Coyote Killing Contest Prompt Howls

Jerrid Geving, organizer of "coyote calling" contest this weekend in Baker, Mont., poses Monday, Jan. 8, 2007. The contest is expected to draw 180 participants. Person who calls in and shoots most coyotes wins. Part predator control, part economic development ploy, the annual event began five years ago in a bid to pique outside interest in Baker, via a $6,000 purse funded by entrance fees, local businesses and the Baker Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown) (Matthew Brown - AP)

Coyotes caused an estimated $47 million in damage to the cattle industry in 2005, according to the USDA. Sheep losses topped $10 million in 2004.

Groups including the Humane Society of the United States and Predator Defense say neither private hunts nor public agency killings offer a real solution because of the coyote's ability to rapidly reproduce.

"You kill some coyotes and six months later it's as if you didn't kill any at all. What are they accomplishing other than just being barbaric?" asked Brooks Fahy, executive director of Predator Defense.

In Montana, coyotes can be hunted 24 hours a day, 12 months a year, with no limits. That provides out-of-state hunters with ample "trigger time" not available in their home states, said Geving, who already has bagged six coyotes this winter around Baker.

Price and others describe a booming interest in coyote hunting, with an estimated 500 "calling contests" nationwide and more added every year. They get their name because hunters howl and make distress calls to mimic prey, attracting coyotes. Many, Price said, are conducted on the sly _ invitation-only events meant to avoid the ire of animal rights groups.

Baker promotes its event with fliers and on the Internet. Even protesters are welcome, said Karol Zachmann, president of the Baker chamber of commerce.

"Actually, that does good for us if they come and meet us and find out we're not all that bad," she said.

To some hunters, turning the challenge of coyote hunting into a contest with large sums of money at stake defies long-standing traditions of the sport. Jim Posewitz, a leading voice in the field of hunters' ethics, says that to purists, the contests violate the basic tenet of "fair chase" _ the notion that hunting is a private struggle between predator and prey.

"I don't think hunting is a contest between human beings," said Posewitz, a biologist who spent 32 years with the Montana wildlife agency before founding the Orion Hunters Institute. "We like to think it's a more meaningful relationship that we have with wildlife than simply viewing them as a competition between people."