[PapaBear3625]

What’s really weird, is that some of the coyotes have been acting differently. Various lone coyotes have walked slowly, laterally across the place in daylight at about 250 yards while looking sideways at me. They don’t come any closer, either, but coyotes don’t usually behave that way. They’ve been doing that since last spring. Normally, coyotes would run straight away if seen during daylight and weren’t seen during the day so often.

What originally caused predators to flee at the sight of humans, was the fact that we used to kill them on sight. But we haven't been doing this for a long while. This means they may now be considering us as potential prey.

Thank the "environmentalists".

[familyop]

Agreed.

[Inyo-Mono]

What originally caused predators to flee at the sight of humans, was the fact that we used to kill them on sight. But we haven't been doing this for a long while. This means they may now be considering us as potential prey.

Thank the "environmentalists".

You nailed it. When you could still hunt mountains lions in California, you rarely, if ever saw one in the wild. Now I find their tracks all over where I work on the outskirts of town and occasionally in my front yard. I have also had fleeting glimpses of lions running into the brush nearby my home three times in the last four years.

We went almost 80 years without a problem with lions until the 1990s, and what is it up to now? 15 or more people killed by them in the last decade?

[familyop]

There’s something more going on with predators over the past year and a half or so. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the drought here. Maybe it’s something else. Don’t know for sure. There aren’t nearly as many red tailed hawks as before, but the population of rough-legged hawks and golden eagles is unusually thick around here—ever-present.