The Mosquito Creek Sportsman’s Club will be hosting its 29th Coyote Hunt on February 21-23rd in Frenchville, Pennsylvania. The annual coyote killing contest is the largest in the nation, not only because of the number of participants, but also because of the tens of thousands of dollars paid out for literally every coyote killed with hounds, guns or traps.
Check-in time at the Mosquito Creek Coyote Hunt in 2019.
Last year, over 4,800 hunters were registered in the two day contest, with 225 coyotes tallied at the weigh-in. The largest cash prize of $9,624 was awarded to a hunter from Erie for the heaviest coyote killed during the contest. Each coyote killed gained the hunter $86, with a total of $48,120 being paid out to contest participants during the 2019 hunt.
Not only the nation’s largest coyote hunt, but in the entire world?
Many of the participant’s in this year’s Mosquito Creek Coyote Hunt will be hound hunters. Pennsylvania’s hunting regulations allow hunting dogs to kill the coyotes they chase, something that can be easily found on Pennsylvania hound hunter’s Facebook pages. The videos accompanying this post were found on social media and shared by Pennsylvania hound hunters participating in next weekend’s coyote killing contest.
These videos are not the exception, they are the rule. Hunting coyotes with hounds is legalized dog-fighting and nowhere is that more evident, then on the Facebook pages of hound hunters themselves. Vicious and brutal dog fights between multiple hunting hounds and one exhausted coyote are the norm when state wildlife agencies like the Pennsylvania’s Game Commission allow hounds to be used to hunt and kill coyotes.
Pennsylvania is also home to more wildlife killing contests than any other state in the nation with at least 30 coyote killing contests taking place the winter of 2019-20, the coyote killing season beginning after deer hunting ends in late November.
Other large wildlife killing contests like Virginia’s Eastern U.S. Predator Calling Championship do not allow the use of hounds, only calling, then shooting coyotes. But the Mosquito Creek contest has long attracted many hound hunters from across Pennsylvania.
Photo from Matt Mitchell’s Facebook page shared on February 2, 2020.
These are the videos and photos that Pennsylvania hound hunters share with each other and that depict acceptable hunting practices such as the fighting and killing of coyotes in a manner that can only be defined as dog-fighting and animal cruelty.
Another photo from Matt Mitchell’s Facebook page shared on February 9, 2017.
The response from the hound hunting community to Wolf Patrol’s continued exposure of the cruelty inherent in hunting coyotes with hounds is to tell each other not to publish these kinds of videos on social media. Nowhere are they critics of the cruelty, only angry hound hunters reminding each other that if these hunting videos continue to be seen by the public, that their sport will be in trouble.
More of Mitchell’s fighting dogs getting ready to kill another coyote slowly on March 3, 2018.
Coyote hunting with hounds is legalized dog-fighting in Pennsylvania and the many other states where it is occurring right now in winter. And coyote killing contests like the Mosquito Creek Coyote Hunt only encourage unethical behavior as hunters focus on killing as many animals as they can not for food, but for the cash paid to wantonly kill and waste our public trust wildlife.
Shared by Matt Mitchell on Facebook in January 2017.
Please contact the Pennsylvania Game Commission and let them know that dog-fighting and contest killing are not ethical and acceptable hunting practices for any state wildlife agency to endorse.
Send your comments to the Pennsylvania Game Commission:
pgccomments@pa.gov
One of Mitchell’s fighting dogs covered in coyote blood after another Pennsylvania hound hunt in 2019.
Wolf Patrol 