Interesting for sure. very wishy washy on hard facts, but facts are hard to get when dealing with the wiley coyote.

The research out there about predation and fawn recruitment is mostly "eh, yes it can have an impact but overall the numbers and data don't bear out that predation is the biggest factor"...that's my take certainly not any meta-analysis or any kind of scientific or statistical analysis.

However, we do know locally predation can be a big player. That is why it is important to be on top of your place, from herd management, food sources, cover/habitat control, and predator control. Only you can be the judge if predators are out of control or if they are a small part of the bigger puzzle. Hard to make many over-reaching statements other than that IMHO.

How do you know? How do you know it wasn't an unhealthy or weaker ibex Rhetorical questions for sure, so no answer needed.

I am not saying coyotes can't take down a healthy animal, but in LF situations, a healthy strong animal should be hard prey for a coyote and there should be abundant small game available for the coyotes to go after vs harder big game. In HF situations where cover may be tough due to over population and small game is scarce due to lack of good cover, coyotes are like a druggie sitting in a hospital pharmacy, which do I hit next.

In wet years coyotes over-populate just like whitetails and all other small animals/rodents do. When it gets drier coyotes numbers are still high and they are still hungry. They kill whatever is easiest to kill that day, healthy or not. They are hunting in numbers right now since they are training pups to kill.

We are high-fenced. We have abundant cover and only carry 1 deer to 20-25 acres. I saw tons of ground squirrels, rabbits and other rodents while on the ranch last weekend. As stx noted, predator populations go up and down with moisture. We had 40+ inches of rain on the ranch the past three years. Coyote and Bobcat numbers exploded. That photo was from only one camera at a gate on a x fence where there is no stand or feeder. Haven't seen any other predators on any of our trailcam photos, but most of our cameras are at feed pens with deer stands. The yotes may have learned to avoid the stands, I dunno. I'll know for sure after we fly the ranch and I've had time to make a half-dozen or so sits. If I'm seeing numerous predators and very few fawns, we're gonna go nuclear on them.

STX, no doubt coyotes can affect things locally and at specific times of year, but fawns should be old enough and if healthy should be able to evade coyotes given enough cover.

The article you quoted above had research that stated despite intensive coyote control for several years, the researchers simply did not see much improvement in fawn recruitment. This suggests one of two things:
1. coyotes are not the main cause of fawn mortality (which there is support for in places where predators are not found in CT and fawn survival is on par with the rest of the country, suggesting there are non-predatory factors involved in fawn survival that are equal to what has been attributed to predators in other parts of the country, i.e. rainfall or other environmental factors).

2. other coyotes simply move in where other coyotes were taken out and the population of coyotes stays pretty stable despite our best efforts to control them.

Very likely a combination of above. Coyotes are for sure going to get some animals, but are these animals we "wanted" in the herd anyway? I can understand the HF ranch dilemma here, need to keep deer herd alive and well. IN that situation, as mentioned above, intensive predator control (and hog control for habitat management) is important for herd management. But in a LF situation, less mouths to feed means more for the remaining herd, and bigger stronger deer overall. Survival of the fittest to the definition.

If I hunted in a place that had deer constantly being harassed by coyotes I would get out and hunt them more, but where I hunt I will hear maybe one group a hunt and they just don't seem close. I know they are out there, just don't see them. At my previous place, I would hear 4-6 groups every hunt, and see one or two every hunt. I actively hunted coyotes and had fun doing it there. Did I expect my actions to impact deer herd/fawn recruitment? no way, there were way too many deer there to begin with, so it was a target rich environment.

I am sure you will see some fawns out there. They are good at hiding, just like the coyotes. They are there, just a little hard to find sometimes.

Our neighbor put a HF up about 5 years ago on 500 acres. They snared over 100 yotes and cats in just a couple years. I don't see anything in the snares anymore. Hopefully it has helped us.

I watched a TPWD show and they did a study in HF where all predators were removed and one where they weren't. Fawn recruitment was very high and drought didn't have much impact on it. Conclusion was predators are a fawns worst enemy.

Coyote do not just eat at one time during the year as you well know. They are in the "kill and eat" mode everyday. All predators have to be like that. To them it is a meal, not matter what age or how healthy it is or size of the prey. Small prey means they eat more often. If they can find a dumb enough healthy young buck, they will kill it. It won't happen to that buck again since his short term memory is now inside the gut of that yote. I have had 4 yrs of 17%-25% fawn crops. I have a lot of coyotes that I hear but rarely ever see them. I saw one coyote last year driving to check TC cams at 10 am during hunting season and then one more I called up after a bow hunt. They cut loose at daylight less than 100 yards from me. That group I know were pups raised on my place. When coyotes cut loose the deer went on high alert on my place. Here on my place if any predator walked out where deer could see them, the deer ran away immediately. Other ranches I have managed I would see deer stand and watch a coyote.
I managed a ranch that has a pasture where we farmed axis deer for the meat market. Hill Country for years had very low coyote numbers but as place sold or split up, the new owners did not work on coyotes like the old ones did. The coyotes found that axis pasture in due time. I had to put a predator wire down around the whole perimeter to slow the coyotes down. For 3 months from Jan till March the coyotes killed fawns on a regular basis. They finally got to be so bad that they would kill just to kill and not eat. One morning I found 9 axis fawns dead in line about 100 yards long across a coastal patch. Only 2 had part of the body opened up and eaten on. The rest were killed and left for vultures and hawks. I found over 125 axis fawns of all ages dead in that 3 months that year till I got the predator wire laid down. It slowed them down a lot but still had issues. Those coyotes hunted that pasture on a cycle and not everyday.
Another ranch I managed in South Texas has laid a predator wire down around the perimeter in the last few years now. They have always worked on snaring and trapping all predators along with shooting everyone they see. Now that they have the predator wire down and still working on numbers, their fawn crops are very high every year. The average fawn crop is now higher than the previous years. This not a little HF ranch but one over 10,000 acres so they have an internal population of predators. No cattle in the past 16 yrs so they have great fawning cover. The only change has been in predator numbers that is effecting their numbers.
No normal 6" or 12" netwire fence is totally predator proof. I have seen a bobcat not break stride and run then jump through netwire at 30-36" off the ground. I have had guys tell me they saw a coyote crawl through a netwire fence on a ranch I managed. No way the coyote could go under on that fence with predator wire or the concrete under the fence perimeter. We checked the watergaps and fence on a regular basis so no coyotes got in any other way unless they climb over or thru the fence. I killed 2 coyotes in 5 inside the fence. One I could track and 2 times one was seen but we could never catch it or kill it. We think it came in for 6 weeks or so then left for about the same time period.
Something that has to kill to eat everyday is going to kill whatever it can catch that day or the next day. If not it will starve to death.

