By Dan Flores
In late 2014, California became the first state to ban the most controversial form of rural entertainment since cockfighting: coyote-killing contests, wherein hunters won prizes or gambling pots based on the number of the wild predators they killed in a weekend. Some no doubt saw the move as coddling predators, but in fact it was just the most recent example of how California has been in the vanguard of attitudes — usually enlightened ones — about living with coyotes in our midst.
