When you said, “The important thing is to put out good information, whether your or I agree with each other or not” hit it out of the park. However, the problem is that most of your reporting are the few a-holes slobs of the hunting/trapping/fishing world and it paints a pejorative picture of all hunters/trappers/anglers, which simply isn’t the case. If I pick up the paper and read about a murder or a robbery — should I now believe every human being is evil? Of course not, but that’s what newspapers report. Your blog does the same kind of thing and while it’s good to get the news out on these dredges of the outdoor world, you miss a golden opportunity to show the good that sportsmen and women are doing in terms of conservation work AND preservation. I’m not sure if you’re doing us a service by fueling the very people (PETA, et al.) that you claim you don’t endorse by only highlighting the negatives.

Anyway, at the risk of sounding condenscending, this exercise has been encouraging that you had the conviction to give this Rob Erickson an opportunity to tell his side of the story…please continue to do so in the future. Thank you.

As to name calling — mr. know-it-all got that name with his statement “The trapping going on was needed and will do good ,but only erickson and me and a few other people are smart enough to realize it,the rest are like kids complaining because they don’t like reality”. Smart he is not. Then there’s this statement: “What fuels me is how these same people have never seen how most animals meet their fate in the wild ,or would want to interfere with the food chain.” Who’s interfering with the food chain? The culling advocates-that’s who. Take out the coyotes and you end up with more rodents, geese, deer etc. R.B’s statement that we “for the most part are in complete denial about the suffering animals go thru-from survivng the winter,and disease-mostly because they don’t want to know” is complete and utter nonsense. No one knows more about the suffering animals can experience in the wild than the true animal advocates. So now is he saying we should put all wild animals out of the misery they endure in life? That’s a poor excuse for culling if I ever heard one. Also not the one being used by Wheaton.

I have no personal gripe against the trapper other than I think he is less than honest with the public. He says he’s careful to target nuisance and sick coyotes but that is not possible. Traps don’t work just on the nuisance and sick animals. They work on anything that steps into them. I live just south of the Wheaton border on a park and until 3 or 4 weeks ago I had the pleasure of seeing a pack of 4 coyotes every few days come through the park. They were as healthy and beautiful as they could be with very thick coats. But funny thing. I haven’t seen them since the culling. I have no problem with killing a seriously sick or injured animal. Those animals are suffering and could be a danger to people. The average coyote is no danger to people if people would learn how to live with them. When you live near wildlife you have to take special precautions. That’s a fact of life. And it is worth the life of the animals. My biggest gripe is with people who think humans are at the top of the food chain and all other life is for us to use, abuse and kill at will.

This whole situation started with one family who allowed their dog off-leash and got attacked. Plus a few whiners complaining about seeing coyotes. They are the ones who created panic in Wheaton. Glen Ellyn is the only other suburb that has complained about a problem with coyotes. Everyone else in the Chicago area seems to have learned how to live with them. They aren’t going away. In fact with the culling we will probably see more of them. That’s how nature works. When there are few, they make more babies. When there are many, food becomes a problem and they have less babies.

Members of the Mustelidae family are very much like cats in the sense that they’re never truly domesticated and their wild instincts are never totally bred out of them. I’ve spent a lot of time around ferrets and domesticated mink, and trust me when I say they’re animals that never truly lose their wildness. Wolverines especially are extremely resourceful animals and can live off carrion such as road kill, etc…so I wouldn’t eliminate the possibility that this *could* be a released animal.

I know that mother nature doesn’t play favorites, but it kind of stinks when it’s the last one in a large geographic area.