Coyotes are in the news all across the region. From the Maine woods, where the state still pays trappers to snare them, to Boston, where the adaptable animals have found edge habitat to their liking. Everywhere they seem to draw out the same feelings from their human neighbors: respect, mixed with fear and loathing.

This mix of emotions is captured well in the Doug Hawes-Davis film Killing Coyote. The film is compelling viewing for anyone interested in the peculiar relationships between coyotes and humans.

While the documentary is set in the West, which has had decades to form opinions about coyotes, it may be especially appropriate for those of us here in the Northeast trying to learn how to get along with our secretive new neighbors.

Much of the film emphasizes the vilification of coyotes as varmints, to be shot on sight. Hawes-Davis managed to get some excellent footage from a coyote-killing contest, including an especially chilling scene of coyote carcasses being tossed like cordwood from the back of trucks under the lights outside a rural truck stop in Wyoming.

It's a powerful film, with a powerful soundtrack by Ned Mudd and The Incontinentals, well-worth watching for anyone fascinated by coyotes."