I think this is a timely and important topic. If it is in the wrong place, please move or delete.
Studies in Ga and reported by GON magazine idicate that aggressive doe harvests combined with current levels of coyote predation can result in a "predator pit" in which prey populations (deer) can not recover through fawn recruitment.
This study seems to result in obvious conclusions, but until recently game managers in Georgia have been reluctant to acknowledge the impact of predation and the relatively exponential impact when combined with radical doe harvests.
I would advise anyone who hunts in Georgia to familiarize yourself with this study available online or in print from GON.
Gregg
Thanks Greg! :wavey:
This has been a problem in GA for over 10 years now even, if the Game Mgmt people don't agree. Dave
QuoteOriginally posted by snellville-dave:
This has been a problem in GA for over 10 years now even, if the Game Mgmt people don't agree. Dave
You got that right.
I grew up in KY and never saw a yote. Also few deer and no turkeys in zLogan County. Now 40 years later when i go to the farm i see few groundhogs but some of the others
When did the east see the yotes?
There is another factor that will happen. When prey populations drop eventually the predator population follows. That may be to late for a decent deer herd recovery, or it might come before herd collapse. I say get the rifles out in the off season and start whacking yotes!
read it lastnight. very eye opening
I have been saying the very same thing for years. I raise and train field trial and hunting beagles and ohio used to be loaded with rabbits. Not any more. The coyotes started slowly moving in some twenty odd years ago and now we are covered up in them. The deer population is now suffering as well as all the ground nesting birds like grouse which are almost nonexistent in our area where we used to have huntable populations and turkeys etc. The face of hunting has changed and I would imagine that the amount of predators will start to decline at some point as well because their food supply is dwindling. I hate coyotes with a passion but also respect their abiility to adapt. They are very difficult to hunt, much more so than deer and adapt to almost any situation well. They have made me look very stupid on a numerous occasions and I dont need any help! No idea what the answer is but I sure dont see all that money we are spending on licenses etc being used to help address the problem!
This is the case in Southern New Jersey also, our deer pop. is bellow half what it was 5-6 yrs ago and the yotes have quadrupled. Thats why a coyote permit is $2.00 the cheapest permit in the state.It just gets worse!
Coyotes are really doing a number on the turkey population around here. I'm in prime turkey habitat, farmland, pastures with wooded fingers running throughout and miles and miles of hardwoods on Shawnee National Forest.
Every night I hear the yipping and howling as the coyotes run through the pastures in front of my place. This yr. turkey population is way down and haven't seen the first turkey in a big agriculture field behind me where I would see them about every day last season.
Could have been the bad weather we had last spring, but I know the coyotes are keeping the population from increasing like it should.
I kill every yote I see! I HATE YOTES! Those turkey theiving you no whats!
I wouldn't hate them so much if they didn't get out of control so easily without hunting them. They can really populate an area fast if they hang around.
thanks for the info
I might be the minority here , but I wouldn't go as far as saying I hate coyotes. They are a nuisance to us as hunters and farmers, but we as humans have allowed for the perfect habitat for medium sized predator like the yote to thrive. Couple with aggressive farming tactics which leave little to nO security for the prey animal to properly take refuge , lends to a feast for the yotes and no proper home to survive.
I do respect and admire the coyote ability to survive. With that said I killed 33 last December and jan. and I plan on getting some more here soon. June , July is prime yote killing.
I have never understood the statement "you cannot shoot too many does", because every time you shoot a doe, you reduce the population by about two. I get reducing the herd. I don't get shooting every one you see - year after year - as eventually you will go over board. By definition that is exponential reduction, and going unchecked, will get you sooner than you think. This seems especially true to public land (maybe not on some large private tracts).
It's interesting how these comments parallel to many states including WI, especially adding wolves into the mix along with the coyotes.
lpcjon2, they make you pay for a coyote permit in Jersey!? Wow and I thought Pa. was out of control with license and permit fees!!
I think as big of a factor is the aggressive doe harvesting. Think about it - if coyotes or wolves on their own caused the collapse of deer populations, by the time humans got on the scene the deer would be extinct.
So here we have two issues - aggressive doe harvesting and coyotes. The one we have absolute control over is doe harvesting - do what we do in ontario, and have people apply for doe permits. We've had a problem here with a lot of does getting harvested when the deer population was booming, but people thought the deer population could take it. one bad winter later, combined with overharvesting and high coyote populations, and the deer population, while still OK in my opinion, is nowhere near what it was 5 years ago.
