Coyote impact on deer

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.

Recruitment will go up, as health increase your likelihood of twins goes up. Also as the rut is more pronounced then the breeding dates will be closer, there for more fawns will hit the ground at the same time causing a fawn swamping which essentially overwelms predation.

On a long rut .... predators are better at picking them off before the get old enough to evade.

Guess I should have provided some context. I lived out in the country. Nearest neighbors were a half mile away. Coyote chased the fawn off the hill behind the house and caught it at the edge of the yard. Mama doe was there 30 seconds later, after the yote killed and carried the fawn off.

We shot an old eight point and a nice 10 point off the front porch that fall.

Edit to add aerial photo.

As usual, Bobo right on the money, IMO.

The ranches that excel at effectively limiting coyotes you arent going to publicize it.

If you are a decent trapper/caller and you are killing lots of coyotes via calling and trapping means you have a lot to call and trap...

When I say effective I mean extreme lack of presence of yotes. You can control to a degree populations with year round trapping and hunting, but not limit.

We trap and shoot every coyote and bobcat we can on our small HF place. It is a constant battle and we've been losing, to be honest. It's also rumored that we have had problems with domestic canines getting inside the fence and killing deer....
We have been trying to repair and skirting to the fence to keep them from digging in, where we have done that, we seem to have less problems but there is a lot of fence still left to skirt.
The landowner also insisted on having the front pasture cut late last summer (because he didn't like the way it looked) and this is where a lot of the BB hang out. I know we had 5 babies that were residing in that pasture that didn't make it. I also wondered if birds might have helped make these disappear, esp since we have an eagle that frequents the ranch...…..

"Also as the rut is more pronounced then the breeding dates will be closer, there for more fawns will hit the ground at the same time causing a fawn swamping which essentially overwelms predation."

Dang, I never thought of this before and it sure makes a lot of sense. Guess I learned something from a Clown!

Yeah, I first learned that I think 2 years ago at TWA Convention. It seems so obvious that im sure the experts have known it for awhile but I never thought about it.
I sure miss STXRanchmans posts on stuff like this and MANY more, anybody know why hes not posting.

I taught the old man everything he knows.

Except the mule deer calling, it was at that point I almost called the funny farm on him.... then I was stampeded by 10 plus mule deer and four coyotes

I learned fawning while reading up Blk bear and coyote management

Recruitment can get so big, some culling programs require shooting yearlings and fawns with their antlerless numbers.

Huh, that’s totally not what I have seen. Hunted south Texas, and didn’t see much net on the road sides, hunted north Texas, northwest Texas, never saw net. Either HF game type or 5 strand. Never hunted panhandle. In OK where I am now, I never see net, only 5 strand or HF (not much but there is some up there).

Makes it interesting to see different perspectives and see what other folks see. A conversation can be totally swayed one way or the other based on preconceived notions that are neither right nor wrong, just different.

^^^Agree Texbuck on all points. Don't think hes untruthful or unaware so just a matter of perspective from what hes used to. I think Hill Country may have lots of sheep/goats so different type fences I guess, but 10 to 1 is a bunch. My curiosity is up now. I also have hunted all over Texas, and recently Okla as well, and very rarely see any kind of net wire.

Net in panhandle is semi nonexistent due to tumble weeds and snow drifts.

^^^^that makes sense for sure.

Just haven’t seen the net don is talking about. I used to live in San Antonio for 7 years and while I didn’t get out much I still didn’t see a lot of net there either. Interesting perspective for sure.

Lots of factors at play I’d say. We do not have control over the deer heard on our place, small enough and neighbors don’t shoot does. We see rutting from mid/late December through all of February and maybe beginning of March. Yes I agree the more mouths you remove the better recruitment will be. Still think good cover is a huge advantage for them and due to near omnipresence of agriculture be it crops or cattle or goats etc many place lack that cover. I’ve seen our place with and without stock and it does make a noticeable difference.

Like some others have said, we kill them when we see them but we haven't done much beyond that. We like to talk a big game, but when we get some dinner in us and have a couple of drinks, the coyote calling tends to go by the wayside. I've let several bobcats walk but I won't turn down a shot at a coyote when the opportunity presents itself.

For 300 years ranchers in North America have been trying everything they can think of to get rid of coyotes. Nearest I can tell they’ve not been effective. Have fun trying to eliminate them. I hear them most nights around my place in east Texas but the forest is so thick i never see them.

