January is a good time to follow fresh coyote tracks in the snow, and sometimes they follow deer tracks.
Trail cameras show us that indeed, coyotes are sometimes caught just a few minutes behind spooked whitetails.
Coyotes on camera are not unusual anymore and their tracks are ubiquitous.
Some people react with negativity when they hear of deer being chased by predators. “Poor deer. Darn ‘yotes. The DEC should have a year-round season on them.”
Currently, in New York, coyote season runs from Oct. 1 to March 29. And coyotes can legally be hunted at any time of day or night. In Pennsylvania, there is no closed season on coyotes. Hunters are urged to check their state regulations because they are apt to be modified each year.
Seems like predators are always the bad guys. And it doesn’t matter which animal kingdom we are talking about, whether mammals, birds, fish, plants or even that third kingdom, mushrooms and fungi.
In the mammal realm, wolves, coyotes, bears, weasels and all cats are often painted as bad characters, even from our house cats to lions and tigers, when they kill. They are all, each and every one, a born and certified predator, after all … no doubt.
They have no choice but to kill, and the process of hunting and killing is built into their DNA so they can survive. Do they kill all the time?
Just when in need or when the spirit moves them … kind of like we hominids.
For example, take our loveable house cats. Fluffy the cat may be well-fed with the most expensive canned food. But put here outdoors and she reverts to her predatory nature as soon as her retractable claws hit the earth.
It has been widely reported in newspapers and through research facilities such as the Smithsonian Institution and Cornell University, that their estimates, through extensive research, find that housecats kill over a billion … yes, billion … songbirds a year in the United States alone!
But because it is our sweet little kitty, we look at her serial killing as OK and let her roam the neighborhood.
And while we are looking at the avian kingdom, some species of birds are predators too, such as hawks, eagles and owls.
When a hawk picks off a songbird from our bird feeder we often categorize the hawk as bad when it is just trying to live and feed too, just like those other birds at the feeder.
Few of us say, “Cool … a hawk at the feeder.” Instead, the sentiment is typically derogatory about the winged predator. We miss so many opportunities to revel in the diversity of nature.
Scientists now say that birds are descendants of dinosaurs. So, if those paleontologists are correct, then hawks are related to T. Rex or Velociraptors, such as those depicted in the popular movies with the Jurassic theme.
And then we, humankind, was more like the small lemurs … our primate progenitors.
Well, the tables certainly have turned, and now we, as human beings are the alpha predators and birds are often on the menu filling large rows and sections at our grocery store’s meat counters.
Bird hunting in all its many different forms, from upland gunning to turkey and waterfowl shooting is very popular worldwide and has been since before written history as archeological evidence has demonstrated.
So it seems more than a bit disingenuous at the least when we castigate animal predators for doing the same thing as we.
Some fish are vegetarians, such as the diminutive molly in our aquariums to the hefty carp in our rivers, streams and lakes.
But most fish are of the predacious variety too, and of course, we use their gastronomic tastes against them when we bait a hook or flick a fly on the water. A fish eating a minnow is really analogous to a hawk picking off a bird, or a fox catching a mouse.
We all need to eat. So maybe we are being a bit hypocritical when we say a hawk or coyote is bad when it catches a bird, while we are passing the plate of carved turkey around the dinner table.
— Oak Duke writes a biweekly Outdoors column.
This article originally appeared on The Evening Tribune: Not just bad guys, predators have their place in the wild | Outdoors column
Reporting by Oak Duke, Outdoors Columnist / The Evening Tribune
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