Curmudgeon

So, we are back to this nonsense about "out of control" or "increasing" coyote populations. Your 19th century approach to game management does not work. It seems people guesstimate the number of coyotes based upon 2 subjective things: how many they hear; how much game they see. Where is the evidence that coyotes are increasing? Why can't you find someone with a science based approach to agree with you. From http://newwest.net/topic/article/hunting_and_predators_does_it_work/C564/L564/ "....a growing body of evidence suggests that indiscriminate predator control, whether due to sport hunting or by predator control agencies like Wildlife Services, has the opposite effect and actually increases conflicts between humans and predators." From DU: Q: What about using predator control to produce more ducks? A: On a local scale, predator control can provide immediate benefits to a few waterfowl, but it will not contribute to the long-term security of waterfowl habitat and waterfowl populations or abundance on a continental or even regional scale. Nor is there a lasting impact on waterfowl numbers, because as predators are removed they are quickly replaced, or other predator populations increase. Predators have to be removed every year, and that is not a realistic option over large areas or over the long term. From Texas - http://agrilife.org/texnatwildlife/coyotes/table-of-contents/the-effects-of-control-on-coyote-populations/ ".........coyote populations can support high rates of exploitation. Sterling et al. (1983) found in their simulations that control programs inflicting less than 50% annual mortality could not be expected to produce declining populations using any combination of litter size and percent breeding. Windberg and Knowlton (1988) showed that the number of coyotes actually using small geographic areas, and therefore the number that would have to be removed to gain population control, is much greater than one might infer from density estimates"

Sounds like a good guess. I have seen osprey doing this. A few years back, Hawk Mountain - the famous migration site - asked other hawk count sites to document how many ospreys were carrying food during migration. They even had entry fields for this on hawkcount.org.

Discussing this on a bird/natural history listserve, the explanation I like the best is a crow or raven caching it in the tree. It could easily have been picked up dead on the shore of a pond. Corvids are famous for caching food.

The point is/was that the death penalty has never been a deterrent - at least on any scale or at a population level. It just doesn't work. It only feels good. This isn't about whether "rational people should be concerned". It is about fear as a deterrent. That only works with rational people. BTW - What's up with suicidal terrorists with 6 month old babies? Isn't that odd?

It seems the people you and Papist fear the most don't fear dying.

Things are slow. The flying squirrel is regular but not much is eating the remains. This is the first time I have gotten this species on camera. My daughter the ecologist calls the smaller weasels "charismatic minifauna".

Hopefully, all those pigs photographed 3-4 years back are dead - killed by APHIS. Like I said, do a FOIL request and you can get many photos and more recent photos -esp from Hancock where one survived. Hopefully, it will not find a mate. If they breed 3X a winter in Texas - as someone said earlier - even if this is true, which I doubt, it does not apply in NYS.

Since 4 seasons has a vested interest in the deer farming industry, proof to him is something completely different than scientific proof.

Doc- What does this mean? I have too many deer. They do thousands of dollars in damage each year. Money out of my pocket. So, am I pro or anti? I enjoy hunting them and spent many days in the Dacks walking many miles during my life. I was on a CTF recommending lowering population numbers. They were too high for forest regeneration and wildlife that depends on the understory. It was the right thing to do. Deer hunters are one group. Many - but not all - have a very narrow focus. They do not consider the well being of other native plants and animals. I was talking to a deer farmer the other day about escapees that DEC wanted to kill. They were Saskatchewan stock. The farmer found it incredible that DEC wanted to remove this source of genetic pollution from the gene pool because they had bigger antlers.

I favor the precautionary principle. Prove the urine is safe before using it in the wild.

So, can we agree to disagree?

