Oh, this is a touchy one for sure. And since I grew up in Alaska where "predator control" is always an issue, I have a lot of thoughts on it, but probably don't have the stomach for much of a debate, because at least in Alaska, the politics are just ugly. My thoughts are kind of a side note to what you're asking, but still very much related.

In Alaska, Game and Fish is very clear on the purpose of predator control: kill the wolves because they kill moose that people want to hunt. Even though science has not backed up some of their ideas--it was found out a long time ago that in fact grizzlies in Alaska kill a many young moose, no one was calling for predator control of grizzlies (most likely because they are also trophy animals, whereas wolves are not, and the board of Fish and Game was mostly hunters who primary purpose was to cater to the hunting lobby, esp. the "bring in the money" out of state big game hunters). In Alaska, even a lot of hunters I otherwise respected got on the bandwagon of "kill all the wolves" so there are more moose (and yes, in alaska there were many, many people suggesting exactly that). It makes no sense, but that was the way it was played.

There are many people still in the west in particular that want very heavy predator control so that there are more game animals to hunt, or to protect livestock. In my mind, yes, there may be times that we need some hunting of predators--but I feel that the regular hunting permits that out there for predators are sufficient--we don't need to be shooting wolves from airplanes or helicopters (Alaska).

I don't know why people want to hunt the predators themselves, though some things I can see: wolf and coyote pelts are very nice and useful (wolf and coyote fur do not frost over like some other types of fur, so are useful for parka ruffs in really cold places like Alaska). People do eat bears. I suppose some hunters really want the challenge of the big predators?

We do need SOME hunting of predators, especially coyotes. Without some hunting, they can and will get overpopulated. This is very, very clear in the coyote population in the US. In the lower 48, there aren't enough wolves to justify hunting them. But I think the reasons this gets so polarized so fast is that people take the most extreme positions: no hunting ever (or at least no hunting of predators), or get rid of all the predators are the points people play up. There is also a strong contingency of people who still believe that humans have dominion over all the animals, and therefore the desire to hunt takes precedence over a wild animal's need to hunt to survive: human desire to kill a moose is more important than the survival of wolves, for example.

Overall, I think sound management is just a difficult issue, when there are so many different sides clamoring for mutually exclusive positions. Unfortunately, most of the time, it is not sound management principles that win.

Ok I will voice the pro predator hunters. I do a lot f predator hunting and for me the only reason is for management. I have two examples of where the lack of predator control has gone unchecked and is now negatively impacting the hoofed wildlife.

California banned lion hunting in the 80s because voters were told that they were endangered of becoming extinct (no real lion studies conducted in Ca until the 90s). So with thin the last 20 years lions have massed their numbers. Since the rise of the lion population, ca deer numbers has fallen over 50% and human/lion issues nearly quadrupled. In my county, the pacific desert big horn numbers are being plummeted because of lion predation.

Another example would be Yellowstone. Before wolves were reintroduced, Yellowstone had a high density of elk, deer, and bison. Since the intro of wolves, Yellowstone lost a quarter of their free ranging bison and elk. Deer population is at its lowest.

The notion that predators will keep a echo system mismanaged by humans is detremental. Predators do what they do best, kill a prey the best way possible to survive. When you have a park that is unchecked and uncontrolled for so many years, reintroduce a apex predator and hope the predators will watch boundaries and kill only the sick and old is wrong.

At some point there has to be a way to also control the number of predators within a given habitat as we do hoofed animals. Because this conservation system is not in place, you end up with unbalanced numbers of predator to prey ratio. When a predator no longer has available food sources in its habitat where does it go? Some where else where there's food. If that new area already has a apex predator, the new addition just added a uneven load to the prey of that habitat.

Unfortunately, humans have dipped their hands in the balance of predator and prey so at some point wether its pretty or not something has to be done about predators.

My only thing I don't like with coyote and wolf hunting is use of poisoned meat or any type of poison bait.

A dog would easily find it tasty and could get hurt. At least with a human hunting the animal they pick and choose to kill a poison or kill trap doesn't..

