New Yorkers have often been referring to “a guy” who set up a camera near a coyote den and supposedly recorded a female coyote bringing an obscene number of fawns to the den during a certain time period. The story varies on a number of facts, depending on who is telling it and their audience.
The facts that vary include: The location of the den, the number of fawns supposedly dragged to the den, the number of weeks the camera recorded the supposed activity and the relation of the camera-man to the story teller. The relationship however never gets closer than “a friend of a friend” or “My Uncle”. One variation of the story even listed “The DEC” as the camera folks. An interesting fact though is that no such alleged photos ever surface. It is a fun story to tell, I am sure, as the listeners are sure to be very interested and probably say “Wow”! and then scoff and say “See, we KNEW the coyotes were killing all the deer!” Sometimes the story varies even more and it becomes “a friend of a friend found a coyote den while he was hunting and it was stuffed with fawn heads!” This is how a hoax is perpetuated. Fun, amazing stories to tell and the coyote is once again the bad guy. I would be fascinated to see authenticated, real photos of a coyote den stuffed with fawn heads, or authenticated photos of a mother coyote bringing back this obscene number of dead fawns to the den . Yet, no one can come up with a real name, a real location or any proof that this ever happened. I am hoping that some day some one can bring me to an active den site so that I can set up a camera and records activity such as this – without momma coyote moving her pups as soon as she smells the human presence.
I suspect this whole story is concocted by hunters and coyote haters that are trying to pressure lawmakers into implementing a year round season on coyotes. Please folks, don’t believe everything you hear. Be sure to tune into tomorrows blog.