I like to kill hog and leave them for the coyotes then shoot coyotes eating the dead hogs. Keeps some of the coyotes well fed and brings death to others haha.

Listen guys, we are all on the same page, coyotes kill to live. We all know that. What we can't predict is how much of that killing is fawn/deer vs other animals. They are going to go with the easiest kill, so if you make it easy on them (i.e. a HF which is crowded with deer/exotics and little else) then they are going to kill a lot of deer/exotics. In LF land, coyote populations will vary based on many factors. I know you guys have way more experience and collective knowledge than I do (it doesn't even have to be collective knowledge as each one of you is probably smarter than I am when it comes to deer management) but my limited experience has shown the exact opposite of STX story above. Doesn't mean it is wrong or right, just my experience. deer would stand and eat in a big wide open field while coyote group after group howled away at dusk. Then after dark would see them run around the deer (within 100 yards) and deer would watch but not run and coyotes would just keep moving on. It was almost as if the coyotes were not interested in the deer. Plenty of fawns to go around, plenty of deer to go around, plenty of song dogs to go around, but never saw a coyote chase after a deer or fawn, never saw the deer get jumpy around the coyotes, etc. Just a different experience. This was north texas, so different situation than south texas. I understand that.

But one thing I have never seen is a coyote kill to just kill, and not eat its prey. I have never come across a dead animal that wasn't chewed on and mostly eaten. My guess is those axis fawns were diseased and dead or mostly dead before they were killed by the coyotes. For them not to eat them means they didn't want them so something was up. A coyote isn't going to kill if it isn't hungry. doesn't go along with nature. Did you guys do any follow up on those carcasses to see if they had disease of something else the coyotes didn't want?

I know it was healthy because I saw it and the other 2 Healthy Ibex that coyote killed in a 2 week period every day when they were fed.. Your thoughts on coyotes remind me of something either pita or "friends of coyotes" would write. When we raised sheep we put some 1080 collars on some old ewes. The coyotes killed the young healthy sheep and did not touch the older ewes. I have found healthy Axis and WT run into fence corners where the coyotes could kill them. I have found numerous WT fawns throughout my years killed by coyotes. And my place has plenty of cover. If you have plenty of rats and rabbits sometimes the coyotes are not a problem. But once they get the taste of a larger animal there diet does not go back to rat eating.

Axis were in their fawning season, which is from Jan to March on 70% of that herd. Deer were all healthy and so were the fawns. Axis does are poor excuses for mothers. I have seen a does run off and leave a couple of day old fawns behind to care for itself. Axis also put 15-20 young fawns together in one pile under the same tree. That axis herd was on coastal and Klein grass and supplemented with hay and/or pellets and corn when needed. Those coyotes killed and ate a lot of fawns that year but they also killed some they did nothing to other than kill them.
I hunted the Jayton area for 3 yrs and saw how many coyotes were up in that country. A lot of them based off of howling and tracks. If it was just one or two coyotes making all those track on 14,000 acres then he was one nervous SOB. The ranch manager there was calving out heifers in a small pasture and was coyotes were in their every hour of the day trying to catch a heifer calving. I also so how deer reacted to them when they saw a coyote. I watched coyotes chase a mature mule deer buck in Pecos County one morning for about a mile till they went out of sight. I saw that buck 4 days later. I also watched a group of 9-10 mule deer does try to pound a coyote into the ground in Pecos County and 20+ does in Western Kansas do the same. A coyotes diet depends on what is available. When rabbits and rats numbers are down due to the drought and coyotes numbers being so high, the coyote is going to eat what it can catch that day.
I am no expert by any means but just things I have seen in my years of learning about wildlife.

We've been penning our Angora kids every night. Monday morning the coyote waited for us to turn them out and killed one and tore up another in broad daylight, about 9 am. They didn't eat the dead one, most likely because we unknowingly ran him off right after his kill by driving through that pasture.

I hate them with the fury of 1000 suns. I killed this one chasing a buck fawn at a friend's place near Caradan.

I hate cows more than coyotes. And I will eat cow meat and am willing to wear their hide over a coyote pelt

Personally wouldn’t mind shooting either species and would take great joy in shooting both. Have seen cows disrupt a hunt sooo many more times than a coyote ever did. But that was on my leases. Now that I own my land, no more cows and very few coyotes.

Quit being a tight wad and call a good helicopter crew to hammer them! lol

that stinks, I had a bobcat on mine a while back but it was a 1 time occurance

time for some early season hunting