I do think farmers should give live stock guardian dogs a try. I mean a couple good ones should deter wolves and coyotes and even roaming dogs from hurting their live stock.

Sad so many are now just pets and not used for their intended purpose..

Heck a Great pyrenees I'm not impressed with it one came wandering in my yard we called it's owner she walks from their farm and said they were repairing their chicken coup and he is afraid of drills..

Some guardian he is afraid of noise like that!

Coarse who knows maybe that was only thing he was afraid of..

I know this one farm is using kangal dogs to protect their livestock from cheetahs it's a win win as farmers live stock live and the cheetahs are deterred from the livestock and go for something with out a dog to protect it..

People do eat bear.

Coyotes I dunno.

One person on dogster feeds bear and plans to feed coyote to their dog. D:

I'm for using up an animal, but feeding a coyote to a dog just doesn't seem right. :\ I dunno..

If someone offered me bear meat I would cook it or make dehydrated dog treats, but not fed raw. I think they have trichinosis? Could be wrong.

I wouldn't mind cooking bear to try..

There is recipes for opossums so I guess depends where you live.

I remember watching some Alaskan show and the guy had shoot a wolf that was getting close to town. He got it's pelt and put it's body in the woods. so the meat wasn't used.

I'm not for aerial hunting of wolves as it seems so unfair to do that.

Things like cougars can be an issue as some places they have less land and eventually will cause issues with humans and deer.

I'm for hunting right way, but poison seems harsh..

I'm lucky so far has had no issues with coyotes. I do think my neighbor will loose their dachund someday as they leave it on tie out for outside time and to potty. I hear it whining and crying at night sometimes which is sad. The dog shouldn't be alone especially such a small dog.

I bring a knife with me in case on hikes luckily animals run heck away even coyotes.. The dogs have bells on so they kinda warn things before we get close.

Though bunnies are dumb they tend to stay in the trail till last minute then run to the high grass.

I mean if coyote is rabid acting or acting bold sure I'll deal with it, but so far they keep wide distance from me. Ones in city seems more bolder luckily I don't live in city right now..

Sad California doesn't allow use of dogs on cougars and bear anymore.. :\

I mean if it did get away somehow at least then it has a new fear of humans and dogs.

That's why when they do bear releases they try to haze them so they get more weary of humans..

When I do see a coyote I do yell at it even if it's at a distance and running away from my presence I figure that help it be more afraid hearing me yell at it.

I'm always cautious when taking dogs out to potty at night with flashlight. Did see two coyotes once I was at the house and they were at the trail on the burn pile side very far from me. They stood there for a bit then ran off in other direction.

Dad had to kill a raccoon once as it was acting way too brazen coming to the door, back upper deck and stuff didn't run off despite Saya barking at it from the door.

Saya has treed juvenile raccoon that was eating my pears.. After she did it the second time they stopped coming though they could have learned lesson and came at night to eat the pears. :\

The juvenile raccoons were killed week later not sure of what, but whatever it was it ate it all was left was head, fur and stomach. Gross.

Someone has said coyotes don't kill raccoons, but juvenile ones maybe they weren't too big.

I'm not a hunter mainly fish and stuff. I have gotten a few books to read on such subject haven't gotten chance to read it as I'm finishing up current books before digging into this.

There is a need for some predator management especially in urban areas where said animals become very bold and brazen.

I've been on the anti predator hunting side of the fence for awhile, until just recently.

In Taos the black bear encroachment was getting very bad, and bear were starting to habituate and even prey on humans. But, I still didn't feel we should be hunting them. That is actually why I got into Laika, I was working with the town to start a bear shepherding program and had planned to use my Laiki for this. But then we moved.

Now that I live here I have been more active with the local Fish and Game and have been communicating with them. I was informed that catamounts are a big issues here, as are black bear, but not for the reason they are an issue in Cali or Taos. Due to the grand canyon Flagstaff is basically a sky island. Our Elk and Deer population is sealed off from the rest of the Colorado Plateau so AZ F&G has to be extra sensitive to their population levels. This is why big cats and black bear need to be controlled in numbers here, as without doing that the deer and elk population would shrink and the predators would then start to prey on nontraditional prey (like us).

