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Cougar are far more effective at hunting them than any group of entitled Elmer Fudds. It should be illegal to hunt cougar, and they should be reintroduced back

Cougar are far more effective at hunting them than any group of entitled Elmer Fudds. It should be illegal to hunt cougar, and they should be reintroduced back to everywhere they were extirpated. But there's also a sense of what's been happening with coyote, which is the more they are hunted, the more pressure is put on them to proliferate, i.e. the more coyote hunters kill, the more coyote there will be. It may very well be far more effective to TNR or haze feral pigs, no matter how much fun killing things is.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
Do you have a link to your Coyote example? From the outside it sounds like complete nonsense and I have never heard of an animal that works like that.
- pvaldes 4y ago
  This is common biology knowledge and has been proven. Pigs do it also. Fishes also change its strategies under heavy predator's pressure. Shouldn't be difficult to find examples on any decent ecology handbook
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    I studied biology and it wasn't in the curriculum I learned. If you have an ecosystem that can support 100 coyotes, how does shooting 10 make the ecosystem magically able to support 200? There are some population management strategies where harvesting large mature animals allow an ecosystem to support a greater number of younger and smaller animals, but that is a very different phenomenon than what you described.
    - Maursault 4y ago
      Well, you're going to have to do a little thinking for yourself. We've been slaughtering coyote by the hundreds of thousands annually for over a century, and in that time their range has expanded to 48 stages. The coyote population has tripled since 1980 alone. You think there are less hunters? No, there are a lot more. We've gotten really good at killing coyote, upwards of half a million a year. It is ineffective. Hunters are causing the problem, not helping it. When coyote are killed, this pressure increases litter sizes. That's why it's happening. And if hunters continue the way they have been, we're going to be literally swimming in coyote. [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-killing-coyotes-doesn-rsquo-t-make-livestock-safer/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-killing-coyot...

s1artibartfast 4y ago

Do you have a link to your Coyote example? From the outside it sounds like complete nonsense and I have never heard of an animal that works like that.

pvaldes 4y ago
This is common biology knowledge and has been proven. Pigs do it also. Fishes also change its strategies under heavy predator's pressure. Shouldn't be difficult to find examples on any decent ecology handbook
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  I studied biology and it wasn't in the curriculum I learned. If you have an ecosystem that can support 100 coyotes, how does shooting 10 make the ecosystem magically able to support 200? There are some population management strategies where harvesting large mature animals allow an ecosystem to support a greater number of younger and smaller animals, but that is a very different phenomenon than what you described.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    Well, you're going to have to do a little thinking for yourself. We've been slaughtering coyote by the hundreds of thousands annually for over a century, and in that time their range has expanded to 48 stages. The coyote population has tripled since 1980 alone. You think there are less hunters? No, there are a lot more. We've gotten really good at killing coyote, upwards of half a million a year. It is ineffective. Hunters are causing the problem, not helping it. When coyote are killed, this pressure increases litter sizes. That's why it's happening. And if hunters continue the way they have been, we're going to be literally swimming in coyote. [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-killing-coyotes-doesn-rsquo-t-make-livestock-safer/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-killing-coyot...