The lesson here is this: you can shoot as many coyotes as you want, but there are always other factors than predation. Predation is often the tipping point - the straw breaking the camel's back. But it's much more difficult to deal with than permit issuing policy. Anyone ever try to keep coyotes down through culls or hunting pressure? How'd that work out? Some studies I've seen indicate that coyotes respond to mortality by having bigger litters.
The cure for coyotes? A healthy wolf population. Go anywhere where wolves used to rule and where they've been extirpated, and coyotes have moved in. Then, of course, you have wolves competing with humans for deer.
If I was game management there (I'm being an armchair biologist, I know, but I did go to school for this stuff) I'd be encouraging coyote trapping and hunting, temporarily reducing doe permits and doing some serious necropsies on any dead deer I find to determine cause of death. It's a little more complicated and less popular than trying to kill all the coyotes, but since its virtually impossible to eradicate coyotes, why try? Just take a little off the top and hope for the best.
Besides, why do we really dislike coyotes? I guess they're just too good at their jobs of hunting and killing stuff.
I have only lived in Ohio for 3.5 years but I agree 100% with Team Fudd's assessment. I believe there has been a noticable decline in deer populations in the 4 seasons I have hunted here.
Of course, OH has very liberal doe permits. I think they are related, but I am no biologist.
Coyote are everywhere, including my driveway. Next year I am going to see how often they can make a fool of me.
Ga limit of does at 10 per hunter combined with .25 fawn recruitment in selected locations + recipe for disaster. As many have stated, hunters have been reporting lower deer sightings for a number of years. The DNR has been slow to respond.
just walked some of my northern minnesota deer spots. more wolve droppings than deer. the strange thing is coyotes howling one night wolves the next. if the two dont mix do the yotes move off and than come back? even after the ez winter the deer sighting seem to be down over a few years ago.
A lot of people think that coyotes do not do much to deer populations. I disagree. I live in some of the most fertile farm ground in the world. I used to see does with triplets every year. Have not seen this in over ten years now. Add to the fact that we have had unlimited doe tags over the counter and deer numbers have suffered.
There's a SC study just completed that says in the lower portion of the state of south Carolina which includes Hog Heaven and Bacon Strip we are enjoying a 70% fawn mortality due to coyotes
We need to start a aggressive hunting program for them. I think a reduction in trapping activity has also exacerbated the situation. There used to be a guy or two in every town that trapped- now you hardly see it being done.
..."but until recently game managers in Georgia have been reluctant to acknowledge the impact of predation and the relatively exponential impact when combined with radical doe harvests."
Sounds like Oregon. The difference is we have cougar and bear and now wolves along with coyotes. At this rate the anti-hunters won't have to spend a dime to stop our hunting opportunities. The predators will take the game numbers down to a point where a lot of hunters will find something else to do or hunt out of state. We have seen this happen.
when I here people state in SC and GA state that on their property they have taken over a 100 does per year for the last 5 -6 years and with the coyote issues...add it up....here in NC (NW part of state) we may only see 10 to 15 deer the ENTIRE season, but the DNR says game populations are exploding.....it's a mess boys and it may be too late to turn it around any time soon.... :dunno:
guk, you've got an interesting scenario there. For my money, I'd bet that at some point one species or the other is going to win. Depends on what happens habitat-wise. Wolves are more adapted to big woods, coyotes to fragmented habitats like fields and strips of bush. Either the wolves won't be able to sustain themselves in fragmented habitat, the coyotes will get eaten and reduced, or (and here is the scary scenario) the wolves will be reduced in numbers until they interbreed with the coyotes. This is why northern coyotes are bigger than in teh south - more genetic contact with wolves. So you end up with the flexibility and cunning of a coyote, only almost as big as a wolf (similar to coydogs - crossbred coyotes and feral dogs)
Like I said above, predation is a factor, but not the only one, and the hardest to tackle effectively.
Mortality numbers are real tricky, too. When they say coyotes kill 70% of fawns, you have to consider how many may have died anyways. When a human hunter kills a healthy, mature buck, it's a pretty good chance a coyote isn't going to kill it. But if a hunter kills a small doe or a first year spike, there's a good chance a predator would have gotten it anyway. This is why game management is a crap shoot. There's so little quality information around, the best you can go by is sightings by hunters, which aren't reliable in a statistical analysis sort of way. And no one, at least here in Ontario, has the money to do any actual studies. So it's mostly guesswork. What's killing the deer isn't the whole story - it's what's killing the deer in addition to other mortality. If coyotes were killing only healthy deer, then 70 percent is a crazy number. But if 50 percent of those deer they kill would have died in winter or from disease anyway, then the statistic starts looking less alarming.
