With all due respect to Heather Bolint, who wrote the benevolent coyote letter (Feb. 13), here are a few facts from a 45-year Maine outdoorsman.

Coyotes in Maine are different from those found out West. Thirty-pound coyotes do, indeed, eat small animals and insects. Those in Maine, on the other hand, eat rabbits and grouse and love to eat deer. They will go into a deer yard and slaughter every deer in it that can’t escape. There are pictures to prove it.

One of the most effective ways to kill coyotes is to snare them around the deer yards in winter. That practice is in question because sometimes the snares kill a Canadian Lynx that stumbles into the trap. The Lynx are doing very well in their home country of Canada.

Wolves and mountain lions will kill coyotes on sight because they instinctively know coyotes will kill until the land is barren.

I had three coyotes come at me during deer hunting season four years ago. I only wish I had an automatic shotgun so I could have killed all three. Checking tracks showed they were after two mature deer and one infant.

Ollie Emery, Mechanic Falls

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