Stark differences in opinion about using bait to hunt coyotes emerged during a hearing Wednesday over a House bill that would ban the practice for all smaller fur-bearing animals.
Rep. Larry Labor, R-Morgan, told the other members of the House Environment Committee on Feb. 26 about an experience he had baiting for coyotes. “The bait was dead cats,” he said. “So I took it, and I wrapped a chain around the legs so the coyotes couldn’t drag it away. Then I drove a stake into the ground a substantial distance.”
He waited and watched for days, he said. When a coyote finally came, “it made two circles around the bait and bugged out before I could even chamber a round,” he described. It was a “0% kill” day for him, he said, and he suggested he’s not alone in that effort of attempting to kill a wiley creature. “We’re not talking about a defenseless animal. This animal is brilliant.”
“I cannot support this bill,” he concluded.
Earlier, committee chair Amy Sheldon, D-Middlebury, queried leaders of the Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife about why they oppose H.132, when they don’t actually know how common baiting furbearers is. The department had just testified it did not monitor or track the practice.
Though the bill would apply to the broad category of furbearers — including foxes, bobcats or other smaller mammals — the discussion surrounding it has focused primarily on baiting for coyotes, an animal that hunters say is near impossible to harvest without leaving out food specifically to attract them. And while advocates for the ban cite concerns that the practice unnecessarily harms productive members of an ecosystem, the measure prods longstanding cultural tensions between the hunting community and wildlife advocates. It also continues an ongoing debate about the role of the Legislature in wildlife management.
Mike Covey, the executive director of the Vermont Traditions Coalition, was blunt about his take. “H.132 seems to be driven by activism, not any other biological imperative,” he told the committee on Feb. 19.
The Fish & Wildlife interim commissioner, Andrea Shortsleeve, summarized the department’s position in her testimony:
“We are not aware of any population issues with furbearers in the state. We are not aware of any disease transmission of scavenging on carcasses, which occurs naturally on the landscape,” she said. “H.132 is trying to address a social values issue. This bill does not address any biological or conservation issues and is not based in science or wildlife management.”
On several facts, the bill’s supporters do see eye-to-eye with the wildlife department.
“It has been well-documented that coyotes do not compete with hunters for deer, and that killing coyotes does not significantly affect their population size,” Rep. Larry Satcowitz, D-Randolph, who sponsored the bill, wrote in an email.
In her Feb. 19 testimony, Sarah Gorsline, a local representative from the conservation group Project Coyote, explained to the committee that the animals are “critical ecosystem engineers,” who can regulate the environment through eating prey species and spreading seeds in their scat.
“Their numbers do not need to be managed by hunting,” Gorsline said.
The Fish & Wildlife Department agrees with some of that, the department’s spokesperson Josh Morse wrote in an email. “Coyotes are a beneficial part of Vermont’s wildlife community and are in balance with the available habitat and with other species,” he wrote.
The department’s goal is to maintain a healthy coyote population in Vermont. Hunting has not had a significant impact on the population of the quickly reproducing animals, Morse said.
Some hunters have argued that hunting coyotes is important for an abundant deer population — a population the department believes is too big now to maintain a healthy herd. But Morse said that is not the case.
“Even with healthy populations of both bobcats and coyotes, the level of predation they exert on deer is not significant enough to reduce Vermont’s deer herd in the regions where deer are overabundant for the available habitat,” he wrote. “The size of Vermont’s deer herd and hunting furbearers over bait are not related, even though they seem like they could be at first glance.”
‘The hardest animal to hunt’
Satcowitz stressed the bill does not prohibit or limit the killing of coyotes – which currently is allowed every day of the year. The bill addresses baiting for all furbearers and would not affect trapping or other methods of hunting the animals.
The bill’s definition of bait — as something placed with the intention of attracting wildlife — protects people’s abilities to cull a nuisance animal that’s discovered an unintentional food source like backyard chickens or a silage pit, Michael O’Grady, deputy chief of the Office of Legislative Counsel, told the committee on Feb. 19.
