Sometimes it's fun to see if you can get two with one shot.
Other times they get real sneaky and you have to out-think them.
Posted on 01/17/2005 3:30:37 PM PST by SJackson
Activists throughout Maine expressed outrage at a decision to hold a coyote-killing competition in eastern Maine, despite protests from anti-cruelty groups and a request by Gov. John Baldacci to forgo the event.
"We think all people should have the right to say how wildlife is managed in Maine," said Linn Pulis of Hallowell, a member of several humane organizations. "We have been excluded."
Twenty-three teams turned out as the two-day event got under way in East Machias amid unseasonably warm temperatures, said Mike Look, an organizer of the hunting derby and member of the Washington County Fish and Wildlife Conservation Club.
Look said he sees little difference between the Maine event and normal hunting of coyotes, which are viewed as a major cause of a deer population decline Down East.
"It's a huge sport nationwide," Look said. "It's a chip off the iceberg of what happens every day."
Opponents say the event does nothing to manage the coyote population and reopens old wounds from a recent bear-hunting referendum.
Event organizers offered prizes for the most coyotes killed in different categories, such as calling, baiting and hunting with dogs. Look said he would be surprised if hunters killed as many as a dozen animals.
Days before the event, the Humane Society of the United States sent a letter protesting the event to Gov. John Baldacci, asking him to use his influence to call off the event.
"We think that any derby that involves wanton killing of animals is uncalled-for," Hillary Twining, the humane society's New England coordinator, said Friday from the group's office in Vermont. She said the derby is "not sound wildlife management" and "has no place in the Maine hunting tradition."
Baldacci also finds the practice inhumane, spokesman Lee Umphrey said.
At the governor's request, Deputy Commissioner Paul Jacques of the state Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Department asked the sporting group not to go ahead with its derby, saying it's not an effective way to control the coyote population. He offered state biologists' assistance in rebuilding the region's deer herd.
Organizers decided to go ahead anyway, noting that some participants were coming long distances and it was too late to tell them the event was canceled.
Pulis said she hopes the hunting group's defiance will encourage lawmakers to ban the practice.
"This has been a terrible embarrassment to the governor," she said.
Activists said they were concerned the derby would renew antagonism between hunting and nonhunting groups barely two months after a statewide referendum to decide whether to ban baiting, hounding and trapping of bears. Maine voters rejected the proposed ban.
In late 2003, Maine's coyote snaring program was suspended after appeals to officials and emotional testimony to the Legislature.
Look said the derby is to make up in a small part for the snaring program, in which hundreds of coyotes were taken in Washington County. The former teacher said he founded the sponsoring fish and wildlife club specifically to rebuild Washington County's deer population, which has crashed since the 1970s.
One of the reasons of the decline, Look said, is coyote attacks on fawns.
"Our deer population is zero to two per square mile," Look said. "If we had a normal deer population, this wouldn't be happening."
Your going to hate this one.
In Texas, me and my friends used to go in the woods after dog packs that would sneak in and kill all the chickens and tear open the rabbit hutches and kill all the rabbits.
The dogs were killing for fun.
Cototes do the same thing.
What about those bass fishing contests?
They tag big prize money on those poor unsuspecting fish, tempt them with luscious looking fake food, then mercilessly yank the line and skewer that poor fishes mouth with a wicked barbed treble hook!
Meanwhile those evil fisherman are drinking beer and having fun playing a game with these poor critters of the wild.
Oh woe is me.
>sarcasm off
Okay, next year how aobut an "activist shoot"?
Where do I sign up?
What's the bag limit on activists?
Controlling the population, protecting your home and property, fine.
Turning killing anything into a game, yes, I'm offended.
If they need to be killed anyway, why can't it be fun?
Plenty of people enjoy hunting.
You love Muslims and wild animals. Or is that an oxymoron?
Do you fish?
Coyotes are as plentiful as rats in Texas and just as welcome. No matter how many you kill, there will always be more than we need.
I haven't lately. But fishing for dinner is perfectly fine.
I like to use a Winchester model 70 in .243 with an 80 grain Hornady PSP going out about 3,200 fps. Dramatic when you connect with one of those brush wolves!
Do you view fishing as a sport?
It is really something to watch. A cat will stake out a spot all day if necessary and when it sees the ground start to move upward, the cat leaps up and then down with claws extended and digs down and hooks that mole.
If people think that moles don't make noises, well they do. The cat, of course, takes it's time killing it.
The Michigan Humane Society is merely a state subsidy of the HS of the U.S. and a clandestine supporter of every environmental waco organization out there. The Mich. HS has literally spent hundreds of thousands of dollars funding lawsuits in an attempt to prevent the legalized hunting of doves here in Michigan. Funds donated to them by the uninformed such as myself thinking all my donations were going to help the helpless pets dropped off at any of the Society outlets........
Sometimes it's fun to see if you can get two with one shot.
Other times they get real sneaky and you have to out-think them.
The animal rights types feel it is their job to make everyone else as miserable as they are by inventing their own morality and trying to impose it on everyone else. I think "The Simpsons" illustrates it ever so well with Little Liberal Lisa.
LOL!!
I've got a friend in N.W. Kansas who epitomizes the original prairie settlers...... Hard work, long hours and minds his own business. Hunts deer, bobcat, turkey and anything that is shootable.
For the coyotes he has a pack of greyhounds ........Now that is fun hunting!!!!
Some people believe in a sanctity in all living creatures.
Some don't.
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