The warden I talked to last week told me that an adult mountain lion kills 1 deer a day. He basically asked me to start hunting lion in our area since there are so few hunters who do that.

So, my opinion has changed on this topic. However, if I'm to be honest, I do not really see the need for killing Wolves and Coyote. I just do not see them to be as big of an issue as they are made out to be by the ranchers and hunters who hunt them. I know ranchers are losing money due to the reintroduction of the wolf, but there are other methods - that have existed for 1000s of years - to control livestock loss from wolves. To me, I think the ranchers just got too comfortable not having to deal with any predatory threats, and now that they have the threat again, they want to stir up all kinds of drama.

I also agree with @ayk on her point. It's important that predators keep their naturally imprinted fear of humans. In Taos, for example, it was not legal to hunt big cat, and so a person dies every year in Taos because the big cats are not afraid of us.

Out here coyotes and lions are the top predators on the deer. You'll be surprised at how many deer fawns and pregnant does fall prey to coyotes. Coyotes are extremely smart and will absolutely decimate deer herds. The bears also do a lot of damage during the fawning season but not as much as coyotes and lions.

Another example would be Yellowstone. Before wolves were reintroduced, Yellowstone had a high density of elk, deer, and bison. Since the intro of wolves, Yellowstone lost a quarter of their free ranging bison and elk. Deer population is at its lowest.

The notion that predators will keep a echo system mismanaged by humans is absolutely laughable. Predators do what they do best, kill a prey the best way possible to survive. When you have a park that is unchecked and uncontrolled for so many years, reintroduce a apex predator and hope the predators will watch boundaries and kill only the sick and old is again laughable.

So for a population that has had zero predators to lose 1/4 of their population, that doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Let's say the population sat at 1million before wolf reintroduction. If we hadn't taken the predators out than it stands to reason that the population would not be 1 million, it would be say half or 3/4 of their population. So the impact of reintroducing wolves doesn't sound that major to me.

You missed the second half of the circle, where once the prey runs low the predator population cannot be sustained and will starve out. That would go into effect without human interference and human interests however. It's the natural flow of things and the system by which ecosystems balance themselves out.

It also wouldn't be "laughable" if you've ever taken any courses on environmental sciences. If you think wolves and sharks will gorge themselves until there is nothing left and everything will go extinct then we wouldn't have such a variety of wildlife now would we?

A system with zero predators for any length of time is of course going to have to go through some population ebbs and flows before rebalancing itself. That's a very unique situation that is not very comparable to other areas such as most of the Pacific Northwest regions. Very similar to which invasive species are introduced to an environment (like constrictors in the Everglades) which then have no natural competition, therefore they are highly destructive.

Your reasoning for hunting them is sound from what you describe of your personal excursions. Culling overpopulation of predators in unique environments that have been so affected by humans that they cannot balance themselves is a reasonable thing to do. I may have had to specify hunting apex predators in wilderness environments that are not undergoing over-predation on a conservation level in order to get the perspective I'm questioning. That which is going out to, lets say Alaska where the ecosystem is managing itself just fine, and actively hunt Grizzly or wolves for no management reasons, just for the sake of it.

@brada1878 That's actually really interesting! I never knew Flagstaff was so environmentally cut off. That's a responsible method of predator hunting as well, so I would engage in that if the local prey populations are threatened due to being so cut off from other populations for interbreeding.

I also agree on the wolf issues with ranchers. It has always seemed like an issue of destructive convenience, where a few bullets cost less than good safety measures. The only reason they lose "part of their livelihood" is because they don't have dogs and reasonable deterrences.

@Jindohoundman The world needs less chihuahuas and puggles anyways! :P That's pretty crazy and I've heard of that. I forget who it was but it was some celebrity out walking her little white chihuahua around Arizona or New Mexico, when all of a sudden a coyote runs out of a bush and tries to make off with her chihuahua LOL. Many years of vet tech work has instilled a dislike of small, yappy things haha.

