Boone & Crockett: Fair chase doesn’t apply to coyotes

By Chris Eger

Coyote at Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge, returning for the last scraps of a road-killed pronghorn. (Photo: Tom Koerner/USFWS)
The nation’s oldest advocacy group for traditional hunting ethics is firing back at animal rights organizations who are seeking to protect nuisance predators.
The Missoula-based Boone & Crockett Club this week made clear its stance on the intersection of coyote management and fair chase hunting. In short, there is no intersection.
“Fair chase applies to the ethical, sportsmanlike, and lawful pursuit and taking of any free-ranging wild, big game animal in a manner that does not give the hunter an improper or unfair advantage over the game animals,” said Mark Streissguth, chair of the Club’s Hunter and Conservation Ethics Committee. “Coyotes are not game animals.”
Founded in 1887 by Theodore Roosevelt, the club named for legendary frontier hunters Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett largely developed the American fair chase tradition. An honor code of sportsmen taught in every hunter’s education class in the country, the concept stresses self-restraint and selective game harvesting rather than wanton waste and negligent hunting practices.
The clarification on fair chase and coyotes from B&C comes this week as anti-hunting groups have stepped up efforts to ban coyote contests. The Humane Society of

Source: Guns.com