The most bang for your buck policy is reducing doe harvests. That will work immediately, as each doe can have 2 fawns. At a certain point you get predator saturation in the population where the coyotes simply can't eat the fawns fast enough. Reducint predator populations in the scenarios listed above is a good idea too, but it's not going to have the immediate relief to a deer population like reducing does killed.
That 100 does in 5 years stat above is scary. I don't care how few coyotes you have, that's a recipe for disaster.Reduce that to 1 doe a year, and you have 95 more does in the population having fawns. As long as your sex ratio doesn't get to like 8 to 1 for does-bucks, your population will do much better (although this policy won't breed for big bucks, just for lots of deer). Then bring the doe permits up - reasonably - when the population starts to overheat again.
They had similar report in SC....I read just this past year. Our herd used to be estimated well over 1M animals but is now in the 700-800,000 range they think.
We have always had a liberal season even though every game zone sets their own dates and limits...here in coastal region I can hunt from 15 aug-1 jan.
they instituted doe tags that could be purchased if you did not want to only hunt on DOE DAYS....to help control the herd a couple decades ago maybe less.
now they are saying with the entrenched coyote population they assess up to 70% fawn mortality rate. WTF???
DNR guy I talked to said.....you need to shoot 8 out of 10 hogs you see just to keep up with them on your property...no matter the size or age or sex. You need to shoot EVERY SINGLE coyote to just keep up without falling too far behind...year round.
it is a problem...that will not go away on its own.
Nature is a balance. If it's out of balance, it's our fault, not the coyotes.
Deer seem to have always done quite well in TX which has always been overrun with coyotes.
yeah but coyotes are not native to the east.....so it is making larger impact in my opinion. drought, heat, wide open spaces, less density per mile food sources than east if I was to guess....
so nothing to help keep them in check....plus more population with large cities surrounded by forests and you have a buffet for the yotes.
It is all over the U.S. that the Game Commission is making poor choices when it comes to deer management. In Pa we used to see lots of deer when we had a two day doe season and limited tags. Now we see few deer and the area that I live in has almost 4 months of doe season and one can kill as many as they want for 7$ a tag.
QuoteOriginally posted by Brock:
yeah but coyotes are not native to the east.....so it is making larger impact in my opinion. drought, heat, wide open spaces, less density per mile food sources than east if I was to guess....
so nothing to help keep them in check....plus more population with large cities surrounded by forests and you have a buffet for the yotes.
Nah, there's still the same number of prey animals per predator. If coyotes are moving in, they're taking the niche of something else. Wolves, bears, and mountain lions were all native to the east/southeast but are now very rare in most of this region. That, and the fact that man has managed deer herds so that their numbers are higher than ever, has allowed coyotes to flourish here.
I agree with Ray and Brock! When I was a kid there wasn't such thing as not seeing a deer when you went hunting. You AlWAYS saw 1 or 2 or 20.
This past year was the worst yet for me. I hunt in the lower part of the state (which is supposed to have more deer) with 4 other guys. I checked my book and I didn't SEE a deer until my 9th trip!
It's very frustrating with 17 "doe days" and every hunter can buy 5 doe tags. Every hunter can kill 21 does a year!!!!
Most young does have 2 fawns a year.... that's a lot of deer that aren't around any longer to replenish the herd.
Oh yea plus the Coyotes!!!!
:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:
QuoteOriginally posted by Brock:
yeah but coyotes are not native to the east.....so it is making larger impact in my opinion. drought, heat, wide open spaces, less density per mile food sources than east if I was to guess....
so nothing to help keep them in check....plus more population with large cities surrounded by forests and you have a buffet for the yotes.
I'm pretty sure coyotes are native to the east. In fact they have thrived all over North America for a lot longer than humans. The population of yotes is growing because we haven't killed enough of them. If we all devoted 1/3 the time we spend hunting deer to hunting yotes I don't think we'd be having this conversation...
Jake,
We don't have winter kill in SC or Georgia...heck, where I hunt in SC they have as high as 80 deer per square mile!
There's no issue with food as we've got an 11 month growing season and a never fail acorn crop as well as plenty of soft mast and browse, plus we also maintain grass planting and food plots.
Eminart,there haven't been mountain lions or bears in SC in measurable numbers since the Pleistocene. Don't correct me if I'm wrong...just chalk it up to me being too long out of school to remember the actual period, but it was a long long long time ago, OK?
