[B]ehold the coyote (Canis latrans) a creature of myth (a trickster in Amerindian folklore) and mystery (starting with how to pronounce it; accent on the first syllable and vocalize the ‘e, according to Wikipedia’s audio pronunciation guide).
And now the object of a philosophical dilemma in Vermont.
Quite a beast.
They are “amazing animals,” in the words of Fish & Wildlife Commissioner Louis Porter, who is aware that some Vermonters hate coyotes so much that they organize hunting contests just to see how many they can wipe out.
Perhaps not for long. If a bill, H. 636, that has already passed the House becomes law, anyone who organizes or participate in a coyote-hunting competition could be fined at least $1,000 and lose his or her hunting license.
Because the coyote is an endangered species?
Not a bit. Lynx, martens, mountain lions and bats are on the list of endangered mammals in the state. But the coyote population, despite all those killing contests, is holding steady at somewhere between 6,000 and 9,000 statewide, Porter said.
Nobody has put forth a scientific reason for banning the killing contests. In a letter to the House Committee on Natural Resources, Fish, and Wildlife, one scientist, the celebrated wildlife tracker (and hunter) Susan Morse, said, “celebrating killing is inappropriate and sends the wrong message to young aspiring hunters.” Non-hunters, she said, find the killing contests “appalling.”
All that could be true, but it’s marketing, not science, lending credence to Porter’s concern that the main reason for banning coyote-killing contests is “because we don’t like them.”
Porter and his department opposed the bill in its original form because it included a jail term for violators. Some of those potential violators are a part of what might be called the Fish & Wildlife Department’s political base: the organized hunting and fishing clubs. Though the coyote-hating faction is probably a small sliver of that base, the Department was not likely to favor a measure that would send some of its core constituency to the pokey.
The imprisonment provision was knocked out on a surprisingly close 75-to-64 vote on an amendment proposed by Rep. Janssen Willhoit, R-St. Johnsbury. The amended bill passed 95-to-44 and is now under consideration by the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee.
Banning the coyote-killing events is not entirely a matter of personal preference. The contests, said Rep. Paul Lefebvre, R-Newark, “cast hunting into a terrible light at a time hunting is coming under increasing scrutiny.”
Lefebvre, a devoted hunter whose family has had a deer camp in the Northeast Kingdom since the 1950s, worried that “more and more land is posted every year,” and said that “in banning the contests, we’re really stepping up to plate with respect for wildlife and against wanton waste.”
But he also acknowledged that the killing contests posed “a cultural problem,” not a wildlife management problem.
Coyotes are also “mythical” in that other definition of myth: folks believing stuff that isn’t true. The coyote-killing contests are based on not one but two false premises: that killing all those coyotes will decimate the coyote population and that coyote predation diminishes the deer herd.
The coyote seems to be a persistently adaptable species which thrives whatever people do. And while coyotes do kill deer, wildlife biologists agree that the deer population depends on how hard the winter is, how abundant the food, and other factors unrelated to coyote predation.
Without the prison term provision, Porter and his department are neutral on H. 636. And while he wouldn’t come right out and say he doesn’t like the coyote-killing contests himself, he made a point of saying Fish & Wildlife “doesn’t license them,” and regards coyotes as “an important and valuable part of our ecosystem.”
Beyond the coyote issue, though, Porter raises a valid question: does a free society outlaw activities and practices (in this case one could even call it a tradition) just because “we don’t like them”?
The answer seems to be: sometimes.
Jay Diaz, the Staff Attorney for the Vermont ACLU, said that in one way or another people have been “legislating morality” for years. Bigamy, for instance, is against the law almost everywhere, “even if everyone involved is a willing adult and everybody is a happy partner.” Laws against cruelty to animals also reflect our “decision as a society” to ban certain practices just because most people find them repugnant.
Inevitably, what one culture finds repugnant, another may not. In Korea, eating dogs is not uncommon, a fact that reportedly dismayed some of the American athletes competing the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang last month.
In America, eating dogs is repugnant, and sometimes illegal. Eating dog meat is not against the law in Vermont, but it is in seven states, including neighboring New York. Commercial sale of dog meat or killing dogs in slaughterhouses is illegal everywhere in the US, or at least so says the web site Dogtime.com.
So outlawing activities “because we don’t like them” is not unheard of. But there’s much less of it than there used to be — not long ago adultery was a crime, and in some places so was opening a store on Sunday — and it can, Diaz agreed, be dangerous.
“You want to be very careful,” he said. “You do want sound justifications when you’re making something against the law strictly on moral grounds.”
A challenge for how justified a prohibition would be might depend on how widespread the moral revulsion is. If it’s pretty close to unanimous — as eating dogs would seem to be in Vermont — there’s a better case for making it against the law.
Is abhorrence of coyote-killing contests that prevalent in Vermont? Let’s see what the Senate says.
