effectively a new species in the niche in this range, and I am not all that sure you can rely on established behaviors as you can where they have been around for a while.

Deer kill a lot more people than coyotes.

Those coyotes must've been pretty big or rabid, or both. The ones I've seen are pretty scrawny & pretty much afraid of humans. If the article hadn't said other hikers heard her screams & came upon the attack in-progress, I would've been suspicious that it might've been a cover up for something more sinister. Bad deal for the girl & the wildlife, all around.

My guess is that she was so unable to fend for herself that she never should have gone anywhere alone. All you need for coyotes is a stick. They're little dogs, shouldn't be a threat to anyone older than 5 or 6. I'd bet she thought they were "friendly".

As for exterminating them as a danger to humans (yeah, good luck with that, BTW), let's get real, folks. This is such a rare occurance that it makes the AP wire. Driving your car is many orders of magnitude more dangerous.
-Kle.

"There's nothing particularly sacred about human life… there is something sacred about ecological balance."

Venusboys, you almost made me spit out my coffee. Too funny.

Can't believe people actually feel that way but, hey, to each his own.

CC

Yeah Cacique, we've all got our topics where we go a bit nutty.