If you are going to count that way then we have less prey animals because we used to have elk and bison in SC....let's not go all gooey for coyotes-they're not native- they were brought in by fox hunters who thought they knew better than anyone else- and yes, much like the armadillo, also by natural migration- but make no mistake- they aren't native to SC or GA.
Eight years ago- never heard a coyote in SC coastal plain where I hunt. Now, nearly every night, five or 6 packs sound off like crazy, chase and kill critters.
Our deer have nearly no experience with them and thus, you have the issue. I'm certain over fifteen generations or so the herd will develop/is developing methods of dealing with them, but since we already manipulate the crap out of everything we need to do our part as stewards and try to bring about a balance by knocking back the excess coyotes which are present because they are being TOO successful at killing whitetails in SC.
QuoteOriginally posted by Ray Hammond:
Jake,
If you are going to count that way then we have less prey animals because we had elk and bison in SC....l
And now that we don't have elk and bison, the deer population has grown because there's more food for them. This is what I'm saying. Nature is a balance. I promise you, it doesn't need our help. Now, if you're talking about contorting it to our own wants (larger herds of whitetail), then yeah killing all the other predators will leave more deer for people. But, then people MUST kill those deer to prevent overpopulation.
That's kind of the idea, isn't it?
QuoteOriginally posted by Ray Hammond:
That's kind of the idea, isn't it?
Maybe for some.
I like the idea of having full range of wildlife and not just a herd of prey animals. I think there are plenty of deer for the coyotes and people too.
QuoteOriginally posted by eminart:
QuoteOriginally posted by Ray Hammond:
That's kind of the idea, isn't it?
Maybe for some.
I like the idea of having full range of wildlife and not just a herd of prey animals. I think there are plenty of deer for the coyotes and people too. [/b]
I'm going to disagree! If DNR reports that 70% of fawns are eatin by coyotes then it wont be long before the coyotes don't have fawns to eat.
lets just say that DNR's math was off by 20%.... thats still half of all fawns every year are killed by coyotes.
QuoteOriginally posted by eminart:
QuoteOriginally posted by Ray Hammond:
That's kind of the idea, isn't it?
Maybe for some.
I like the idea of having full range of wildlife and not just a herd of prey animals. I think there are plenty of deer for the coyotes and people too. [/b]
Realistically that isn't how it works. Nature should be balanced, but we need to acknowledge that our species has completely mucked up the balance and it will never return to equilibrium while the human species survives. Between all the hunters you know, how many deer were harvested last year and how many coyotes were harvested last year? Most people don't enjoy coyote hunting nearly as much as deer hunting. The vast majority of conservation dollars come from hunters. If hunters are successful, they'll eventually quit hunting and conservation dollars will decrease. See where this is going?
We need to manage the coyote population just like any other game animal population.
QuoteOriginally posted by gringol:
QuoteOriginally posted by eminart:
QuoteOriginally posted by Ray Hammond:
That's kind of the idea, isn't it?
Maybe for some.
I like the idea of having full range of wildlife and not just a herd of prey animals. I think there are plenty of deer for the coyotes and people too. [/b]
Realistically that isn't how it works. Nature should be balanced, but we need to acknowledge that our species has completely mucked up the balance and it will never return to equilibrium while the human species survives. Between all the hunters you know, how many deer were harvested last year and how many coyotes were harvested last year? Most people don't enjoy coyote hunting nearly as much as deer hunting. The vast majority of conservation dollars come from hunters. If hunters are successful, they'll eventually quit hunting and conservation dollars will decrease. See where this is going?
We need to manage the coyote population just like any other game animal population. [/b]
I disagree.
We manage the fox population less than the coyote. Yet they don't overpopulate because their numbers are based on game numbers. We don't kill ANY birds of prey, some of which compete with us for game birds and small game. Yet, their numbers somehow remain constant according to available game.
What is different with the coyote? Only that they kill deer, and deer is our favorite game.
Coyotes are self-regulating. In years with scarce game, they produce fewer, or no pups. So, if you want less coyotes, kill more deer (and especially rabbits, mice, voles, cotton rats, and grasshoppers). If you want more coyotes, kill fewer deer.
I'm not saying that coyotes aren't affecting the deer herds at all. But, if anything is being damaged beyond quick repair, it's being done by people.
Agree with Eminart 100%.
I had the oppertunity to listen to a gentleman who has been involved in the presator managment line of work for many many years this last march. The findings of his studies were amazing and align in most ways with the study mentioned.