Found it, at least a modernized version of it.

http://dovsherman.deviantart.com/art/Wa-Tor-An-Ecosimulation-25692206

Start of with a map as big as you want, within reason, max out the prey, and add 2 predators. You'll see the fluctuations are massive until it balances back out. Of course, this would be without human intervention on either the prey or predator side, seeing as how prey animals generally reproduce on a faster level than predators. Of course this can be adjusted to relatives of specific populations and it also isn't perfect. But the math on it all averages out that in an unaltered environment if there is a massive excess of prey then the predator population will explode until it reaches a point that is unsustainable. Prey of adequate size will be very hard to find and scavenging sub-optimal prey will only last so long, eventually resulting in the predator population starving out to a sustainable level.

Edit: It took 625'ish cycles for populations to reach an equilibrium only to restart the cycles of extremes again around 1000'ish cycles. Around 1350 there was a hard reset where the predator population was down to a single group and then two where it completely restarted.

As an aside... the points of extreme fluctuation would be where those with more advantageous characteristics would reproduce while those with less advantageous characteristics would die off. (SCIENCE!)

I'm not a wildlife biologist by any means but going off of what I have seen coming from a family with wildlife biologists. Yellowstone is a mess right now because of over predation by wolves. You can't take a place where wolves have been non existent for centuries, put wolves in and hope everything works out. The elk, bison, and deer lives there for a long time only falling prey to starvation, coyotes, and bears. Now add wolves and the animals had a difficult time because of a completely new predator. Wolves were extremely efficient in putting a major dent in the population of hoofed animals. So much that they would drive herds out of their range into the national forest.

I wish it was that easy to harvest a brown bear or a Wolfe in Alaska. Alaska has some of the best wildlife biology in the world. I'm under the assumption that some might think you can hunt these animals with just a license. It's much more cost involved. In North America when you hunt big game, most all states including Alaska requires you to purchase specific tags for specific animals. The conservation department sets a quota on how many animals can be taken and sets a limited number of tags for each animal. The work of the biologists is to do animal counts (I have personally taken part in animal counts) so that they can set the tag count.

This method of wildlife conservation has been copied around the world in managing wildlife. Because of this method MANY animals have recovered from near extinction (wild turkey, pronghorn, grizzly bears, wolves, etc). Unfortunately it's not a perfect world where the preservationist mentality can be used due to human encroachment and environmental changes.

Didn't mean to come off like a jackass, hunting is a subject I have a lot of passion for and something that is part of my livelihood. It's also a very deep subject and many people have different views.

Absolutely the Alaska wolf issue is definitely political. The only helicopter shooting I would say is beneficial is hogs in Texas! Although if there are too many wolves there has to be a balance both predator and prey.

For wildlife conservation and take the NA big bears for example, the number to take is most often set with how many of a certain specie a specific environment can handle. So biologists also take into consideration how much food is available for each specific specie and figure out how many of one animal the given area can sustain.

Think about it, if within a 5 mile radius only two or three grizzlies can be sustained, wouldn't it be better to take the excess animal (as long as there is a healthy population or over abundance) instead of starving it? Taking by generating revenue from that one grizzly to put back into research towards the overall grizzly population. That in my book is smart sound management.

I hunt just about everything that is legal to hunt but my specialty is turkey, waterfowl, deer, boar, predator.

I hunt hogs with my Kishu kens and also bowhunt. Not sure where you're located but if you are near San Diego, you are always welcome to hunt where I hunt. There nothing like putting meat in the freezer that you harvested your self. And it's much more healthier.

@shibamistress Wow those coyotes are vicious! You may want to consider carrying a gun or collapsible baton on your walks...

There nothing like putting meat in the freezer that you harvested your self. And it's much more healthier.

I agree with that.

I've seen comments on dogster and really I'm about done messing on that forum it's annoying with the people who think they know it all. :\

Comments I seen were like we have farmer's, butchers and grocery stores there is no reason to hunt besides for sport.. My jaw drops when I see comments like that..

