A pack of coyotes howling in the night is eerily reminiscent of the ghoulish chortling of spotted hyenas savaging a kill in the Serengeti. The primordial refrain rings of death and foreboding and never fails to raise the hair on the back of my neck, no matter how many times I hear it.
Their baleful cries remind us that we may bury the wilderness beneath concrete and condos but we cannot escape the tenacity of its original inhabitants — and coyotes are nothing if not tenacious. Scientists tell us that when man finally destroys himself and his planet, coyotes, carp and cockroaches will likely remain to scavenge our post-holocaust debris.

BY DENNIS SMITH

It’s virtually impossible to watch the cable television outdoor shows these days and not be disenchanted with the blatant commercial corruption and trivialization of the ethics that once defined fair chase big game hunting. In today’s dollar-driven television hunting show producer’s mind set, if it’s legal, it’s moral. If it generates a buck (sorry), that’s better yet — ethics and tradition be damned.

If we’re to believe the celebrity hunters and their sponsors, we no longer need to spend years perfecting skills of observation, woodsman, stealth, patience and myriad subtle but critical talents required to find and stalk within range of our quarry. According to these guys, the way to get your trophy buck or bull is to hire an outfitter who will personally transport you to one of his privately owned, comfortably furnished tower blinds strategically erected within easy shooting distance of an automatic game feeder, where you wait for the animals to come to you when the dinner bell rings — Pavlov’s deer, if you will. Never mind that many of these trophy bucks are farm-raised, biogenetically engineered mutants bred and fed to grow freakishly enormous antlers — and that they’re sequestered behind high-fenced enclosures to make certain they’re available to paying clients.

Thank goodness the majority of us aren’t “Hollywood” hunters. And nowhere is that better illustrated than in the recent success of a local young lady who purposed in her heart to take a mature whitetailed buck, on public land, on her own. She wanted to do this the traditional way, one on one: her versus a wily white-tail buck.

Here’s how it’s done.
1. Set a definite goal. Stephanie LaChance wanted a clear, standing shot at a mature buck on public ground.
2. Be patient. Stephanie waited seven years to draw a buck tag in one of eastern Colorado’s trophy buck regions.
3. Do your homework. Along with her husband, Chad, Stephanie studied maps and aerial photographs of the selected hunting area to locate food sources, security cover and transition areas.
4. Work hard. She and her husband covered many miles on foot (10, the first day, to be exact) hiking and glassing remote coulees and brushy draws for a good buck. They spotted two bucks but botched a stalk on one and passed on another younger one.
5. Be persistent. On day two, they hiked in five more miles to explore a deeply cut coulee with their binoculars and almost immediately spotted the glistening white tip of a big buck’s antlers in a pile of tumbleweeds scarcely 35 yards away.
6. Remain calm. Stephanie shot only when she was absolutely certain of a clean kill. The buck stood and reoriented himself four times without offering a standing shot, but finally, after many anxious minutes, he rose from his bed, took a step forward and stood stock still.
 He turned out to be an ancient 10 pointer, nearly 300 pounds on the hoof and well past his prime. He’d lost an eye battling another buck in a previous rutting season, his teeth were worn to the gums and his face was an overall grizzly gray. The regional biologist estimated the buck to be a 7- or 8-year-old — a legitimate anomaly considering a 4- or 5-year-old is considered an “old” deer.

Stephanie LaChance’s buck is a trophy in every meaningful sense of the word, but even more so when you consider that it was taken according to the strictest rules of fair chase. Too bad the big boys on television weren’t there to see how it’s done. They could learn a thing or two — particularly about ethics.

Living with urban wildlife can be a blessing or a curse — sometimes both. Where I live in Loveland, we seem to be “blessed” with a number of resident wild critters ranging from songbirds and game birds to raptors, rabbits, foxes, coyotes and those rascally raccoons.

Deer, elk and the occasional bear have made sporadic appearances in town, but rabbits, coons and foxes seem to have taken up permanent residence in almost every neighborhood in recent years. A week ago, I watched a red fox casually stroll past the entrance to the King Soopers supermarket in the Orchards Shopping Center, then stop in front of Baskin-Robbins to pick up a snack of some sort from the sidewalk. (A bit of ice cream cone wafer perhaps?) I stopped my car to watch him not 15 feet away and thought for sure he’d bolt, but he didn’t seem the least bit concerned. He kept his eye on me, wolfed down his snack and then leisurely wandered off around the corner going north toward Dry Creek.

The restoration of the wild turkey in North America is considered one of the greatest storybook comebacks in the history of wildlife management. Only a few decades ago they were nearly extinct, virtually wiped out by a century of habitat destruction and commercial slaughter.