In my region of Ohio very few fawns are seen come mid-summer. Some of the deer that I have taken in the past few years have been some of the oldest age wise. I fear, in a few years we will be hunting ghosts. It gets harder every year as the deer population seems to dwindle. Now as for predators, the coyotes and bobcats are thriving. Since bobcats are currently protected by the State controlling them is out of the question. I try to do my part in keeping coyote numbers down with the help of a few steel traps. Over the past five seasons I have removed 100+ from the 3 major farms I deer hunt on. It may help some but overall I haven't seen a drastic improvement. You just can't get em all. :dunno:
We need to think in bigger bites of time. Yup, coyotes are native continent-wide but they were never as abundant as they are now. It was eradication of wolves in the east (and west too for that matter) that allowed both coyote and deer populations to soar.
I remember there not being many deer in Illinois either when I was growing up. I did a story one time when I dug up a biological survey in the 1940s that put the total state deer population at quite a bit under 1,000 deer. (This was at the end of market gunning and Depression era subsistence hunting.) It was in the late 60s/early 70s that IDNR (back then it was the Ill Dept. of Conservation) shifted emphasis from upland game birds to deer management, and successfully, too. At that time a coyote siting was pretty rare. Deer populations increased rapidly, and THEN so did the coyote population, coming over from Missouri on winter ice.
Wolves are the only real predators of coyotes. (actually violent competitors) But it was not hunting, trapping and poisoning that lowered coyote populations. That is what lowered wolf populations. Coyote populations were already low and reacted to increases in deer populations. I'm not for a second advocating wolf reintroduction back east. And I don't think we can put a serious dent in the coyote population simply with hunting, but we should try.
In my opinion, we are on uncharted ground.
eminart,
I agree with you in principle, but I don't agree that we will ever return to any form of natural balance, especially in the eastern US. Coyotes,like foxes, do self-regulate, but the self-regulation comes when the prey population collapses. Food sources for coyotes in the eastern US will never collapse because people have completely upset the natural balance. There are livestock, pets, rats, etc everywhere, so there is no end in sight to a growing coyote population if you wait for their food source to collapse.
I have to agree alot with eminart. I PERSONALLY feel thae WE as humans thru managing game animals to levels we want , set the coyotes up for success. They are small enough to hide well (wolfs not so much) but big enough and smart enough to take down most any prey they choose. Plus they are adaptable. They don't need a perfect environment . They just need an alright environment.
They are amazing animals, who are very fun to hunt.
Now, if they tasted good, everyone would be so happy right now you wouldn't be able to see straight.
In addition to liberal doe limits and coyotes, deer are having to compete for food with an increasing population of feral hogs in many parts of Georgia. Hard to compete with a hog.
I own a very small tract, but I have seen one hell of a lot of coyotes on it. I have seen a large number of dead deer, especially fawns. I agree that part of the decline in deer sightings is over kill of does, but it is the combination of over hunting and predation that, in my opinion, makes the issue serious in my area. However, in the times before the coyote population mushroomed, we had very high kill limits and still had deer out the yingyang, causing me to believe the coyote is the major problem. I NEVER pass up a shot at a coyote, and I never go in the woods without something that shoots, whether it is a bow, a gun, or both.
Now if DNR will take a serious look at the decline in deer sightings and take appropriate action...
You are wrong- coyotes have been introduced to the Southeast
I've lived a lot longer than many of you and have actually seen millions of acres that had ZERO deer and ZERO coyotes in them in several states
Coyote populations have exploded here- just as they do out west when there's a rabbit 'bloom' - then both crash precipitously
I'd rather we work to manipulateruns trad of enduring a feast or famine system rise and fall which is what will occur if an out of balance system has to correct itself
We've interfered too much with our land management and farming practices
Like it or not we can't turn off our responsibility to assist a system that can no longer balance itself because of our interference- without drastic highs and lows being the result
QuoteOriginally posted by gringol:
QuoteOriginally posted by Brock:
yeah but coyotes are not native to the east.....so it is making larger impact in my opinion. drought, heat, wide open spaces, less density per mile food sources than east if I was to guess....
so nothing to help keep them in check....plus more population with large cities surrounded by forests and you have a buffet for the yotes.
