Starting this month through June, hunters in Maine are allowed to kill coyotes at night, when the animals are out on the prowl. This practice is disturbing to wildlife activists in itself, but even more upsetting is a coyote hunt tournament taking place in Jackman.

The contest's organizers say thinning coyote herds will help boost the number of the white-tailed deer. Activists dispute that, and say the coyote is being unfairly scapegoated.

"These tournament hunts are example of that scapegoating, and they're simply ecologically and ethically indefensible," says Camilla Fox, Director of California-based Project Coyote, which is calling for an end to the hunt. Her group is joined by the Wildlife Alliance of Maine and the Humane Society of the United States.

Fox says that deer populations are down because of harsh winters and reduced habitat. Coyotes, she says, actually keep deer populations healthier. "In a natural cycle of predator - prey, the predators like coyotes will keep down the sick, diseased, compromised animals and actually help to keep the herd genetically robust by keeping those weaker animals out of the gene pool."

Fox says that the $500 prizes being offered to the hunters who bag the most coyotes and get the biggest coyotes demonstrate that the contests are about killing for entertainment.

The Jackman-Moose River Region Chamber of Commerce, which is sponsoring the hunt, disagrees. It says that killing coyotes is a matter of protecting the local economy. "The town lost a lot of revenue this year with not having any deer around so the deer hunters can come in and hunt and stuff," says Kevin Cavanaugh, the chamber's president. He says coyotes are also menacing people, livestock and pets.

He says just a few weeks ago in a nearby township, coyotes surrounded a child. "The family had a camp at one of the remote ponds and they had an outhouse. The little boy came to use the outhouse and stuff and when he came out there were three coyotes out there waiting for him, and it took him a few minutes to holler into the house to get his father's attention to come out and get rid of them," Cavanaugh says.

Still, the chamber has decided to keep the hunt small in response to protests. It will no longer be promoting the contest on the radio, and will limit participants to local hunters. So far, only six hunters have registered for the hunt. and killed one coyote among them.

But that's one too many, according to activists who have called on Gov. John Baldacci to intervene. David Farmer is a spokesman for the governor. "The governor doesn't support this kind of tournament -- he finds the practice inhumane," Farmer says. "He has spoken with his Commissioner of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and asked that he reach out to the group that is sponsoring the event and see if they would be willing or interested in calling it off."

Farmer says there are questions about how large an impact coyotes have on the deer population. Lee Kantor, the state deer and moose biologist, agrees that it's hard to assess.

"If you come across a deer carcass in the wintertime or at end of winter, you have to look at closely at when that animal died and what was the actual cause," Kantor says. "Was it the direct cause of an actual predation event, or the coyote attacked it and that was the reason it was killed? Or was it already susceptible, based on being in poor body condition or starvation?"

Kantor says that in certain winter conditions, coyotes can prey more easily on deer, even healthy ones. And he says deep snow and ice are much easier for coyotes to navigate than deer.

But Kantor adds that coyotes are not the only threat to deer. "There's this whole host of things that together have an effect large and small on any given year -- wintering habitat, the quality of summer habitat, the amount of predation by coyotes and by black bears and by smaller critters like bob cats, there's road kill, there's hunting mortality, there's poaching, there's wounding, there's disease, there's starvation," he says.

The issue of deer predation will be the subject of a discussion before legislators on the Joint Standing Committee on Inland Fisheries and Wildlife early next month. In the meantime, wildlife activists are circulating a petition raising awareness about coyote hunting and contests in which coyotes are killed for a cash prize.