EDMONTON - For 40 years, Pat Mattson and her husband, Glenn, have raised cattle on a 240-hectare farm near Mayerthorpe.

They have never lost an animal to the coyotes which share their tract of land, about a cow-chip toss from Highway 43.

“We have always lived happily alongside coyotes and have respect and empathy for their struggles during winter,” says Pat Mattson, 69, who grew up on a dairy farm in nearby Sangudo. “They have a right to be here, too.”

While other farmers in Alberta complain that coyotes are filching their livestock, the Mattsons express few concerns.

Their ample house cat has survived one serious scrap with them, and occasionally they raid Pat Mattson’s garden, but otherwise the coyotes have been good neighbours.

“Sometimes their pups make a mess hunting mice in my hay piles, but that’s about it,” says Glenn Mattson, 64. “I’ve never once lost a calf to a coyote, and I’ve had them come right through the herd and not bother them.

“I just don’t think they are hungry enough. They must have plenty of feed here.”

She is a retired teacher and he is former pipefitter in the oilpatch. The Mattsons have been together nearly 41 years since their romance was kindled while curling at a bonspiel.

They raised two children and are blessed with four grandkids. They share their home with a testy two-kilogram dachshund and a sweet-tempered Rottweiler that weighs 70 kilos and lumbers clumsily through the living room chasing its ball.

While Pat plays classical violin with a group in Whitecourt and rides in competitive barrel races, Glenn tends to their herd of 27 massive Simmentals and a half-dozen registered quarter horses.

He she has seen coyotes only a handful of times this winter and says they are less of an annoyance than the fox that repeatedly breaks into their garage while rummaging for food.

“It would be bad not to have the coyotes around,” Glenn says.

The daughter of a war bride, Pat moved to rural Alberta from England when she was three years old and has grown up with coyotes around her. She remembers watching as her father’s cows chased a coyote through a field when she was a kid, and also recalls seeing ewes with serious injuries after being attacked by them.

Despite that, she harbours no ill feelings.

“I probably should dislike coyotes, but I don’t,” she says. “I admire them. They have a tough life and they have to fight to survive.”

Although she grew up in a family of hunters, she was angered recently when she learned a coyote tournament was being staged at Alberta Beach. Because coyotes are considered a nuisance, it is not illegal to shoot them with permission from private landowners.

“I was displeased people can take pleasure in killing them,” she says. “They don’t deserve that. It’s just disgusting to me.”

On clear winter nights, Pat used to love taking her previous Rottweiler for a walk on the farm. Pat would howl at the coyotes, the coyotes would howl back, and then, Helmut, who liked to yip along as Pat played How Much Is That Doggie In the Window on the banjo, would join in, too.

“I love to hear the coyote choirs at night,” she says. “Sadly, this pleasure has become more or a rarity than the norm these last few years.

“No one will ever get permission to hunt coyotes on our land.”

mklinkenberg@edmontonjournal.com

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