I mean go buy a wild Alaskan salmon and a farmed salmon grill same way same seasoning and tell me which taste better!

Compared to farmed salmon Alaskan salmon taste like gold.

Pricey, but worth it for once in while treat. We got a big thing of it fed me and my mom for two days for dinner.. Saya and Bella each got tiny bit of unseasoned cooked salmon for training treat they each got 1oz.

I've tasted deer, Canadian goose, duck, and dove yummy I think I prefer dove over the other two birds.

I've even had grass fed beef it wasn't the highest grade of steaks I forgot it was kinda in the middle of steaks it tasted great like one from fancy restaurant had good flavor with minimal seasoning.

I get grass fed beef tongue for Saya and it looks much more appetizing than the beef tongue at walmart..

Yeah some hunt for sport and stuff, but some do it to feed their family and friends.. My brother gets deer from his wife's cousin's they all share.

I watch yukon man it's interesting show they were hunting moose to get meat to last them for the winter.. The wife or daughter I was half asleep so I forgot. Anyways she says they once saw a moose carcass in the water that had it's rack or whatever taken off. Sad someone would discard so much meat like that. :(

One thing to point out this country has changed so darn much compared to the old days bison used to be in more areas, and many other animals. Roads have caused a lot of issues for animals coyotes, deer, raccoons and so on.. I see dead coyotes on road from being hit, or deer and usual road kill. Sad.. :(

I try not to drive out at night because danger of deer my mom hit one she wasn't going fast luckily so the deer just got grazed and it ran off mom watched and it seemed alright.

When I'm out at night I think to my self no wonder cars hit deer there is so many cars going by a deer or herd of deer has barely any chance of crossing the road safely.

The cars just keep going.. :\

I'm sure our highways, and roads have messed up deer migration a lot.

I also have been seeing a lot of farm land for sale and some got bought out guess what they put in. cookie cutter houses.. I call them that as the houses are not well made and some look the same and so on.

We had some high winds once and bit of siding came off.

We don't need any more houses when there still many for sale.. ah well.

we keep tearing down fields, farm land, and woods guess what coyotes and deer will have no choice, but to move in.. I seen deer in town before.

Like shibamistress said coyotes aren't going to only go for chihuahuas, Pomeranian and dachshunds there been issues with rotties, labs and other big breeds.

Shiba inu isn't that big of a dog..

Ones in my area seem less brazen as I'm more in country where there is less people feeding stray cats and we keep trash cans secure.

I don't think a coyote won't hurt my dogs I'm sure if they feel threatened or are hungry they will try go for my dogs.

Most local Indiana coyote attacks seem happen when owner lets their dog out at night alone in a unfenced yard. That is a recipe for disaster and the owner should never leave a small or big dog alone like that especially when they live by the woods and in town even.

I remember Brada's neighbor in their previous home their lab was in trouble coyotes were going for her.

Coyotes aren't only out at night too I seen them during the day. Usually in the field or deep in the woods by the creek.

I do think some people need stop habituating coyotes stop feeding feral cats if they're feral the cats will hunt for themselves.. be more humane if the people would catch the cats and get them fixed. I caught one and turned into the shelter it was intact and a intact cat breeds like rabbits.

I seen a mom cat she had litter of kittens where I worked and she caught rabbits and rock pigeons to feed the kittens.. some workers started to feed them kibble. I'm like why do that they're taking care of the pigeons since everyone hates those flying rats..

Sorry go bit off topic. :\

I don't really know right answer, but like I said world is changing so much it is sad.

I do wish people would take more interest in nature at times my cousin's are scared of even a box turtle. :\

@poeticdragon - I agree with your sentiment on using the least stressful and most humane way to kill game. However your point about "real predators" is actually not correct. There are many documented cases of apex predators playing with their prey before killing them - and in some cases they do not even consume the prey they played with.





I know that there are accounts of Polar Bear and Brown Bear, as well as Tigers, playing with their prey too, but I cannot not find video of it...

And in some cases, they don't wait for the animal to die before starting to eat them.

