*&$#@%* coyotes!! (Read 1402 times)

That sucks. Last time I tried was maybe 2002. I left the UK in 1994. I figured that at some point (10 years? 15 years) they'd let me give blood again. Sheesh. Trent (a.k.a. the idiot who dredged this up), if you see this, how about a medical explanation? Can I really carry something in my blood that long that doesn't hurt me but makes my blood useless?

I'd love to understand that better, myself. I haven't been outside North America since that semester abroad...one would think that after 15 years with good health that I'd have been cleared. Then part of me thinks "hey, if the Red Cross is gonna be so picky, then they need to quit whining about blood shortages. I'm sure a person in desperate need of a transfusion would rather have potentially tainted blood than NO blood."

Plus many jokes about road runners etc.... the general gist of the first two pages of this thread was "kill them all" and have a pile of coyotes in your back garden. Fun for all, eh? I know that people still go hunting in England but the point I'm trying to get across is that it's mainly rich people living out in the country who have nothing better to do and still do it for "sport" - it's not primarily to feed themselves, as anyone too poor to buy meat would not be able to afford the licensing for a gun!! All I'm trying to say is that it seems like a whole lot more Americans are okay with the idea of walking out your back door and shooting a wild animal. If this was a UK based forum talking about foxes being a pain in the arse you wouldn't get one single person suggesting you shoot it. This isn't a judgement on your culture or me having a go, it was merely an observation.

Good morning Deborina (morning my time, that is!). Part of the reason for the disparity is how (and how long) the two countries developed. Europe as a whole has been pretty heavily populated for hundreds of years now, and hunting was always considered a privilege reserved for the rich / nobility (i.e. the monarch and his friends). As I understand it, the only hunting allowed to the common man was small game such as rabbits and squirrels. When the first (European) settlers arrived here in the 1600s, they had to hunt just for sustenance (and began with the animals they hunted in Europe - the rabbits and squirrels. As the European population here expanded, fathers taught sons, neighbor taught neighbor, and all observed several of the native American tribes hunting for their food as well, and started following their example. It became a tradition, and a part of the culture. Unfortunately, in the late 1800s things got out of control with what became known as "market hunting", where paid professional hunters went out and killed as many of a certain animal as possible, for one part or another (i.e. buffalo for their pelts for coats, pheasant and turkey for their feathers for quill pens and hat decorations, etc.). It was a sad spell for animals in America. Other professional hunters were employed to eliminate predators by the ranchers moving west, so they could raise their cows (and sheep, to a lesser extent) easier and not have to worry about losing some to wolves (for example). This led to the complete elimination of predators in many parts of the country, as well as significant reductions in the populations of other animals. Fast forward to the 1900s. Some people had already begun to realize what was happening to the animal population, and started calling for limits and conservation (Pres. Teddy Roosevelt and John Audobon among them). This is part (not all) of the reason the idea came for our national parks, such as Yellowstone NP. (Note that Teddy Roosevelt was also famous as a hunter). Conservationist groups began to form, and worked to preserve land to keep habitat safe for the animals that had been hurt by market hunting. Some of these animals adapted well, and have since adapted to the suburban and rural nature of the way we live very well. It's gotten to the point now that several of these animals are overrunning the land in many places and becoming nuisances (whitetail deer, turkeys, black bears, and coyotes being the most common). It's gotten to the point where there are coyotes living in Central Park, NY (in the middle of Manhattan!!) Where I live in New England, there are now more deer and turkeys than there were when the Pilgrims landed, and the coyotes have lost their fear of man and are starting to threaten small children. Not a summer goes by without a story about a mother on the news talking about how the coyote was stalking her stroller. Thanks to *no* natural predators (wolves and cougars), the populations of these animals grow and the range expands unchecked. The only control is humans hunting them. Respectable hunters here make every effort to make a quick, clean kill that is as humane as possible, and to ensure that the animal is used as much as possible. They donate excess meat to food banks, pelts go for clothing, etc. It may seem cruel, but it's not nearly as cruel as Mother Nature. Note that no wild animal ever dies of old age. It will be killed by some other animal, or starve to death due to an injury that limits its ability to get food, or get caught in a natural disaster. The saddest thing I've seen in my few short years in the woods was a bedding area of four deer (mom, yearling, and two not quite fawns) dead from starvation after the first heavy snow. The fawns had just been born the previous spring. That's part of why I hunt - to hopefully reduce that kind of suffering. Another part of it is that the overpopulation of any one animal has a major impact on the natural balance of many other things in the environment. Turkeys outcompete pheasant for food, deer browse all the natural vegetation up to about 6 feet, thus stopping the growth of young plants, which in turn would have provided food and cover for other animals (birds, rodents, etc). And let's not even start talking about Lyme disease (first discovered in my home state of Connecticut, thankyouverymuch ). If the deer weren't so plentiful, there wouldn't be so many deer ticks, and without a plentiful deer tick population, there's no infectious agent to give us the disease. So I feel like I'm helping that way too. Are deer, turkeys, bears, etc, beautiful? Yes they are (I'll reserve judgement on coyotes - I think they're ugly, personally), - but - they were not here first. Humans and animals crossed into this country together, and have lived, died, and hunted each other side by side for millenia. Have we taken over their territory with our buildings and highways? Yes - but they have adapted and overcome that, in many cases. You probably will never see a wild bear walking down 5th Avenue, but the again you'll never see a New York traffic jam of cars on the backroads of upstate Vermont, either. We've each found our places to live and coexist (and I include hunting in coexisting, as it has always been a part of that).

