coyote attack in Cape Breton

A trapper in Cape Breton caught a coyote last season that weighed 70.5 lbs. I saw a pic of it on another forum and it looked like a wolf.

It's a shame about the young woman, the radio station is reporting that she was a folk singer on tour and was to have played her first show this weekend.
 
We've got coyotes here in Newfoundland that are well over 50lbs. Haven't run into any aggressive 'yotes yet, but that day is coming. We're seeing them in the day much more often now and they're cleaning up a hunter-killed moose site in mere hours.

Foxes are being driven from their traditional territory and into closer contact with humans. I'm expecting to see a sharp rise in French Lung Worm in beagles this year because of it.

Our coyote license is good from Sept. to July, but without it, no one is allowed to carry a firearm in any area "frequented by wildlife." Protection against hostile wildlife doesn't cut it. I guess things are the same in Nova Scotia as the government official suggested that hikers carry a "knife."

That'll work just dandy against a pack of 'yotes or an aggressive black bear! I had a run in with one of the latter a few years ago hunting out in central Newfoundland. When facing a pissed-off 600lb bear, even the machete I had in my hand seemed pretty puny at the time. Good luck with a 3"-4" folder!

When are government officials going to wake up and realize that nature isn't a Disney movie? The false sense of security they instill in the tofu, tree-hugging crowd is getting them killed needlessly. This girls death was entirely preventable, and that is a tragedy.
 
X-man said:
We've got coyotes here in Newfoundland that are well over 50lbs. Haven't run into any aggressive 'yotes yet, but that day is coming. We're seeing them in the day much more often now and they're cleaning up a hunter-killed moose site in mere hours.

Foxes are being driven from their traditional territory and into closer contact with humans. I'm expecting to see a sharp rise in French Lung Worm in beagles this year because of it.

Our coyote license is good from Sept. to July, but without it, no one is allowed to carry a firearm in any area "frequented by wildlife." Protection against hostile wildlife doesn't cut it. I guess things are the same in Nova Scotia as the government official suggested that hikers carry a "knife."

That'll work just dandy against a pack of 'yotes or an aggressive black bear! I had a run in with one of the latter a few years ago hunting out in central Newfoundland. When facing a pissed-off 600lb bear, even the machete I had in my hand seemed pretty puny at the time. Good luck with a 3"-4" folder!

When are government officials going to wake up and realize that nature isn't a Disney movie? The false sense of security they instill in the tofu, tree-hugging crowd is getting them killed needlessly. This girls death was entirely preventable, and that is a tragedy.
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IIRC, I don't think you can carry a firearm in any National Park in Canada.
 
In NS you are allowed to carry a shotgun with up to #4 buckshot for "ther harvestable wildlife" as long as you have the $3.00 Habitat Stamp.
 
sad to hear what happened to that young lady .that is why i carry my rifle with me at all times in the woods .
 
It's a shame something like that happened, sometimes the government doesn't realize the animal control problem till it is to late. One solution to the problem would be to have a good best friend with you, i am not concerned about the coyotes when i go for a walk at night it seems the coyotes don't want any (trouble) my 146 lb Anatolian shepard.
 
sealhunter said:
anyone who has ever ben on the wrongside of a dog understands ... much less coyotes..
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:agree:

Having owned 5 GSDs over the years and been bitten once by a strangers Rottweiler I can say that big canines are really fast when they want a piece of you. Like suddenly you're looking down and they have their teeth in you and you barely saw them move.

Sympathies to the young lady's family and friends.
 
Young musician dies from coyote attack

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1149994.html
Halifax, NS | Thu, October 29th, 2009​
Young musician dies from coyote attack
Hunt on for animal that mauled, bit 19-year-old hiker on Cape Breton trail
By Our Staff
Thu. Oct 29 - 4:46 AM

tc271009skyline2_RGB_10-29-09.jpg

This barricade blocks traffic to the Skyline Trail entrance at the top of French Mountain on Wednesday. (TERA CAMUS / Cape Breton Bureau)
10-29-09_taylor.jpg

Taylor Mitchell, a young folksinger-songwriter from Toronto, died Wednesday from injuries she suffered in a coyote attack just a day earlier. Two coyotes mauled and bit Ms. Mitchell all over her body while she was hiking in the Cape Breton Highlands.