@poeticdragon I disagree, hunting itself in the modern age is no longer a "need" based activity. It is a challenge based activity/sport where you are using your own skills (and if using a dog, then teamwork and training) to overcome an adversary, whether by gaining the element of surprise or using one's skill at shooting to overcome the prey's defenses. Ex. flushing birds and having to be a good shot, learning woodscraft to stalk or attract deer. If it was a matter of feeding one's family or dying of starvation then I would agree with you. There are PLENTY of hunters who would be willing to hunt big game, whose population has started to take hoofed animals below the desired population levels, by non-mechanical methods. No reason to make it an industrial process. If people want the option to simply press a button to put an animal down with no challenge then they should go volunteer at a city animal shelter.

@brada1878 I perhaps phrased it poorly. I know animals play with their food or kill for reasons other than food. As mentioned, cats of all sizes do it a lot. But what I meant is that an animal doesn't handicap itself to make things more fair or sporting. It may handicap itself to draw out the kill, but if there's a chance the prey will get away or hurt the predator, its going to use everything its got.

@cezeig I didn't say there was a need to hunt (not even going to get into it) but yes there is a need to kill. My point is that in the same breath saying things should be sporting/"fair" (eg. handicapping the hunter) and humane (eg. killing efficiently) is difficult for me to reconcile.

wow, that wolf/coyote one was pretty intense, and it had everything in it--ravens, wolves, coyote, even a bald eagle!

I never thought of freezing the stuff the dogs have killed before letting them have it. That's a good idea when they get bigger stuff, because then it would kill the worms if I froze it long enough. But usually, by the time I realize they have something, they are gulping it down.

Bel eats birds whole--feathers, bones and all.

I've been watching this thread for a hot minute because I really like the ideas being tossed around. I don't really have as strong a stance on the subject (though I do have some opinions), so I like seeing everyone discuss it.


Not gonna lie, that video with the coyote made me feel a type of way. I wasn't expecting something that nitty-gritty real-life and it reminded me of when London gave chase to a coyote. I'd never seen London act so aggressively - it was one of the most frightening moments in my life because I THOUGHT it was someone's dog. I still remember how haunting it was when I realized it wasn't. I didn't know if I should feel relieved or even more frightened.

There was no doubt in my mind that there would be blood when he caught up to that sucker. His hackles were up from nose to tail, I'd never seen something so wild out of him. So of course, when I watched that video, I just remembered how London looked and how scary that moment was. I felt like I was the coyote in that video for half a second. Jarring.

My family need wild game, my kids are like a pack if hungry jackels. I swear they pack together soon as I unload a deer or a hog from the truck and you can see them drewl as I clean out game. Lol. But seriously coyotes are savages when they get ahold of a deer. Last spring I watched four coyotes just tear this deer apart as it was screaming and trying to get away, nature is definitely not pretty.

Hmmmm... So, this is interesting.



That's a dirty game.

I witness something today that hit me kinda hard at first. A local sportsman club has what they call Coyote drives. I had never really paid much attention to it until today. Today happened to be one of the drives. They had hunters spread out through several fields. Those hunters waited there while another group drove the coyotes from behind. I am not sure what they were using to drive the coyotes, it ust caught me of guard to be driving down the road and all these hunters in blaze orange holding rifles spread out along the edge of the field. They were all about 50-100 yards away from the edge of the road. Coyotes are getting bad around here and I completely agree their population needs to be checked. They are becoming way to comfortable around people and are preying on pets.

I am a little reserved about some of the rhetorics of predator-hunting advocated by anti-wolf groups. For example, whenever the ungulate populations drop-- the first thing hunters do is blame the wolves or coyotes. However, after a few months, research often offer a different reality.

Recently, Finland's moose population fell to a record low and small calves were common. Of course, people blamed the wolves and lynxes. Research has shown that moose were accidentally ingesting snails because of an unusually wet and warm summer and became infested with meningitis.