The issue for hunters is that intentional baiting is one of the few ways to kill a coyote, bill opponents said in testimony.
“Hunting coyote is very, very challenging. Many consider it to be the hardest animal to hunt,” Chris Bradley, the president of the Vermont Federation of Sportsmen told the committee on Feb. 19. “(Baiting) is a necessary tool in our toolbox to stop an apex predator,” one that can become a danger to humans and farm animals, Bradley said.
Furbearers do not follow the same regular patterns that deer or other big game follow, which make them easier to hunt. “A bobcat here today could be 15 miles away tomorrow,” said Covey. “We can’t hunt them the same way that we hunt other species. They move more erratically.”
Wildlife advocates pointed to the unintentional consequences of baiting.
Allowing some legal baiting could lure bears even if it’s been set for coyotes during their hunting season, Brenna Galdenzi, the executive director of Protect Our Wildlife, said in her testimony on Feb. 19. Covey said that he’s open to banning baiting during bear season, in response to that concern, but otherwise strongly opposes the bill.
Baiting may facilitate the spread of disease, said Galdenzi. The practice attracts many animals from across species to one shared location where salvia and bodily fluids can linger. As avian influenza remains a concern in the state, the practice of baiting with chickens or pheasants is a particular risk for transmission of the virus to wildlife populations, Galdenzi said.
Also, baiting may actually increase coyote prevalence in human areas.
“Bait creates incentives for animals to return to the area, and invites new animals to enter the area even after animals have been removed,” said Gorsline of Project Coyote. “It is the opposite of wildlife wariness; instead it habituates wildlife to a particular area, ensuring their return.”
In other circumstances, the department advises people against feeding and baiting other kinds of wildlife.
“I’m not sure how we reconcile your position on this, with your position on other people feeding wildlife and attracting them to their houses,” said Sheldon, the committee chair.
“It’s a fair question,” the department’s wildlife director John Austin said in response. The state prohibits the feeding and baiting of bears, turkeys, deer and waterfowl.
“We do that for a variety of reasons. For deer it’s largely because of the risk of disease transmission” — the same is true for birds, he added. “In the case of furbearers, part of the issue we’ve had is that the carcasses still exist on the landscape.”
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‘The word ‘fair’’
Behind the scientific arguments back and forth lurked the question of whether baiting animals to hunt them was fair practice.
Chris Huston, a hunter from Waltham, Vt., testified to the House Environment Committee on Feb. 19 that he believes that the practice of baiting falls outside the hunting ethic of pursuit and fair chase. The practice also puts the hunting community out of line with the general public, which he sees as largely against the practice.
Covey expressed that the legislature’s consideration of the ethics of baiting “not an appropriate way to make law,” as he said. “The word ‘fair’ has no place in a meaningful conversation about wildlife conservation or hunting.”
Finding a shared consensus on what a community finds to be fair is exactly the purpose of the law, Sheldon later responded.
As it stands, if the bill were to become law, it would go into effect July 1, 2025, banning the practice of baiting furbearers. Failing to follow the ban would result in a 10-point violation, which equates to a year’s suspension from a hunting license, according to Fish and WIldlife’s point scale. The bill lists no specific penalty, so violations would default to a $1,000 fine, according to legislative counsel O’Grady.
While the Fish and Wildlife Board holds rulemaking abilities when it comes to hunting questions such as this one, the board declined to take a lead on the issue of baiting, Satcowitz said over email, which is in line with its record over the last few years. It was the Legislature that ultimately passed bans on wanton waste (which exempts coyotes) and a ban on coyote killing contests, he pointed out.
Among the debate was also a more general point: “If I live on 100 acres and I want to shoot out my back door, what business is it of anybody’s?” Rep. Michael Tagliavia, R-Corinth, asked the committee Wednesday.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont House bill would ban baiting for coyotes and other furbearers.