CONSERVATION officers in Cape Breton were still hunting Wednesday for one of the coyotes that took the life of a young Toronto musician who was on an East Coast tour.

Taylor Josephine Stephanie Luciow, 19, a folksinger and songwriter who was known onstage as Taylor Mitchell, died in hospital Wednesday morning, a day after the attack.

Ms. Mitchell was hiking, apparently alone, on the Skyline Trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park when she was mauled by two coyotes, said RCMP spokeswoman Sgt. Brigdit Leger.

RCMP received a 911 call at about 3:15 p.m. Tuesday that two coyotes were attacking a hiker. When they arrived, they found only one of the animals.

» Taylor Mitchell's MySpace page
"Clarity" by Taylor Mitchell
Watch Mitchell's last performance, in Lucasville, N.S.
» 'Big dreams, a big heart'

"For officer and public safety, an RCMP member shot a coyote that was still present at the scene," Sgt. Leger said. "The coyote, although thought originally to be dead, kind of hobbled off to the side."

Paramedics rushed Ms. Mitchell, who had bites all over her body, to Sacred Heart Hospital in Cheticamp. She was airlifted to the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre in Halifax early Tuesday evening, where she succumbed to her injuries Wednesday morning, Sgt. Leger said.

After attending to Ms. Mitchell, one of the officers "went back to retrieve the carcass, (but) the carcass was not located," Sgt. Leger said.

Parks Canada officers shut down the trail to search for the coyotes. They found one on Tuesday night.

"It was caught and shot," said Germaine LeMoine, spokeswoman for Parks Canada in Cape Breton.

The coyote killed Tuesday night was not the one the RCMP shot and injured earlier in the day, Ms. LeMoine said.

The search for the remaining animal, which Ms. LeMoine believed had shown aggression, was still underway late Wednesday afternoon.

At the entrance to the Skyline Trail on Wednesday morning, a barricade and signs in English and French warned of coyotes. Five park officials searched the area surrounding the 9.2-kilometre looping trail.

At the French Mountain look-off overlooking the Skyline Trail, three people were discussing the tragedy.

Residents of nearby Cheticamp were in a state of shock Wednesday over the teenager’s death.

"It’s so sad, eh?" one woman said to another in a lineup at a local coffee shop. "Only 19, that’s too young."

"No one should be hiking alone at this time of year," another resident said. "It’s just too dangerous, anything can happen — moose, bear . . ."

Officials are at a loss to explain what may have caused this tragic animal encounter. Parks Canada is sending the carcass for pathological testing to determine if there was anything physically wrong with the animal to cause such aggressive behaviour.

"This was a very rare occurrence," Ms. LeMoine said.

Ms. Mitchell was midway though her concert tour of the Maritimes and had taken a break to go hiking, her manager Lisa Weitz wrote in an email to The Chronicle Herald.

"She loved the woods and had a deep affinity for their beauty and serenity," she wrote.

The manager told the Toronto Star that after speaking to Ms. Mitchell’s mother late Tuesday night, "we thought she was stable, but she had lost too much blood."

Mike Campbell owns the Carleton bar in Halifax where the singer was scheduled to perform on Sunday. He booked her after getting a cold-call email from Ms. Mitchell’s agent and was won over after listening to one song.

"Most times I say no," he said outside the Argyle Street establishment Wednesday afternoon.

"She was quite clearly, to my ears, that good a talent. She sounded like somebody who was already well established and had something to say."

Ms. Mitchell released her debut CD, For Your Consideration, this year and just this month received a Canadian Folk Music Award nomination.