There are plenty of pics. Some appeared in Adirondack Explorer. They use game cameras to monitor them. DEC doesn't release many but do a FOIL request and your bandwidth will be filled in a hurry. Here's some - http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/70843.html Here's another - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/nyregion/feral-pigs-plaguing-upstate-new-york.html?_r=0 Good map - http://www.nyis.info/?action=invasive_detail&id=18

Yes, reports from Delaware are dismal. Otsego - at least here - is very different. None of the locals are complaining. Why? I'm guessing Delaware is a harder place for a deer to make a living.

I don't hunt Delaware but I am familiar enough with it. It seems to me that much of what happened in the Dacks with forests maturing and closing the canopy is also happening, or has happened, in the Catskills. I am in northern Otsego County. I keep a pretty close eye on weather and ground conditions. Here, we get more lake effect than you do. However, you guys can get hammered by noreasters that barely reach me. This seems to be happening more and more in recent years. I tried to find some snow pack information via google but wasn't very successful finding anything up to date.

APHIS - USDA's hired guns - killed a bunch of Eurasian boar in Delaware County in 2014. This was just outside the hunting preserve in Hancock that someone ripped apart in a another thread. I heard they got one on camera that APHIS missed. Someone I know said there were feral domestic pigs around Greek Peak. He saw them while deer hunting 2 or 3 years back. I assume DEC had APHIS go after them too. If no one is seeing them, that is a good thing.

DEC staff I talk to say deer harvest numbers are down in western R4 and eastern R7. The biggest reason is winter kill - the same reason numbers dropped dramatically in '01 and '02. DEC seems to have not realized the extent of last winter's kill until the last couple of weeks. So, that wasn't figured into the number of doe tags that were issued. I photographed more bucks this fall than in any of the 7 years I've been using cameras. That said, we didn't kill a legal buck on the property. That hasn't happened since I moved here in '82. We did kill a bunch of does to address the chronic overpopulation problem. Several people called me about deer curling up and dying in their yards last winter. These are just the deer people saw. What was seen near houses was happening across the landscape. The predators didn't even have to kill stuff. Dead deer were laid out as a feast. Scapegoating predators for population level changes may feel good but is truly simplistic.The coyote population has not changed significantly on a regional level. Coyotes do kill deer, especially fawns. Not enough as far as I'm concerned. Maybe Otsego County coyotes are just incompetent and they are those feared killing machines in other counties. Certainly, deer numbers can't have anything to do with snow pack, record cold temps, habitat, DMPs, etc., etc., etc.

Hey, how did the egg guys hijack this thread? Papist would be proud.

All the dogs love the UPS guy. He has treats.

d-bone - Ford is right. Papist is a provocateur, good for a chuckle now and then. Papist - If you are the academician you claim, don't you have grades to do? No other prof I know has as much time as you for this stuff.

As a professional Christmas tree farmer, I go out to the yard a few days before Christmas and find the least ugly thing left. Then I cut it to about 4' and put in on top of a table.

Except for the Mrs. and grandchildren, everyone gets maple syrup for Christmas.

Right now, a woman in my family is attempting to break up with her common law husband. He is extremely upset. He refuses to accept the change. She owns the house. He won't leave. He will be evicted. He is a gun owner. He has no history of violence. However, there are a bunch of us who are quite concerned about the woman's safety. What can you do? In another thread - I'm paraphrasing at my own peril here - Papist suggested that families need to take responsibility for keeping guns out of the hands of unstable people. What if someone is stable and then is not?

I agree with the need to keep guns out of the hands of some people, but what people? While the Left is the focus of this discussion, when there is no transparency to such "lists" they are always subject to politicization. I was on such a list during the Reagan administration because I opposed the dirty wars in Central American. During the 60s, the bad guys were revolutionary leftists and blacks. Then it was peace activists while Reagan was in office. During the 90s - after Timothy McViegh - it was the right. After 9-11, Bush was using new laws against terrorism to harass environmentalists. The bad guys change according to who is in power.

While VJP and I don't agree on much, I do agree that the proposal lacks due process and adequate balance. Anyone can end up on a list, even you and me.

I used to live in Willet. It was the wild west back in the 70s.