In a letter to the editor in Tuesday’s edition of the Democrat, the Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs of Sullivan County, gave reasons why the annual coyote hunt should be allowed to continue. Now whether you are for or against this hunt really doesn’t matter to the ecosystem of New York State, because the ecosystem will adapt and those adaptations may be worse than having an annual coyote hunt in the first place. 

Sure you can argue cruelty to animals, but which ones? If left unchecked, the coyote population will get out of hand, to the point that they will start having to move from rural areas of the county into suburban areas. If there are not enough squirrels and rabbits to eat, they will be happy to kill your cat or small dog at the first chance they get. I caution summer visitors all the time about tying up small dogs on a lead in the backyard of their Air BNB if they are not outside with them. Everyone loves to come up to see nature, but many do not understand that wild animals are just that, wild. Quite honestly, having just one annual coyote hunt isn’t even enough to keep up with the population explosion. 

As the deer population in New York State has skyrocketed with the annual decrease in active hunters, the coyote population has grown as well. Why do you think you always see fawns by the roadside in the late spring and early summer. The does hide the fawns in the tall grass in the ditches by the side of the road so that they will be safe from coyotes as coyotes generally do not want to be seen. Of course this also leads to the problem of deer getting hit by cars or people finding the fawns and thinking they were abandoned by the mother, take them in and want to raise them. Just check with the DEC to find out how much trouble you can get into for doing that. I have written about this before, but since 2005, more deer are killed annually by car than by gun in Sullivan County. Since deer do not have no fault insurance guess who gets to pick up the tab. 

That in-turn raises insurance rates for everyone else as well. Coyotes were reintroduced to help bring down the deer population, but coyotes by themselves are not the only solution. We need hunters as well and state gaming laws that will encourage instead of discourage hunting in the future. Every week throughout the year I sell products to keep deer away from someones plants. My own house has a six foot high deer net around one third of it, of course I live in the country, some of my customers with deer problems are in the center of Monticello. You can usually catch a glimpse of deer crossing Broadway in Monticello on a moonlit night. 

The deer have moved into town and soon the coyotes will follow, especially if they get overcrowded in the woods. So like it or not, the coyote hunt needs to continue, but unfortunately, the decisions made in Albany are not usually aligned with the needs of rural counties because we don’t have enough votes to matter. Now you might think from my rant that I am an avid hunter and that is the furthest thing from the truth. I have never gone hunting in my life nor do I plan to, but that is not the issue, population control is. You can’t get a dog or cat from the ASPCA unless it has been spayed or neutered, so why should we let the coyote, and deer for that matter, populations go unchecked.