Our landowner offered us a 100 bucks for every yote or bobcat killed when we first got on our place. Not a single $100 reward yet and have never seen either in person or on camera

m-44's work if you use them correctly and are not around domesticated dogs and cats.

I once read coyotes are responsible for up to 90% of fawn mortality in areas where they share habitat.

I'm a firm believer in taking younger deer and leaving the more experienced doe behind. Otherwise, you lose both the doe and yearling when the yearling is later lost to predators due to inexperience. Anyone who has ever watched how a mature doe pays attention while a yearling ignores signs of danger knows that full well. Also, those additional months that a yearling has with its mother during the winter when predators are most hungry and aggressive can make all the difference. Huge difference in being orphaned just before winter rather than later in the spring when there's more cover and plenty to eat. Saying "It'll make it" is little more than wishful thinking.

Yet you support Culling spikes as a way to increase the prominence of superior genetics, that same mind set would say you should concentrate with reckless abandonment on older age class doe(s) which in theory would have a higher probability of inferior genetics...........

Does should be taken across all age groups. You do not want to wreak havoc on any particular age class.

Shooting the younger, less experienced doe has nothing to do with genetics but is seen as a way to maintain deer numbers.

Beyond that, I'll let annual harvest limits dictate the balance between carrying capacity and ensuring hunters have good success rates. After all, it's a system that continues to satisfy the needs of the vast majority of Texas deer hunters.

a previous deer lease I was on had the most stringent coyote killing program I've seen. A professional trapper came in for around 30 days every march, and killed hundreds a year. throughout the year, snares and other traps were set. all coyotes were shot that were seen. Along with bobcats and others. Fawn crop % started in the 50% range and went up consistently and peaked around 105%. But every year... hundreds of coyotes got trapped. Their resilience is absolutely amazing.

If you subscribe to TDM like you do by eliminating spikes because you don’t want them breeding, then an early culling means in theory that your best genetics bred, there for your older does will always as a whole will be the off spring of previous less desirable Breeders...in theory your culling strategy increases the prominence of desired genetics...

Annual harvest limits? Ya that’s a Very scientific county and property allocation 😂

I just don’t understand any of your agruements, they don’t even compliment each other

X2

And like freerange , I miss the wisdom of STX Ranchman. Is he posting on the bow hunter forum?

Rarely see yotes on my place but they're thick as can be. I usually shoot 2 or 3 while deer hunting. In the evening have at least 5 to 7 different packs howling within a mile or less of my cabin.

Often find fawn legs when I hike around my place. Had area biologist in to advise on improving habitat. and we discussed my yote population. He advised that less than 50% of my fawns survive mainly from yote predation.

He still around talked to him the other day. Doing well, just ranching

Allowing some areas to stay thick and grown up so doe can birth and hide fawns is a plus. As stupid as they are, even cows will look for cover to hide their newborns.

We lost a lot of fawns and 3 head of cattle last year to coyotes, so we've declared war on them. We used to mainly pressure them in March and June which are our calving/fawning seasons. But it will be a year round focus going forward. And we've enlisted the help of a government hunter as well. Even gave him permission to put out M44 Cyanide traps. It's not a battle we'll ever win because we share a border on one side with a state park, but maybe we can curb their enthusiasm.

Randomly walked up on a new born head few years ago. All that was left, just born. Going turkey hunting and a mile from nearest road. Cow guy just said oh well, happens all the time.

What is increasingly difficult to do in a natural state, is to document the amount of healthy fawns that get eaten by coyotes vs the sickly and mostly dead/already dead fawns. Have read where rainfall shortly after birth can play a huge deal in fawn survival (brings down their body temp and if mom isn’t around to feed them soon enough the fawn will succumb to hypothermia, I think the data I saw was mortality goes up 30-50% for every inch of rain that falls after birth, and this was not a flooding issue). Also, we know doe will birth twins many times if the doe is heathy, but if the habitat can not support twins (meaning fawning cover isn’t good enough, OR maternal nutrition isn’t good enough) one or both those fawns will suffer enough to make it easy coyote bait.

