Hung and Christmas-decorated coyote stirs outrage
Posted by Ted McDermott on Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 4:42 PM
- Christine Svoboda
“I was mortified by it,” Svoboda says. “I like wildlife. I moved to Montana, because I love living among nature, and then you see sad things. It’s cruelty to animals, is what it is. It’s very disrespectful to animals.”
Sanders County Commissioner Carol Brooker, who represents the Plains area, says she doesn’t know a lot about the offending coyote, but she does know Svoboda isn’t the only one alarmed by bizarre decoration. According to Brooker, River Road is the second busiest thoroughfare in the county. Its traffic, she says, regularly includes school buses.
“It’s really unnerved a lot of people,” Brooker says.
While Brooker says there is an old ranching tradition of hanging dead coyotes to ward off other coyotes from vulnerable livestock, she doesn’t believe this to be the intention in this case.
“This particular place that this is hanging, I don’t think they have any livestock,” Brooker says, adding that the animal is in a yard, not on a ranch.
According to Brooker, the Sander County Sheriff’s Department is aware of the coyote but is unable to do anything about it, since it’s on private property. As for Svoboda, she says she took photos of the hung animal in an attempt to raise awareness.
“I thought maybe I would try to just let them know that somebody knows, that somebody saw it, and maybe it’s not okay to do that,”
Exposing the Big Game 
This happened in Montana? I’m shocked.
Monsters and perverts are everywhere, and Montana has a healthy share of them. What filth.
Low life pond scum yahoo !
Same type that come from SCI and DSC to desecrate our animals in Africa.
Rid the world of them.
It is outrageous and so sad…
as well as sick and morbid.
I would not believe a County Commissioner who says “this did not have anything to do with a rancher.” These County Commissioners are in league with the ranching communities through out most places in the rural west. This is a very common practice, even if a bit different with this killing. Even if it was not a “rancher” who did this particular killing, it is part of the ranching mentality–they hang hawks, coyotes, wolves–you name them–usually on fences, so why not a tree?
http://www.foranimals.org
It really is offensive, like strange fruit. Same mentality. Desecration of God’s creations. Whatever ‘tradition’ it was, there is no place for traditions like that in an enlightened world.
Yes, strange fruit indeed. Well said. Apt analogy.