NIGHT SHIFT

IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON IN February, and the farmer gave me the usual post-deer-season response when I asked if I could hunt coyotes on his land. “Go ahead,” he said. He even pulled on a weathered Carhartt coat, stepped onto his porch stoop, and motioned toward a creek drainage separating his cornfield from the neighbor’s hayfield. “Right down in there is where we usually see them cross.” Then he added, “They eat my chickens, so kill ’em all.”

I said thanks and reminded him that I’d be