We have been hitting the yotes on our ranch hard - shooting on site along with trapping. I have read articles/studies about the impact these predators have on the fawn crop and bucks after the rut. They are prolific - shoot one and 3 more show up.

Anybody else try to control your coyotes aggressively?

I shoot em when I see em thats about it. Still plenty of deer.

we have standing orders to shoot every one we see ...

have read reports from all parts of US, biologist claim is a significant predation on fawns

^^^basically what Sapper said. Right or wrong, that's what we do.
"They are prolific - shoot one and 3 more show up." You said it tlk. If you hit them real hard at the right time you might do some good but otherwise.....
Ive researched a good bit and what I got out of it was that over the long haul you really cant do much about it. Others may disagree, but just my 2cents.

can yall tell I am bored and made up a subject to discuss??? lol

I want deer season to get here!!!!!!!

Deer season is too far away, but got my soybeans in and will get to planting them toward the middle end of May.

Coyotes are pretty much plug and play. Research says some are roamed and some are resident. If you shoot a roamed you still have the residents, and if you shoot a resident then typically a roamed takes its place.

I don’t shoot them on my place although I don’t see but maybe one a year. Hear them a lot more. I think I had one move in, asked my son if he wanted to shoot it and he said we haven’t seen the three roaming feral dogs (we did see these a lot more often and I even saw two chasing a deer this season, but no shot opportunity) around since the coyote has been there...so take what you want from that, one coyote or three feral dogs.

One theory too is that coyotes help by finding and eating the sick fawns. Who knows. I did see plenty of dawns this year and last. As long as I see good dawn numbers I am not going to get concerned about coyotes.

I fight coyotes 24-7-365. They have a significant impact on Deer in areas that don't have a good population of rats and rabbits such as here where I live. South Texas has a good rat and rabbit population so they don't have near as much problem with them working on Deer. Here it is a different story. My place is HF. I have Stay Tuff predator proof wire on most of it and the rest I have 4"X 4"X 48" cattle panels that I recessed 6" into the ground. When I find a hole dug under the fence I either cover it with rocks or if it looks like it was dug by a coyote I will put a snare in it. Last month I lost a full grown Axis Doe and 4 Mouflon lambs plus a few Blackbuck to coyotes. I caught 3 coyotes in snares and now I don't have a problem for now. But when the WT Does start having fawns you can bet that others in the area will loose a good percentage of them.

Don, one of the benefits of a HF is you know what’s in there for the most part. One of the bad things about a HF is so do the predators. And once a predator gets in a HF the animals have no where to go....you are very different than lf ranches in that regard

Watched a coyote take down a spotted fawn in my front yard a few years ago. Had just backed out of the garage and sat there in disbelief as the yote trotted away with fawn in its mouth. Don’t give any a pass after that.

Not intending to take away from the experience, but if a fawn is in your front yard, it probably isn’t going to make it anyway, if you have a front yard like most folks have. A fawn needs more cover than most front yards can give.

Last deer season a group of guys I know saw some deer bedded and were waiting for the buck to stand up so that they could shoot him. While waiting 5 coyotes came in and they wanted the fawn. Two coyotes kept probing and the doe would try to keep them at bay. Once she took one step too many, the other coyotes rushed in. The fawn was completely dismembered in seconds. Three of the coyotes were taken out and the other two got away. All the while the buck stayed bedded down.

Several years ago AZ Game and Fish killed 50 coyotes in year 1 and another 50 in year 2 in one of our units (10). This unit is 1.5 million acres. Long story short, by killing 100 total coyotes they increased the first year fawn survival rate for pronghorn to 90%.

While I like personally like and respect coyotes, I will take them out when I get the chance.

None get a pass.

tlk, have you been on the "Off Topic" forum much? You talk about a buncha bored folks looking for any subject to talk about..... Lots of good virus topics but lots of weird topics. I never spent much time on OT before but ive become a real regular over there the last 3 weeks.

Actually a HF or a LF to a fawn makes no difference unless it is a 5 strand barb wire fence. A fawn can't jump a 4 ft. net wire fence any more than it could a 8 ft, one. I find just as many fawn and Axis kills on a LF place I have as on the HF one.

Don, how many LF places have something other than 5 strand barn as their fences? If it is a game Fence yes it is impassable by a young dawn. But most paces I have seen in Texas have 5 strand (or less) barb and a fawn can easily sneak underneath the lower strand. So can coyotes, but the point is. In a HF, game fence situation, the coyote can corner any animal and make an easier kill along the fence line. Obviously this becomes an issue in small HF sections, the larger the area of HF the less this becomes an issue.

That is why I said you are in a different situation, you need to take out as many coyotes as possible in your HF area, and keep them away from your LF area as much as possible so the coyotes don’t try to enter the HF.

In most LF areas, coyotes don’t have as captive an audience as a Small HF area.

Free range, you ain’t joking. There’s some really interesting discussions going on over there. Has been amusing.

Think I will pass - regular life has enough drama for me to go create more - lol

Around here net wire fences outnumber barb wire probably 10 to one. I don't what places in Texas you are seeing more barb wire fencing unless it is in the Panhandle.

We shoot every one we see even if we are hunting deer. Usually keep a .17 in the stand just for coyotes and hogs.

This is the best time of year to go varmint hunting if you desire to protect your deer herd and especially the fawn crop. Right now.

We shoot them when a good opportunity arises and we trap, but I’ll admit we are poor trappers and don’t typically have the ability to let the traps sit long enough as we don’t leave them set when we aren’t there.

That said I think a lot of it depends on the cover. We have an ungodly high coyote population we hear them see them and get many trail cam pictures of them we shoot close to 10 does a year and still have a bumper crop of fawns every year. We are LF good brush and no livestock, even in drought years we have good ground cover and I think that makes a huge difference.

Side note - if you are heavy on your doe harvest, you will secure a higher fawn crop.

Yes and no I guess if you shoot 1/2 your does logic says you cut your fawn number in half. Maybe your recruitment goes up?

yes, recruitment will go up. Less mouths means more resources for those remaining. Pretty simple really.