Or the time people blamed the Canadian lynxes for the decline in the caribou population in Newfoundland and Labrador: when snowshoe hares were introduced to the area so the local people have something to eat, the snowshoes competed with the native Arctic hares and caused the Arctic hare population to decline. When the snowshoe hare population crashed after reaching the carrying capacity, the lynxes turned to the caribou out of desperation and starvation. The lynxes ended up starving anyway, since the species was too much of a hare specialist unable to kill the caribou and left many of the caribou calves dying of infections. This probably wouldn't had happened if the snowshoe hares wasn't introduced; but if the snowshoe hares were not introduced, then the people wouldn't have enough protein to work efficiently in the fishing industry. Catch-22.

Another instance I could think of is when people blamed foxes and coyotes for the decline in rabbit and quail populations. The reality was when Americans left the farms in the 1940s and 1950s, the land was no longer being maintained and the rabbits and quails thrived. When the forests began growing back in the 1970s and 1980s, the quail and rabbit populations declined. Of course, we now know that in the rewilding eastern United States, elks, martens and fisher-cats are coming back to their historical range.

Similarly, research on the changing ecology, particularly the woodland caribou, in northern Alberta as the result of the tar-sands development project is causing the non-hunters to be angry at the depredation advocates.

However, I am not anti-predator hunting. Lots of people depended on coyotes for their fur. Some ranchers will not touch a coyote the rest of the year, but will employ shooters for any coyote which ventured close to the calves during birthing season. The coyotes who are wise enough to stay away don't get shot.

Also, some populations such as Black Bears are exploding because they are now feasting on landfills and dumpsters. The bears are also learning not to fear humans since they are going into settlements to take advantage of our human waste. Not to mention bear-meat is commonly consumed in the Northeast United States and in the Pacific Northwest, bear-meat is often used for dog-food.

Or if you are living in the Northwest Territories, a trapper is dependent on the price of lynxes, wolverines, martens and other game-animals to survive the year. He is also not going to waste the meat. Apparently, lynx-meat is very good.

So, I am not anti-predator hunting. However, I am skeptical of some of the claims made by anti-wolf, anti-coyote, or anti-cougar groups. Why? Every time research points to something else other than predators being the problem, it gives hunters a black eye and gives the anti-hunting crowd more ammunition why hunters are stupid in their eyes.

It happened after the mid-19^th century when the Newfoundland government introduced snowshoe hares. Newfoundland and Labrador historically didn't have snowshoe hares, so the main prey was Arctic hare. It is very seldom that shoeshoe hares' and Arctic hares' natural range overlaps within the range of Canadian Lynx. Also, because Canadian Lynx are a snowshoe specialist, their carrying capacity is very low in the range of the Arctic hares.

However, since the landscape never had a population of snowshoe hares, the new species easily over-populated in a new ecosystem. So, by early 1900s, the population crashed. Surprisingly, it turned out both snowshoe hares and Arctic hares have a ten-years cycle. then the lynx, whose carrying capacity increased after the introduction of the snowshoes, turned to the caribou calves. However, the lynxes couldn't kill the calves so most of the young caribou died of diseases. This scenario is common example in textbooks for when two species competing for the same niche (snowshoe hares and Arctic hares) have an impact the apex predators.

@brada1878 That was super neat! Thanks for sharing :)

Great posts @souggy :) That's pretty interested and I never knew about that! I think it's very much a knee-jerk, oversimplification when the fast choice is made to reduce predator numbers. One of the reasons I'm very against predators being tagged out in large quantities without legitimate study.

@brada1878 Great video! Makes me want to move out to Saskatchewan and take up ranching instead of programming :D Really cool to hear about the different roles that each breed takes upon itself.

@WrylyBrindle - I heard that too and was kinda a taken back by it. Tho I also kinda found it interesting as I had not considered using those collars in that way. Made me wonder if that is the origin of the typical mastiff (decorative) spike collar...

@WrylyBrindle @brada1878 @shibamistressThat is pretty interesting that they use the spike collars for that purpose, along with protection while fighting predators I'm sure. It must be no different than people, sometimes getting so involved in a fight/argument that one just sees red. Along with not having constant human oversight, so the dogs settle their disputes among themselves.

I still can't get over how gorgeous that countryside is.