Ever since I stood outside the grizzly’s cage I have been thinking about Joseph Beuys and his coyote. In my pocket are Walt Earl’s signature coyote calls: handmade in their custom box. To Walt the coyote is a pest, a predator to be exterminated. To Beuys the coyote was a symbol of the Shaman, a beast that crosses between the physical and spiritual worlds, who has the power to see into the past and the future. A magical and transformative animal. I am looking at Walt’s calls in my hand and know I have to make a coyote film.
But first I need to learn how to call them. Perhaps with a lesson from Walt…
There is a gret deal of folklore about coyotes in the American West…One story has it that when trappers set metal leg-traps they will catch muskrat and mink and fox and skunk but coyote only rarely. Coyotes develop their own relationship to the trap: as one naturalist has written, “it is difficult to escape the conclusion that coyotes have a sense of humour. How else to explain, for instance, the well known propensity of experienced coyotes to dig up traps, turn them over, and urinate or defacate on them?”
When a coyote defecates on a trap he is neither predator nor prey but some third thing – From Hyde, L. ‘Trickster Makes this World’ Mischeif, Myth and Art. Edinburgh:Canogate
you’ve never seen a coyote climb over a fence? the deer that cotyeos kill ARE my live stock! so thats why we kill them so they dond kill the deer we hunt (TO EAT)!I like having more deer in the woods dont you? let me ask you this,why wouldnt you coyote hunt???you dont let rats run around your house eating all your food do you? you’d set traps to kill them I’m betting that you dont eat them iether. why would cotyeos be any different? the forest is my home the deer is my food.