Mr. Campbell got a text message Tuesday night telling him about the attack and then a second saying she seemed to be doing better. At 3 a.m., he got a third text telling him she had died.

"There’s just no words for that," he said.

The Evergreen Theatre in Margaretsville, Annapolis County, announced Wednesday that the Oct. 30 show at which Ms. Mitchell was to open for Daniel Heikalo has been cancelled "to show respect to her memory."

Ms. Mitchell’s family has requested that they be left to mourn in private, Sgt. Leger said, but the family expressed their thanks through Ms. Weitz.

"From her mother Emily and family, a heartfelt thank you to all who welcomed Taylor and her music into your hearts and for being a part of her dreams," Ms. Weitz wrote.

"Her warmth, artistry and infectious enthusiasm will be so missed and forever remembered."

With files from Patricia Brooks Arenburg, Dan Arsenault and Tera Camus,

staff reporters

( newsroom@herald.ca)
© 2009 The Halifax Herald Limited
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1149994.html
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Biologists baffled by attack

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1150025.html
Halifax, NS | Thu, October 29th, 2009​
Biologists baffled by attack

By IAN FAIRCLOUGH and EVA HOARE Staff Reporters
Thu. Oct 29 - 4:46 AM

The coyote attack Tuesday that killed Taylor Mitchell is rare on many levels, say wildlife scientists, including one who studied the animals in Nova Scotia for four years.

"This event is unprecedented," said Brent Patterson, who followed radio-collared coyotes in Kejimkujik National Park and River Denys, Cape Breton, in the 1990s as part of his master’s degree research.

"It’s very atypical of coyotes anywhere. We may at the end of all of this, despite any investigation, never have the answer as to why this happened," said Mr. Patterson, who’s an adjunct professor at Trent University in Ontario.

Jon Way, who runs Eastern Coyote Research in Massachusetts and has studied the animals for 12 years, says the fact a human was attacked is rare enough, but other elements make it even more so.

"I don’t think they regard people, even kids, as an opportunity for a food source, so this is certainly an abnormal attack," Mr. Way said. "They certainly are not like (big) cats that regard people as food, they just don’t do that."

The fact the incident happened in a sparsely populated area is also curious because coyotes tend to run at the first sign of humans in the wild, he said.

His studies in eastern Massachusetts involve animals that have a lot of interaction with humans because of heavy development.

"There are certainly interactions, but by and large the danger from these guys is at the bottom of the radar screen of dangerous things in your neighbourhood," Mr. Way said, adding this attack is "certainly a puzzle."

Mr. Patterson agreed. "It’s very rare for coyotes to attack a healthy adult."

He doubted that either animal involved in the attack was diseased because if they were sick, it would be unlikely the two would travel together.

An ill coyote generally "snaps" at others and "retreats," he said.

Rabies is a possibility, Mr. Way said, but two coyotes being involved in the mauling makes him question that.

"The first thing I thought with two animals is ‘wow, that’s bizarre,’ which is why I’m a little nervous to say ‘yeah, it’s a sick animal,’ " he said.

Mr. Patterson said it’s important to find out whether there has been any "habituation" of the creatures; in other words, people feeding the animals that has led them to lose their fear of humans.

The fear needs to be put back into them, said the scientist. Authorities should be checking whether there have been any instances of people handing or putting out food for the animals. And any carcasses authorities find should also be examined to see if food scraps are found among stomach contents, he said.

"Overall the habituation factor is something to avoid, because then all of a sudden they start to associate humans with food," Mr. Way said. "An animal might be having a bad day, and if it’s used to getting food might get (annoyed) if it can’t find any."

But it would take a lot of interaction between coyotes and people before humans would be regarded as prey, he said.

"I really question if they were looking at her as food. This has never happened before, so it would take a lot more interaction for any type of coyote . . . to think of people as food.

"These animals have lived around people in the northeast (United States) for 75 years, and if they wanted to attack people, it could happen anywhere at any time."

