Wranglerstar on YouTube

[Ashley Cawley]

Just thought I would share a YouTube channel that I think is great, it's called Wranglerstar - https://www.youtube.com/user/wranglerstar

A chap called Cody + his family who live in the Pacific Northwest of America, he's incredibly lucky in the land, tools and space that he has. Wonderful workshops and he does a lot of superb skills-sharing as he learns or discovers new tricks in everything from carpentry to ramp pumps, bee-keeping to chainsaws, forest work and much more.

My wife and I have watched their videos for probably a year or more now, best video blog I've come across and it's taught me a few things so thought I would share.

T^

[OakAshandThorn]

He's an interesting guy for sure :). There is, however, a lot of controversy about him over here in the States. For me, I really enjoyed watching his craftsman vids where he builds things, and his hand-tool restoration vids are fantastic. Some of his axe videos are rather misleading because of the constant "proper axe" terminology, and the misconception that drop forged axes are bad quality. He doesn't seem to understand that Gränsfors Bruks axes are open die drop forged (not hand forged), just as most mass produced axes are manufactured today.

All that aside, one video he made has pretty much turned me away, and that was the one he made about coyotes supposedly attacking his dogs. He shot at the coyotes and killed one of them. He claims that one of the coyotes was large enough to weigh nearly 32 kg/70 lb, and that these animals deliberately stalked and attacked his dogs. The problem I have here is that these are western coyotes, in other words, small canines usually weighing no more than 14-16 kg/30-35 lb as fully grown adults. Here in the Northeast, adult coyotes are often larger and weigh more (up to 23 kg/50 lb) due to interbreeding with the Timber Wolf in Canada. There has never been any solid proof of a western coyote weighing 32 kg, as far as I know. Even over here, those numbers just are not realistic. But let's play devil's advocate for a moment and presume that this man was exaggerating due to the circumstances of his pets being attacked...the second problem we run into is that his dogs heard coyotes howling, and because they were not properly restrained, they charged after them. He heard a scuffle, brought out a firearm, and shot one of the coyotes. This whole thing could've been avoided if he simply restrained his dogs or kept a fence around his house (which is where he and his dogs were just before the incident) to prevent them from running out. I believe that his dogs were the aggressors, not the coyotes. In his own words, his dogs are: "a 60 lb Border Collie and a 100 lb Great Pyrenees". It is now clear that the coyotes weren't attacking the dogs at all, but rather defending themselves. Seriously, two 16 kg coyotes attacking 2 much larger domestic dogs? I highly doubt it....

When coyotes are rabid or diseased, they can definitely be a problem, though by that point, they are often excluded from a pack and wander on their own. I've seen similar practices among the deer here. Diseased or dying deer will go their own way separate from a larger drove. But what really annoys me is that this particular video feeds on common misconceptions and fuels the fire of idiots who believe coyotes to be nothing more than vermin that should be extinguished. The westerners will most likely argue that we eastern "city-slickers" (more a demeaning word in this sense than anything else) have never dealt with wild animals and can have no possible idea as to the danger coyotes pose, this-and-that, :blabla:....when these same people are too darned ignorant to review factual info provided by their state's department of fish and wildlife, much less try to understand that coyotes are not just limited to their own parts of the US, and that many "city-slickers" here are in fact farmers, homesteaders, or just simple people who prefer a simple life living close to Nature. Coyotes are not much a problem here because most folks take the suitable precautions, such as installing a 1.5 meter fence around their homes to protect pets and farm animals, and the sensible folks restrain their dogs on a leash outdoors. The idea that coyotes are ravaging killers who stalk their prey and will attack anything they can get is pure delusion and myth. It is sad to see the same reckless hostility alive today which has led to the poaching of thousands of Timber Wolf during the colonial times up until the mid 1800s. These canines used to share this land and now only dwell up north in Canada and the fringes of the Maine. But, on the bright side, coyotes are smart...smart enough to outwit western ranchers who use them for target practice and to travel north, south, and east, spreading all across the US and adapting in such a way that no other canine has ever done on this continent. :)

Anyway, rant over :mad2:, :Sorry: guys, I had to get that one off my chest.