Hunting Wolves

We don't have wolves in Maine, but we do have an increasing number of large eastern coyotes that have begun to reoccupy the environmental niche once filled here by wolves. Like wolves in the Mountain West, these coyotes are predators that prey upon the economic assets of farmers (which is a jargonish way of referring to animals like sheep and goats) and compete with sportsmen for game. Maine has a year-round open season on coyotes, meaning that a licensed hunter can pursue them every day or night if he or she wishes, killing as many as possible. Despite this arrangement, coyotes continue to thrive here. Their numbers may even be increasing.

It turns out that managing predator populations is something of a voodoo science unless you resort, as our ancestors did, to outright extermination. I'm sure there are deer hunters in Maine that would love to return to those hoary days of yore when the state paid a bounty on coyote hides, and it's clear that there are a lot of people out west who feel the same about gray wolves. Hence the recent wolf hunts in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. According to the New York Times today the results have been mixed, if one's definition of success is meeting a quota on animals killed. If I lived in the Northern Rockies, I would support a moratorium on wolf hunts while scientists studied ways to ensure that a reduced wolf population remain genetically strong, but I also believe that, as long as humans and wild animals occupy the same landscapes, hunting and trapping remain the most effective tools for creating eco-systems that aren't terrifically unbalanced. That said, I personally have no more desire to shoot a wolf — or a coyote — than I do a German shepherd.

Find a Park

Call it chauvinism, but I've always been a fan of L.L. Bean. One reason is the generous discount it gives Registered Maine Guides. Another is this cool feature on the Bean Web site. You can literally search the world for parks according to the sort of activity that interests you (from hiking to big game hunting). I just searched Scandinavia for places to fish and discovered Urho Kekkonen National Park in Finland, where 20,000 reindeer graze the windswept tundra. I have no clue whether the fishing is any good in the Finnish part of Lapland, but the thought of all those caribou roaming around under the Northern Lights brought a smile to my face.   

An OK Book, If You Like That Sort of Thing

I've finally been reading War and Peace, twenty years after I pretended to read it for a Russian literature class at Yale (being an artful bullshitter, I nevertheless earned a B). The book has been considered a masterpiece for so long that I feel reluctant to even blog about it. I can't share how much I'm enjoying this novel of novels without sounding like a guy running around town telling people about this delicious new food he discovered called pizza.

Leo Tolstoy (c) Library of Congress"War and Peace is a great book. Thanks for the newsflash, Doiron."

Well, War and Peace is a great book, even if holding it above your chest for an hour at a time feels like doing an extended bench press.

As a reader, I'm struck by all those things my Russian lit teacher tried to impress upon me long ago. I'm appropriately, if belatedly, awed by Tolstoy's insights into the broad range of human motivations, and I'm dazzled by the seeming effortlessness of his artistry. As a writer of fiction, I'm just humbled. Tolstoy makes writing a novel look so easy that I can understand authors around the world smashing their laptops in despair after reading War and Peace.

Then I stumbled across this quote on Wikipedia attributed to Anton Chekhov:

When literature possesses a Tolstoy, it is easy and pleasant to be a writer; even when you know you have achieved nothing yourself and are still achieving nothing, this is not as terrible as it might otherwise be, because Tolstoy achieves for everyone. What he does serves to justify all the hopes and aspirations invested in literature.

If Chekhov felt that way, it takes some of the pressure off us hacks, I guess.