Coyote attacks on humans, especially those that are unrelated to rabies or starvation, are becoming more common, and the number of involved coyotes is also increasing. Whereas you used to hear about a single, or maybe a pair, of coyotes attacking a small child in a backyard or a playground, now there are attacks such as the one in Ohio (linked above) where 4 coyotes attacked a grown man on a lawnmower in broad daylight.
A coyote trots across an urban road while a child plays in her yard in the background.
In areas where coyotes are rapidly spreading, such as the midwest and the eastern states, there is little being done to stop them. Hunting is more difficult and less productive in the thicker forested areas and underbrush of states east of the Mississippi River, and in some cases the coyotes have been breeding with eastern wolves, making them larger and more aggressive. Combine all of that with a small prey population and more dense human populations and you have a potential problem.
Coyotes in a subdivision in Littleton, Colorado.
Even here in the western states coyote overpopulation is a problem. Damages to antelope and deer populations are easily seen and we certainly have our share of attacks, though with our large open spaces and greater prey populations, the attacks are rarely food motivated. My point to all of this is that the need for predator population control must go well beyond hunting, which accounts for a VERY small percentage of the overall control effort, and people have to get serious about self-protection as well as management of animal populations. We're stewards of this planet, after all, and we're human beings with opposable thumbs, for crying out loud - so we'd better start acting like it. You can cry for the animals if you'd like, but they won't stop eating you just because you care about them.
Happy Hunting!
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