I was joking with my girlfriend last night that if I served her barbecued or curried coyote, she wouldn’t be able to tell what she was eating. I don’t think that is really the case, but your comment made me smile.
The only thing I’ve ever heard about eating predators is to avoid the livers. Carnivore livers are loaded with toxic levels of B-vitamins.
I’ve eaten dog before. In Indonesia. Wasn’t great, wasn’t terrible.
I have no problems leaving predators laying where they fall. I kill them as a wildlife management exercise. Once in a while a bobcat skull or pelt ends up preserved but by and large we hunt/trap/kill predators here at home strictly to mitigate their impact on game. Dead predators = live turkeys.
The Bible calls wolves a curse. Because that’s exactly what history shows they are, to a society built around the consumption of meat animals. Wolves should have been left eradicated, or at very most restricted to a place like Yellowstone. We don’t need them. Aldo Leopold was wrong about ‘keeping all the parts’. He was wrong precisely because he assumed all the parts were inherently ‘good’. At the end of the day my worldview, where human needs trump animal rights, is a hill I’ll die on, and as humans we need game and livestock production more than we need the last component in ‘Wild’ places.
I don’t say this primarily as a hunter or a producer of beef/pork. I say it as a Christian who believes human needs trump animal rights. People are more important than animals. Animals exist to be subservient to the needs of people. It’s a worldview issue first, biology second. At the end of the day, wolf reintroduction is a victory for the nihilist. What they call ‘more natural’ is ultimately ‘less food for people’. Starvation is pretty natural, historically speaking. What they call science is just a really slow and expensive way of starving ourselves.
So ask yourself this question: do you value the last component of ‘wild places’ to the exclusion of yourself - or do you value the production of food for people?
That’s the continental divide in attitudes towards large predators.
Having said all that, I’d love to see a wolf, either from a safe distance or while hunting with a wolf tag. I’d love a pelt on my wall.
When I was a kid an old trapper I knew had a pelt, a dark blackish-red fur, from what we assumed was an eastern Red Wolf trapped after they were believed to be extirpated from the south. I’d love to know where that pelt went. I’d love to have my own hanging on the wall.
