Don't feed the coyotes
IT IS NOT quite a rerun of Shays' Rebellion yet, but there is grumbling among hunters in Western Massachusetts about the toll they believe coyotes are taking on the region's deer herd. Sportsmen are pressuring the state to lengthen the November-to- February hunting season on coyotes or to make it open season on them year-round.
A better course would be for everyone to take a deep breath and, before reaching for their rifles, make sure their garbage cans are tightly lidded.
Coyotes, which wildlife biologists say are not native to New England, have been living here in increasing numbers since the 1950s. Between their opportunistic and omnivorous feeding habits and efficient breeding, they are here to stay. New Englanders keep them amply supplied with garbage, fresh compost material, pet food left outdoors, and, alas, small pets themselves. These predators also like rabbits, woodchucks, sheep, and calves. Farmers who are victimized by coyotes are allowed to shoot them any time of year, if they can. Coyotes are hard to hunt.
Sometimes coyotes will go after deer, but that happens more often in northern New England, where deep snows can slow deer down. According to Massachusetts' assistant director of wildlife research, Tom O'Shea, coyotes are more numerous now in suburban areas than in rural areas. At least one coyote is making a home in the woods north of the farm in Pittsfield where Herman Melville wrote "Moby Dick." After a recent snowfall, it was easy to follow the animal's tracks and find a resting place, a slight depression in the snow marked by small tufts of tawny fur it had left. There was no evidence of its diet.
The state is holding hearings in May and June on ways to deal with the coyote population, including a proposal to lengthen the season slightly and permit hunters during the fall deer-hunting weeks to shoot any coyotes they encounter, which is now not permitted.
Whether this would be effective in permanently reducing coyote numbers is doubtful. "It's really food resources that control" coyote numbers, O'Shea said. "There's a quick reproductive response when many are killed." In any case, the longer-season proposal is unlikely to satisfy advocates of a year-round season. At a recent meeting in Cheshire in northern Berkshire County, one hunter decried the ruthlessness of coyotes, saying that they even "kill for sport."
This sportsman was right about these sports animals. While O'Shea said he knows of no cases of this in Massachusetts, he said elsewhere there has been evidence of coyotes killing deer but not eating them. Possibly, the coyotes passed up the venison because they had dined well elsewhere. Denying them the food that people make available to them is the best way to keep their numbers in check.