That sucks. Last time I tried was maybe 2002. I left the UK in 1994. I figured that at some point (10 years? 15 years) they'd let me give blood again. Sheesh. Trent (a.k.a. the idiot who dredged this up), if you see this, how about a medical explanation? Can I really carry something in my blood that long that doesn't hurt me but makes my blood useless?

I'm no doctor, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, and I've been giving blood for years (and also hunting for several years). The thing they're concerned about (with the meat, at least), is mad cow disease, or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). The organism that causes it is a prion-type organism, which in layman's terms works like the creature that causes trichinosis, except it's much smaller. It can live in your cells for years, possibly even decades, in a state of hibernation or suspension until conditions are right for it to reactivate. The problem is, like the trichinosis bug, it has a hard "shell" cover that protects it. So far, no medicines that have been tried to kill it have worked, and it can not be killed by cooking. FYI, it is similar in form to the prion that is causing Chronic Wasting Disease in the wild deer population in some areas of the country, and can also be found in sheep, and to a lesser extent goats. That's a wildly simplified explanation, but it covers the pertinent facts, and like I said, I'm not a doctor or infectious disease expert. So, unless / until they find some drug that will penetrate its shell or kill it some other way, you're out of luck for donating blood. Too bad, too, because your contribution is always needed. MTA correct spelling

and we in Wisconsin were getting such a bad rap for trying to allow shooting of cats.

You know...I am a HUGE lover of cats...we have 4 of our own. We love them so much that we don't declaw them and we don't allow them outdoors...because cats allowed outdoors face some really terrible risks to their safety and health, as well as the safety and health of other animals and they can become a nuisance to others. But there's a part of me that thinks shooting strays is more humane than the alternative. Feral cats often meet very sad ends (often at the hands of cruel people who think nothing of torturing or poisoning cats or killed or mortally wounded by cars) and they can spread a lot of disease to pets and decimate bird populations--I believe this has become a major problem in Australia. Plus the cat population is insanely out of control. I wish people had to license pet cats the way dogs are licensed. Requiring spaying/neutering of all household pets not used for breeding would go a long way towards curbing the overabundance of cats--feral and otherwise.

/Off-Trent's-personal-comet-topic: Hey, is that still true? Do you have any idea what the time limit is on that, if there is one? Last time I tried to give blood, I got turned away for the same reason. But its been over a decade now, I wonder if I can give blood again ...? /Back to the coyote murdering

Yes, still true. It is that silly Mad Cow Prion that nobody can really test for. I don't eat meat and still can't give blood because of the time I spent in Europe.

(is it okay to eat meat but not okay to hunt it?)

Apparently not in the UK. Good thing I'm in the US where I don't have to have such oppositional viewpoints.

(is it okay to eat meat but not okay to hunt it?)

I'm going to put on my fur-lined leather coat and my leather boots and go to an anti-hunting rally tomorrow. I have my rotisserie chicken picnic almost all packed. I'm just trying to raise awareness.

The dogs do not have a human conservation policy. They do not preserve our environment (Dog, no) The lion will not conserve us.

Yes, with all this talk about animal rights, I find it disturbing that no one has mentioned animal responsibilities. Tsk tsk. That said, go deer!