Let’s face it, the fur industry hasn’t been what it was decades ago. The decline in an American “fur boom” through the 1990’s has coincidentally coincided with an increase in wildlife conflict across North America; especially with one wild canid in particular. The coyote has managed to outlast and outwit mankind’s old-world attempts at eradication and broad-scale control. It has also been quite the topic of discussion from coast to coast over the last few years. Few critters can lay claim to the adaptability and resiliency the coyote has cast upon rural and urban America.
This image of GPS tracking of multiple wolves in six different packs around Voyageurs National Park was created in the framework of the Voyageurs Wolf Project. It is an excellent illustration of how much wolf packs in general avoid each other’s range.
Many deer hunters must now consider potential impacts of coyote predation on local deer herds. Historically confined to the western United States, coyotes have expanded throughout the eastern states and are now common across most landscapes we manage for deer. This expansion has obviously generated a lot of interest from the public, and the coyote’s ability to prey on deer makes their presence a primary consideration for deer hunters and managers. Coyotes are one of the better studied animals in North America, but most research has occurred outside of the eastern and southeastern United States.
During 2009-2011, we studied coyotes in northeastern North Carolina, and during that same time other studies on eastern coyotes revealed interesting information about coyote ecology and how coyotes could influence deer populations. The findings of these studies provided the impetus for what we refer to as the Tri-State Coyote Project, which was a cooperative effort across three states and multiple agencies. Funded by the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife Resources Division, and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, the objective of the Tri-State Project was to study coyote populations at broad spatial scales and learn how coyote populations are structured on the landscape. Moreover, we wanted to assess prey selection of coyotes to determine potential impacts of coyotes on local deer herds. What we found has important implications for deer hunters.
It was early summer, and I was on the verge of turning 40. I found myself entertaining a recurring daydream of escaping from time. I would be hustling my son out the door to get him to school, or walking briskly to work on the day of a deadline, or castigating myself for being online when I should have been methodically and efficiently putting words on paper, and I would have this vision of myself as a character in a video game discovering a secret level. This vision was informed by the platform games I loved as a child – Super Mario Bros, Sonic the Hedgehog and so on – in which the character you controlled moved across the screen from left to right through a scrolling landscape, encountering obstacles and adversaries as you progressed to the end of the level. In this daydream, I would see myself pushing against a wall or lowering myself down the yawning mouth of a pipe, and thereby discovering this secret level, this hidden chamber where I could exist for a time outside of time, where the clock was not forever running down to zero.
You can do this with a gun, and have something good to eat when you come home if luck has it.