Mr. Way has never seen coyotes guard a food source or den from humans, and at this time of year pups are out of the den anyway. Habituated animals in urban areas could attack if they were trying to protect a food source, or if they felt cornered, he said.

Mr. Patterson, who tracked coyotes here from 1993 to ’97, said autumn is the worst time for them and they’re generally the skinniest at this time. Their populations usually rise and fall with the prevalence of snowshoe hares, their primary food source.

Until Tuesday’s attack, there had only been one other recorded human death in North America from a coyote attack. That was in 1981 when a three-year-old girl was attacked in her yard in California, where attacks in suburban areas have increased in the past decade.

Mr. Way has spent 12 years tracking 50 animals that are wearing radio collars.

"I get on my hands and knees trying to get close to observe them, to get video and pictures, and the first thing that happens, when any of them smell me or sense me, is they run in the opposite direction, even if they don’t quite know what I am," he said.

"They overall do a pretty amazing job of avoiding us. There are very few animals in most areas that are seen as problems that might attack people."

Both he and Mr. Patterson said it’s obviously best to observe any such animal from a safe distance.

If they are acting bold or aggressive and approaching you, clap your hands, make yourself appear as big as possible, or throw rocks to get them to go the other way, the scientists said.

As you would with bears, do not turn your back on the animal, Mr. Patterson said. Back away and "don’t take your eyes off the animal," he said.

He said to be mindful of certain cues the animal will give, including a bristling of the hair at the shoulders and obviously growls.

"You’ll know it when you see it."

COYOTES IN NOVA SCOTIA:
As coyotes spread eastward across North America they mixed with the red or eastern wolf, says wildlife biologist Jon Way. That created a cross that he calls a coywolf. DNA studies show that all the animals in the eastern part of Canada and the United States have wolf as part of their genetic makeup. The animals here are about five kilograms heavier on average than the coyote of the western part of the continent, weighing 16 kilograms with males sometimes reaching 25 kilograms.

FAST FACTS
•First recorded in Nova Scotia in 1977
•Coyotes often mate for life, and have five to seven pups in late April
•Top speed of 55 km/h, and can bound five metres
•Main prey is snowshoe hares and white-tailed deer, either live or dead. They also eat insects, blueberries, apples, mice, porcupines, woodchucks and garbage

Source: Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources

( ifairclough@herald.ca)

( ehoare@herald.ca)
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1150025.html
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My observations .............. many more coyotes

As mentioned in another thread, I can tell you that the coyote population in our area has exploded in the last few years. I think that an abundance of food (the regular wild life + cats, dogs, horse manure and other delicacies) and milder winters have contributed to the population explosion.

Regards
Robert
 
Had a coyote come right onto the porch this spring in CB. Cheeky bastard just looked in the window at me. No gun at the house there. I should rectify that situation.
 
Those comments from the biologist are alarming. Instead of trying to determine probable reasons as to why this event occured, all he can do is comment from past experience way back in the 90's. Anybody ever think maybe this lady had her period and they smelled blood? Even if she didn't have her period, coyotes have shown on numerous and countless occasions their brazen ruthlessness on grabbing young children i na public park with their elders watching. Or even someone's small dog while the owner was right there with it on a leash! It's time to take our heads out of our butts and realise that predators given no reason to fear, will attack and kill.


These yotes need to be shot at every opportunity no matter when or where they roam in parks or not.

I personally cannot comprehend that there is an actual season for yotes here in Quebec. What are we trying to protect? These buggers reproduce like rats and have spread way beyond their original ranges in the midwest. They almost wiped out the deer herds some 10 or so years ago in the Gaspé and lower areas. Deep snow allowed them to take down the deer with ease. Back then bologists could not come to grips with yotes actually harvesting deer. It had never occured before.
 
