On Jun 17, 2009, at 6:51 PM, Alex Stanley wrote:
--- In [email protected], Vaj <vajradh...@...> wrote:
Wait till the coyotes move in. Hope you don't have any cats or
small dogs...
We have coyotes out here. But, we also have lots of trees on our
property, which is probably why our cats have remained safe.
--- In [email protected], "Rick Archer" <r...@...> wrote:
We have plenty of coyotes around here, but there's still a deer
overpopulation problem.
Coyotes get a few percent of baby deer, but they really have very
little impact on deer populations.
I wonder about that. Years ago I used to fly into a wilderness lake,
bordering the Katahdin massif. In Maine we still have state registered
guides and master guides and the owner of this camp was a Master
Guide. This meant he could not only guide you to the best fishing and
hunting spots and clean and dress any animal he might catch, he also
had a keen awareness of nature having observed it living in the wild,
off the grid for decades with his family. He'd witnessed personally
the way coyote packs would chase deer onto the ice of a lake to
collectively accomplish a kill. I've also witnessed packs take out the
mature deer in my area (along with one of my cats in the fronts yard).
Apparently what has happened is the coyotes in this region have inbred
with the few remaining wolves. They're unusually large.
And, guys who only hunt bucks also do nothing to control the deer
population (because one buck can service a huge number of females.)
Hunting does is what controls the population. Most deer hunting
states won't even give you a buck tag until you've taken a certain
number of does, but Iowa doesn't do that. My sole interest in
hunting deer is the meat, so I only hunt does (buck meat is much
less desirable).
One has to wonder if the almost universal desire to "kill a buck" is a
type of oedipal complex.
Have you read the book "In Defense of Hunting" by James A. Swan? He's
an expert on sacred space and the sacred aspect of hunting. Show me a
real hunter/huntress and I'll show you a man or woman with a very deep
appreciation for the interconnectedness of life and reality.
