We're in a very interesting spot. Some interesting facts about here....We had over 11000 people move into our county between JUL 2015-JUL 2016. We're the number one location for Lyme disease too. The worst fact...we're the richest county in the nation (median income). Those things together mean we're getting alot of development, and with hunting being the last on people minds, but that we also have alot of deer and the landscaping is cocaine for deer. I've hunted the same 80+ acres hard over the last 5 years and saw very few yotes. I pulled nine off that property this winter within 2 oo yards of each other. This summer we've seen more turkeys than usual, which was the goal. We also have a TON of red foxes (very few grays). I can catch reds here on that same property every week.

I'm 50/50 on it all. I just enjoy the hunting/trapping. I enjoy deer hunting and the numbers we have, but I love chasing the k9s more. You can do whatever you want, the yotes aren't going anywhere. We've tried to take the out for almost 200 years and they've laughed at us.

Jeepsyco it sounds like you had a family of coyotes raise in your area and you took them all out. Good job! If the coyotes stay your red fox population will drop. It will take a while but the coyotes will thin the fox down more than the deer IMO. Your correct the yotes are here to stay, I just want them to be considered in the equation for deer management across the state. In your area they should help with the numbers of deer over time.

a couple of thoughts,
Coyotes may kill a few deer during the year but they are not limiting the deer population.
Left unchecked Deer destroy the habitat that feeds them.
The lessons of the Kiabab are being disputed, some cling to elimination of predator others say over browsing damage, either way the habitat in the end limited the deer population.
If you think predators can decimate the deer herd how do account for unlimited (by man) predators and still there were lots of deer before European settlement. Indians used habitat manipulation (fire) to attract deer and other prey and this manipulation benefited the deer.
I find it sad that there are still those want to eliminate predators of Deer, whether Coyotes, Wolves, mountain lions or whatever. This just so they can have more deer to kill for them selves. Meanwhile farmers, property owners and others pay the price for over population of deer.

I myself think there are too many deer in my neck of the woods. We have few coyotes at this time, they are around, but not in large numbers. There are still more Red Foxes than coyotes in my neck of the woods. I'd hate to see the foxes go if the coyotes became more numerous but if they do I'd doubt if the coyotes would put a dent in the deer, it be nice if they did, but they won't.

I hear the whining of others from Northern Wi on the declining deer heard up north. If you want to see the deer heard rebound don't worry about Wolves, let the chainsaws loose and start clear cutting pulp and you'll see the heard rebound. The more logging the better.

Dirty D- when the coyote population exceeds the red fox population you will see the deer numbers decline unless your deer population is still growing because hunters are not shooting enough does. We had an over population of deer and the population needed to drop but once it does and lots of hunters think they can still shoot double digit number of does and it will not impact the population is when the decline really speeds up. When the numbers start to decline is when you see the coyote impact the most IMO. In some areas I think coyotes may only kill 10% of the fawns and in others I think they may kill 90%. There are lots of variables, habitat and deer population are two important ones.

I can remember years back at a Wildlife Commission meeting in Colorado, one of the biologists stating that deer were "an insignificant portion of a coyote's diet". One of the other trappers Assn. members uttered under his breath "Where do coyotes buy they're Tofu?. That same year Utah came out with a study showing more than half of coyote droppings studied contained deer hair, in the spring the scat contained about 70% , mostly fawn hair as I remember.

I hear the whining of others from Northern Wi on the declining deer heard up north. If you want to see the deer heard rebound don't worry about Wolves, let the chainsaws loose and start clear cutting pulp and you'll see the heard rebound. The more logging the better.

Top
Yes and it won't hurt the grouse, bear or snowshoe population along with the deer either. Sure deer can destroy their habitat but if browse is a major source of winter food for deer and the trees grow up then the browse is not within reach. Clearings create grass and broad leaf plants along with shrubs and first succession trees, like aspen, birch, alder etc. which growth thick and provide lots of winter feed.