Given that it was a national park, I'm pretty sure that habituation to humans will ultimately prove a factor in this attack. Again, we have the Disneyland view of wildlife that motivates people into doing dumb things like feeding wild animals. What those individuals don't stop to realize is that by feeding them, you are almost guaranteeing the animals death and in this case, the death of a person as well. I saw the same thing happen in my neck of the woods with a family of Foxes. They became a local attraction and became dependent upon the car after car of handouts. The pups never learned to forage for themselves properly and when the bad weather hit and the handouts stopped, they starved.
 
Second coyote in attack still on loose

http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/1150175.html
Halifax, NS | Fri, October 30th, 2009​
Second coyote in attack still on loose
Necropsy planned on other animal that killed hiker
By LAURA FRASER Cape Breton Bureau
Fri. Oct 30 - 4:46 AM

tc271009skyline3_RGB_10-29-09.jpg

Enforcement officers were somewhere on the hill in the foreground where the Skyline Trail winds through French Mountain hunting for the second coyote that mauled a Ontario woman to death Tuesday. (TERA CAMUS / Cape Breton Bureau

One of two coyotes that savagely attacked and killed a Toronto folksinger had not been found by Thursday night, even though five trackers had been trying to pick up its trail in Cape Breton ever since RCMP allegedly shot the animal on Tuesday.

Taylor Mitchell, 19, died overnight Tuesday in a Halifax hospital after she was mauled by two coyotes on the Skyline Trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park earlier in the afternoon. RCMP said they believe the woman was hiking alone.

Parks Canada sent the body of the other coyote to the Atlantic Veterinary College in Prince Edward Island for an animal autopsy, known as a necropsy. Pathologists will test the coyote for rabies and look through its digestive system to see if it had eaten human food, said Chip Bird, a superintendent with Parks Canada.

Ingesting human food could have led the coyotes to lose their fear of people.

Mr. Bird said it’s unlikely the animal was an offspring of a wolf and a coyote, known as a coywolf, but said he expected the necropsy would look at all possibilities.

"We will ask the pathologist to give us an opinion on that, but at this time we don’t have any indication that’s the case," he said. "What happened in this particular case, I don’t know. It’s unprecedented in my career and I’ve been around for 30 years."

RCMP received a 911 call around 3:15 p.m. Tuesday that said two coyotes were attacking a female hiker. When they arrived, only one animal was at the scene. Members shot the animal, but it hobbled away, Sgt. Brigdit Leger said Wednesday.

Sgt. Leger said the ongoing investigation would mainly be handled by Parks Canada.

The RCMP contacted Ms. Mitchell’s family.

"They’re devastated, they’re in shock," the RCMP provincial spokeswoman said. "This is a critical time for them and my heart goes out to them."

It’s unclear exactly where Ms. Mitchell was attacked. A reporter saw no signs of blood on the first section of the Skyline Trail Wednesday.

Sgt. Leger said she believed Ms. Mitchell was seen by other hikers near the beginning of the trail. She would not say whether the hikers intervened in the attack or simply called 911.

Veronique Hache, the owner of Cheticamp Outfitters Inn B&B, said she’s been telling her guests not to hike alone. It’s something she’s done herself in the past, but not anymore.

"Even around here, I’m not sure if I’m going to take off and go up behind my house because I can hear the coyotes," she said. "I’m telling my guests that if they’re alone — they’re not to go. They’re to wait in the car until there’s other people on the trail to meet up with them or they don’t go."

In the 18 years that Ms. Hache has run the bed and breakfast, she’s never worried about sending hikers into the park.

"I mean, there are bears, but I tell (guests) where they usually are, and then tell them not to go there," she said. "But as far as coyotes, I never really thought about coyotes."

Mr. Bird said he hopes the Skyline Trail will be open to the public shortly, but he said that will not happen until trackers have done everything they can to find the missing coyote.

Conservation officers have been watching for signs of aggression in other coyotes in the area, he said.

"Anytime we see a coyote now, we’ll be paying close attention."

( lfraser@herald.ca)
© 2009 The Halifax Herald Limited
http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/1150175.html
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