Coyote Hunting

Wily in the pursuit of coyotes
By Joe Mozingo
January 27, 2009

Jimmie Rizzo puts a lump of chaw in his lip and picks his way into a ravine below a home in Redlands. Through a wrought-iron fence, a French bulldog named Phoebe yips, snorts and wheezes in her rhinestone collar. Rizzo tells her to shut up. He's here to help.

For years, coyotes have fed on pets in this hilltop neighborhood. When residents complain to the county, the county calls Rizzo.

The trapper, born and raised in the hardwood forests of the Mississippi Delta, specializes in California's big predators: coyotes, bears and mountain lions.

Bear and lion problems make news. Coyotes make business. Rizzo spends about 80% of his time tracking, trapping and putting down wild canids from Pacific Palisades to Twentynine Palms.

His services are at once widely sought and controversial, reflecting suburbia's conflicted relationship with its wildlife. Read More

You will notice how lightly HSUS is treading on this subject. They need to keep suburban residents sending in donations, so they aren’t very eager to make a big deal about this. Now if this involved livestock, they would be shouting from the mountaintops about the evils of trapping coyotes. I guess they are smart enough not to bite the hand that feeds them, even if a coyote has to die in the process.