So the question becomes, are coyotes hurting your place or helping by taking the weak ones? My answer would simply be, what’s your fawn recruitment rate? If it’s high enough to make a sustainable deer herd, then they aren’t hurting. If you see numbers going down despite limited harvest, then you probably have a predation problem. But as mentioned above, going after them with snare, trap and gun isn’t really the answer. It’s creating fawning habitat, maximizing nutrition, and then anti-predation tactics. Just some thoughts

Excellent post. Most know that theres a lot to consider on this issue and it cant all be covered in one post. But IMO you said no wrong in this one and shed some good light.

This is what happened on my high fence place 3 yrs ago. We high fenced it 6 yrs ago put down and buried 3 ft predator wire clipped to bottom of high fence and buried on the outside. In other words no digging under!. the place is 360 ac. and is old crop land that is mostly open. Have let it start growing up which is mostly mesquite and wesatch. We planted 240 acres in a native grass mix. Before high fence place was covered up in hogs. Now there are none, only on outside. 3 yrs ago we had a flood that washed out the water gap. I repaired it as soon as I could, but one day I was driving to house and saw coyote scat in the road. Went and checked the water gap and found a dig under. Fixed it, so no more problems. This was in May. From game cameras on gut pile and actual sighting I determined I had 3 coyotes on the place. I have lots of cottontails and hundreds of rats. I mean when I shred I see at least 100 or more. I thought 3 coyotes with all the rats and cottontails would be no problem. Well then came June/July. doe started fawning. I saw from cameras and actual sighting 12 fawns atleast there could have been more. I have 4 feeders corn/protein that feed year round with game cameras on them. With 3 coyotes and plenty of other stuff to eat that year I did not see one fawn with spots with its mother at the feeders! I can say I had a 0% fawn survival. So needless to say they were exterminated. Now for the last couple of years I'm seeing lots of fawns with this last year being exceptional. But also I have no coyotes. When they were in the ranch I found also a young buck in my hay field dead in a corner. Coyotes had eaten on it and I can only assume they cornered him and killed him. On another note I cant keep the bobcats out. I have seen them crawl up to the first big square about waist high, stick their head thru and crawl thru. I have fond fawn bobcat kills I'm pretty sure because they were covered with grass and I put camera on it and bobcats were there next night. So now I call them and shoot. But I'm not loosing near as many fawns to cats as I did to just 3 coyotes. Hope this helps some wondering whether yo should shoot the on sight or not. I guess it all depends on whether you are wanting to raise deer or coyotes!

It’s like hunting pigs, can you effectively manage pig populations with hunters.... NO
Can you manage pig population with year round trapping, hunting and helo gunning Yes
Can you eliminated pigs with year round trapping, hunting, night hunting and helo gunning... NO

If you are half arsing it, you are spinning your wheels

From a deer management stand point, sometimes high coyote population are a blessing if you don’t have a bunch of killers on your lease, just can be very disappointing post rut. Webb country is a perfect example

Bobo, I can think of a couple situations where predators matter:
1. Situation described exactly as what the post before yours, small HF where animals are captive coyote/bobcat bait
2. Situation where your cover and/or nutrition are low and you want to take more deer per annum than the local population of predators will allow, year round action could allow more fawn recruitment to increase the deer population to where it could be sustainable with the higher annual harvest

I am sure there are probably some other situations that predator control could make a strong play into a management program, but for most of us, it is way down the list of things related to deer management/wildlife management.
We all know a healthy managed place starts with abundant cover (specifically fawning cover and early successional cover), which will allow abundant nutrition, so the deer numbers should be more of a “how many do we need to kill this year” rather than a “how many can we kill this year” type situations. Predator control is down the list of things in wildlife management similar to age culling and something most LF ranches will probably never get to in practical measures. This isn’t to say LF places can’t kill lots of predators, but most on here have to realize if you have predators in those kinds of numbers they are reproducing as quickly and will keep their numbers sustainable and replace the dead ones almost as quickly as you take them.

Doggitt, you offered some good insight and thanks for sharing it in a detail way. However, your situation is so unique compared to maybe 99%+ of the hunter/managers on this forum that its hard to apply it directly. When Matt Dillon locks a guy in a 10x 10 cell he has a responsibility to insure theres no rattlesnakes in there. Several ways Matt could handle that but doubtful he could utilize the same technique to rid Kansas of snakes. Once again, good insight but just a suggestion for all to take it in context. It sounds like you are trying very hard and being fairly successful, so good luck, and thanks again for sharing.