I'm pretty sure coyotes are native to the east. In fact they have thrived all over North America for a lot longer than humans. The population of yotes is growing because we haven't killed enough of them. If we all devoted 1/3 the time we spend hunting deer to hunting yotes I don't think we'd be having this conversation... [/b]
nope, you are wrong....no coyotes east of mississippi until bridges allowed them to cross...and people brought them over surreptitiously....coyotes are a prairie open animal. We had red wolves but no coyotes. NONE....they are recent addition of 20th century.
I was born and raised in Ga. When I started hunting back in the 50's there weren't any coyotes there or deer in most counties. Back then quail was king.
We have had Coyotes here in Oklahoma forever, used to be a bounty on them and you would see hides hung on fence post for miles, probably should bring that back, we have way too many. There are alot of people moving to the outskirts of town and finding out that coyotes love little dogs, and they dont seem to be as scared of people anymore
Sounds like what we have had here in Michigan for at least a decade...very few deer except in localized spots in the southern 1/3 of the stae which is largely private land. A DNR that manages for $$$$$$$ instead of a good solid herd, and hunters who have been ignorant and greedy; "unlimited doe tag; ok, I will kill everything I can."
Plus a coyote explosion.
It is depressing.
To be fair, I think most everyone here has good points. And my opinions probably stem from the fact that I'd like to see the world's human population be about 1/32 what it is today. Obviously I don't want any kind of disaster to make it that way, but there's just way too many people. With the number of people now, you guys are probably right in that letting nature take its course isn't entirely feasible.
BUT, a deer herd will sustain a certain level of predation. We have become accustomed to most of that predation being from humans. I think we deserve ours, but I'm willing to share.
And I think whoever mentioned feral hogs brings up another good point. They can destroy an ecosystem.
Hey fellas not sure about this "self regulating" thing. Coyotes can eat lots of stuff besides deer and I don't see them regulating themsleves.
Coyotes do exterminate foxes since canines have zero tolerance of each other. Wolves too exterminate coyotes - I have seen it - it is quick. But I hate wolves - even though I want to keep coyotes to a minimum I kind a like having them around. They clean up a lot of trash species in the woods and for me deer move better in daylight where coyotes exist.
Right now most scat still is full of hog hair near where me and Ray hang out - and YES Ray is correct coyotes have been introduced. There introduction and expansion is man made and has happened steadily during my lifetime (I am 55) - I remember when there were few deer - many counties with none - and NO coyotes from the southern Adirondacks to the Gulf of Mexico.
The way I see it is if you are a serious hunter of Mule Deer you ought to take a couple a cats at least during you adult hunting career - and if you are a serious steward of wildlife here in the southeast you must start trapping coyotes and you must kill them. Best to hit em hard winter and spring to to break up pack units. Our biggest probelem is the widespread practice of professional coyote trappers "selling" their catch 'live' supposedly to catch and run pens. I know many of these end up being loose again.
sickening guys - but we can do something. Trapping is good woodsmanship that all bowhunters should develop - it will make you a better bowhunter too.
Good Luck<><
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I almost hate to post on this since it seems to be getting so far off of traditional bow hunting,but here goes anyway. Predators and prey have been seeing the ebb and flow of things well before we ever got here. When prey gets scarce the predators start to die off and all sorts of things set in and then the tides turn in the favor of the prey and they make a comeback. That's just the way nature intended it,we as man have made a big impact on extra hunting and habitat loss,it's just something we all have to deal with.
Couple of points. I know folks who brought in coyotes in the 80's in a high fence area in SW GA. They also migrated here . Really exploded the last decade. I was in a hunt club just north of metro Atlanta two years ago which was trying to rebound from low deer numbers. 3500 acres and we trapped 77 coyotes in one year.
As far as the balance of nature, it may be correct to suggest that prey/deer species will balance OVER TIME. But who wants 10-15 years of virtually no deer in an area? Also you have to consider that coyotes will be sustained by human activity even if the deer population is destroyed. Deer only provide sustenance for a few months during the birthing season. Coyotes eat mostly fruit and vegetables during much of the year.
QuoteOriginally posted by Sharptop:
Also you have to consider that coyotes will be sustained by human activity even if the deer population is destroyed. Deer only provide sustenance for a few months during the birthing season. Coyotes eat mostly fruit and vegetables during much of the year.
I disagree. It takes a certain amount of food to sustain the predator population at the point where it currently is. That already includes any food they're getting from humans. If the deer population drops, the predator population drops. If the mouse population drops, the predator population drops. If the food in garbage bags by the street population drops, the predator population drops.
Sharptop,
We have killed deer( adult does and bucks) that have had the hind quarters ripped up by coyotes, they hunt in packs and size doesnt matter when they are hungry.