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Post by Cosmic Wonder on Oct 30, 2009 21:43:07 GMT -5
I understand the wonder of nature, and I get that we are not at the top of the food chain, unless we are armed. But I also get that we do have oposable thumbs and wish that young woman had gone hiking with one of these: Mike
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Tamarack
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Ancient Citizen
Posts: 9,376
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Post by Tamarack on Oct 30, 2009 21:54:02 GMT -5
Somehow I find the untimely death of a young adult particularly tragic. My condolences to her family and friends.
Also bizarre and puzzling. I have been in many wilderness areas in many parts of the continent and have come close to coyotes, black bears, moose, bobcats, and water moccasins (some closer than others). I have never felt unsafe. At times I have considered acquiring a firearm and practicing its use, but I will continue being careful in the back country and accepting randomness in life.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 30, 2009 22:14:49 GMT -5
I think someone else already posted this but maybe because we're in closer contact with more "wild" animals (due to our expanding housing needs) they are losing their fear of humans and starting to look at us as possible prey or (in the case of herbivores) possible predators to be fought.
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Post by John B on Oct 30, 2009 22:35:37 GMT -5
This evening I watched three deer eating acorns in the front lawn. Of the three, one had a gash on her left rear leg and was limping pretty badly, and one had a 4" section of her right hind leg torn up - it looked like the skin was ripped off. Not quite as bad as the one my wife and I saw back in August (which looked like most of a rear leg was skinned), but pretty awful. The Missouri department of conservation says coyotes usually attack the neck, right behind the jaw, and that wild dogs are usually the culprits in other woundings. Maybe this coyote(s) didn't learn the right way to hunt.
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Post by epaul on Oct 31, 2009 0:07:07 GMT -5
Mankind has always been in close proximity to wild animals. Mankind has always lived in the woods and in the wild. Mankind was born and raised in the wood and wild.
I don't understand this talk about how we are invading the wild animals space. Maybe it is a citycentric view, but it isn't accurate.
There was a time when if a coyote wasn't very cautious around humans, it didn't live long enough to breed. The result was a bunch of clever and cautious coyotes that avoided man. There are signs that may no longer be the case.
I'm a live and let live kind of guy, but if I ever saw a wolf or coyote that dared hang anywhere around the farm, I would shoot it. But the wolves and coyotes around here avoid people, there are quite a few pickups with guns in them and still quite a few folks who aren't concerned about popping a wolf that hangs around where people are.
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Post by omaha on Oct 31, 2009 0:23:24 GMT -5
That's the point exactly. Its not about being at the top of the food chain. Its about being the top predator.
I saw a great NatGeo thing on lions and hyenas long time ago. Painted a pretty brutal picture of the lives of both species. The part that struck me was when the male lion (who generally just sat around and didn't give a crap about much of anything except keeping other male lions from coming around and bumping uglies with his females) decided to start killing hyenas for sport. These hyenas, at least when there were two or three of them, were pretty much an even match for the average lioness in the pride. But with the male it was no contest. The producers had an infrared camera and they showed him rampaging through the hyena den at night, killing them at will. It was pure natural brutality. This was not hunting. This was killing.
And it was all about keeping the hyenas away from their game, and their cubs. No different than Paul shooting a wolf.
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Post by epaul on Oct 31, 2009 0:31:59 GMT -5
Those coyotes wouldn't have been protecting cubs. Cubs are born in the spring and grow quickly. By fall they are nearly full grown and independent.
Those coyotes were after a meal.
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Post by Doug on Oct 31, 2009 7:30:08 GMT -5
On Niki and I's daily trips out in the desert we've been exposed to a lot of coyotes. Right now they are very curious, the ones we are seeing close are spring's litters. Young stupid adults. Like most animals the just barely adult are the ones that we have the most contact with. Look at animals killed on the road. You almost never see a road kill mature animal, the ones on the road are young coons not 40lbs old coons, or spike deer never big rack bucks. In FL we shot coyotes that we saw on our 40 acres to protect our cats and dogs, so mostly we didn't see them.
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Post by sekhmet on Oct 31, 2009 9:27:46 GMT -5
I think this talk about "invading space" is a bit out there. It's all our space and their space. We just happen to be sprawled on a lot of space that we defend with guns. When we go places without guns and there are more of them than there are of us they are in the ascendant. It really is wild there on that trail. It's not somewhere you would want to be alone, especially in the fall when very few humans venture up the mountain.
Ms. Mitchell's mother posted a letter at the Globe and Mail thanking everyone for their kind thoughts and also stating that her daughter was an experienced hiker and loved the woods. She would never have wanted a cull of the coyote population in the park as some have suggested. I suppose the moose wouldn't mind a cull of the coyotes mind you.
Anyone interested in the terrain of the place where this happened should check out Cheticamp Nova Scotia on Google Earth. The trail is just north east of the village by about five miles on the edge of a cliff and along a deep ridge. Not somewhere I would go alone.
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