Bryce

Another source:

http://www.fieldandstream.com/predator-control-truth-about-coyotes-vs-deer

PA guys- how are things there since coyotes have moved in the area?

http://www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/big-buck-zone/2014/06/are-pennsylvania-coyotes-4-million-problem

If your goal is a "Coyote Bounty", you will need to use politics, not science.

WI pretty much keeps control on how many does get shot. Gun season you need a "special" tag, bow is hunter's choice. Not many bow hunter shoot does. Its the antler hunt. nobody is shooting double digits of does. There needs to be more does killed in the southern 1/2 and more habitat creation in the northern 1/2 (logging).

Biggest killer of deer in my area is starvation, in the north its human hunters.

Enough fawns killed by mowing hay and hogging weeds to skew any study of scat, at least most years. Need to collar about a thousand coyotes and track them closely for a year. Find out just what the deer kill numbers are.
A thousand is a large enough sample to get fair results and would require enough people so that some of the bias would be eliminated from the results.

This sounds like the hunters are more to blame than the coyotes?

How does collaring give you more information about source of dead fawn than studying scat, unless you have a video strapped to the collar? Also, in statistics the size of the sample is of limited importance, for a study to be sound the sample must be randomly selected.


I will say this generally: I have very little faith in coyote studies. I question the smarts of many conducting such studies. Most of the findings are conjecture at best. Then they are repeated ad nauseam as other studies copy previous ones, or at least the conclusions of which. There's a lot of dumbassery being passed off as hard science. The Virginia Tech coyote study is just a complete joke....worse than unhelpful, clearly reflects the bias of the author, and wasted hundreds of thousands of license fee $$$$.

good excuse for crappy studies, statistics have little to do with truth;

camera on the collar could assist in the close 24 hour a day monitoring, good idea
when the coyote is feeding in fresh cut patch, odds are excellent that the fawn was found dead, imo, my thoughts are does don't hide the baby in a fresh cut field.
The cost of any coyote study is well worth it if even one fawn is saved?

Biilytraps- my goal is to see good wildlife management practices based on good data. I do not believe in traditional bounties. I said that earlier and said that a tagged coyote program may help get hunters and trappers interested in hunting coyotes while game departments could collect some data when tagged and after tagged(% harvested, how long they lived, how far they traveled, etc.) We can not control them, we will have to learn how to manage our wildlife populations with coyotes.

Tjm- hunters are being told that it is based on heavy doe harvest that started years ago, disease and habitat loss. Lots of these hunters shot double digit deer for years without any significant impact to the population (prior to coyotes). Now they don't understand why they can't still do it.....I don't want disease or the habitat to cause the reduction so I better shoot them.

Pass-thru- I don't support any more studies on coyotes. They studies conducted show significant variations in data and that will continue IMO. Lots of variables: coyote population, deer population, habitat, fawning season(how spread out, buck to doe ratio for breeding them in a short window) weather during spring and summer, crops/ other available food and etc. The weather alone can have significant impact on a fawns survival IMO. Lots of rain and everything is lush, fawns grow faster, more cover, does milk better, etc.

I think studies could be designed the best way possible and you could still see data from coyotes killing 10% to 90% of fawns across different areas. I agree don't waste anymore money. The benefit of another study would probably be as low as traditional bounties.

I also am not doing this for my own interest to kill more deer. If I never kill another deer I have killed enough. I hope my kids get to enjoy hunting and trapping the same way I have over the last 40 years. If the revenue stops coming in to the states our hunting and trapping rights will change for the worse quickly.

If you are running a lot of fawns through haybines then there is a decent to high population of deer in your area. We have been cutting over 3-4 million acres of hay in WI for over 80 years and deer numbers in the heavily farmed area have boomed during that time.

Bryce

When hunting ginseng during bow season,I come across deer that are being eaten by coyotes.Same thing close to roads. Plenty of fawns get mowed over also. I have no doubt that Coyotes kill deer,but deer are lousy here in spite of liberal bag limits,not to mention permits given to farmers. As bblwi said farmland with suitable cover nearby is where the deer are ,at least around here.

Facts from PA

There is no closed season and no bag limits on coyotes. This kinda goes against the conspiracy theorists.

I've seen may times and in all seasons that a dead deer/fawn/cow/calf will lay untouched for months with no sign of coyotes. Will they eat carrion? Sure but to imply that a very significant amount of deer hair in their scat is from eating critters already dead doesn't add up especially in fawn drop season.

I had a friend in high school in the early 80's who grew and smoked a lot of weed on his rural Bedford County farm. He'd come to school every once in a while and say that he had heard coyotes howling on the mountain the night before. Friends would laugh and say well "musta been the weed". Guess it wasn't the weed. Now we have (proof of some, anecdotally for others)

1. Many more bear
2. Many more bobcat
3. Many more fisher
4. Many more coyotes
5. Very healthy turkey population
6. Significantly less red fox
7. CWD
8. Viable population of Bald Eagles
9. Lot more of opportunities to kill deer
10. Many less deer

You can draw your own conclusions but the yotes, as we all know ain't going anywhere.

I am from eastern NC and I am here to tell you that coyotes and ( red wolves ) will decimate a deer population. PERIOD end of discussion.

I will also say that in my lifetime I have laughed at all kinds of ridiculous statements made by biologist. I think they mean well they just don't have the where with all to actually see the forest for the trees. They have been conditioned to " study the date " and therefore they are always behind the curve.

Let me put it this way. A whitetail deer herd cannot be predated on 365 days a year by cars, disease, food scarcity in winter, automobiles and poaching and then evade hunters for 120 days (Sept 10 thru Jan 1 ) and expect the herd to grow.

I hate a coyote and red wolf ( any wolf ) more than any white man walking the planet.

BillyTraps- you are correct, politics can get bounties approved Science normally will not support bounties.

My estimates/assumptions
800,000 deer in VA
400,000 does bred
480,000 fawns born (some does have 1,2 or 3 fawns- assuming 1.2 fawns per doe) assume same every year
Harvest approximately 250,000-2007/2008, 2008/2009
Coyotes appeared 15 years ago in my area( 2002) healthy population by 2007
Coyotes kill injured and sick deer from HD/EHD that sometimes would survive before coyotes
Coyotes kill 20% of fawns in 2007 - 96,000 fawns- coyote population grows
Coyotes kill 30% of fawns in 2008 - 144,000 fawns - coyotes population grows
Coyotes kill 40% of fawns in 2009 - 192,000 fawns - coyote population grows and levels off for future years
Coyotes kill 40% of fawns in 2010 - 192,000 fawns - l believe the coyote population is still growing but used 40% as a max
Same kill every year after. 2011 - 192,000 fawns
2012 - 192,000 fawns
2013 - 192,000 fawns
2014 - 192,000 fawns
2015 - 192,000 fawns
2016 - 192,000 fawns - deer harvest 180,000 for a drop of 70,000 deer or 28% from 250,000. I think the peak was 256,000.....the website just shows a graph when you click the years 1947-2016 it just shows last year.
I predicted to our biologist that the harvest would decline to 150,000 years ago and I think they laughed at me. Here is my prediction going forward.
2017/2018 - 198,000 up 10% from last year because of good mast crop hurt hunters success in 2016/2017and big snow on last day of season kept numbers down, mast crop appears poor will help hunters this season, number may go over 200,000
2018/2019-168,000 down due to over harvest in 2017/2018, continued coyote pressure
2019/2020 - 151,00 decline continues as over harvest of does has made coyote pressure on fawns greater
I hope this is the bottom but we will see. I believe my assumptions are low on the percentages of fawns killed by coyotes but tried to be conservative. Fawns die from other causes too. The Game Department has cut doe days out in the national forest land and reduced doe days in 14 counties but numbers are so low they will take years to recover with coyotes in the equation. Any logic here or is the head biologist correct by saying, "I can not and will not blame predators for the decline in the deer herd".