If you kill off all the coyotes, what happens with the rodent population?

The rodent population explodes, then it attracts predators, and the predator population explodes. Biology says these things are self limiting cycles. As food supply goes up, predation goes up, as food supply goes down predation goes down.

You didn't answer the question very well. Let me go further - so, if the coyotes are decimated, the rodents multiply (oh boy) and then another predator surges in population? What type of manipulation is this? What predator(s) is/are picking up the pieces?

There has to be balance.

Coyotes will move in from other areas. Even if you decimate a coyote population in one area, you can’t control the population everywhere. So others will move in. It’s natural and has happened since time began. In the short term you would see more hawks, bobcats, and roaming coyotes until they set up shop in the newly discovered rodent feast.

But nature also does thing like have diseases and food supply that limit the amount of any species that can survive ina by given environment. Humans have been good about manipulating our environment re: food and disease, but rodents can’t and they will eat out the food supply and see disease creep up to keep their numbers down some.

It all plays a role.


But to answer your question specifically, roaming coyotes will set up shop in the vacant land. Squatters rights apply to coyotes

Ive followed Hudbone and Texasbuckeyes posts enough in the past to bet money they think very similarly on this topic and its just a matter of spitting it out correctly. Buy hey, im learning, so keep going back and forth(especially since its staying so civil). Good stuff, good thread.

All I got rid of was the coyotes. Still see lots of hawks, owls, coons, rattlesnakes, chicken snakes, bull snakes, skunks, bobcats and feral cats from the neighbors. All of these eat rodents. Would hate to see rat population without these predators.

FreeRange is correct. BuckEye got there.

Everybody always thinks the neighbors suck and the coyotes are out of control. Plain & simple, you can't control them, but the environment can. You can knock them back for sure. Read a study that indicated if on one single day you shot of 75% of the coyotes at your ranch, in one year with no further coyote terminus, they would be back at the same numbers before the killing spree.

Someone else alluded to the following with thoughts on keeping brush - overgrazing is a bigger issue than the coyotes. Deer have evolved to hide as fawns. With no cover, there's no hiding and the coyotes become much more efficient.

I don't know where you are getting your information but a lot of it sounds like BS to me. Hypothermia in May and
June in South Texas? Give me a break.

That’s funny don. A newly born dawn stuck in a cold front, wet....you must not know much about hypothermia.

Just as an aside, smaller animals, including humans, are at much higher risk for hypothermia due to their larger surface area to mass ratio. Makes it much easier to kill small animals with wet cold weather.

Yes, hypothermia in May and June isn’t common in Texas, but it is a possibility. The research I was talking about was done in the eastern US, but not in Canada or places that are colder in May/June. They found the amount of rainfall was directly correlated to dawn death rates, and the amount of rain was almost directly correlated to death rates. The more rain (which would come along with longer cloudy, wet times) was correlated to higher death rates. So yeah, a summer shower isn’t going to kill fawns. A couple day period of rain and wet, yeah that can kill some fawns due to hypothermia. Not BS. You can look it up.

The geographic connotation in Southern hospitality is there for a reason. Go to Michigan for a summer and you'll find out why. In South Texas, I'll take my chances with a couple of days of rain in the summer or any time past March 1st for that matter.

I believe I probably know way more than you do about raising animals. I have Mouflon, Urial, Blackbuck and Ibex that some start having offspring starting in late Feb. I have personally watched many being born. Some when it was well below freezing and some in the rain and I have yet to see one die of hypothermia.

It’s ok don. You also have seen a lot more net fence than I have too. I guess I just don’t know that much...it’s all good. I am comfortable with that.

Some posts on some threads have talked about the virus etc putting everybody on edge. I think most of our forum members are showing quite a bit of restraint. Now, in the Off Topic section it can get a little hairy but hopefully we can have civil discussions about hunting regardless of any pandemic.

I agree with you, I do sense people are more on edge. I try to remember that and not aggravate intentionally and try to proof my posts lately to make sure they aren’t irritating. No reason to make anyone more irritated than this all has been for us.

Nature also helps to control the population of coyotes, that is why we have up and down cycles in the rabbit population. Hunt them vigorously and shoot them. Mother nature will make sure they do not become extinct.

Humans: we made up the concept of carrying capacity to determine how much a certain species can live in a certain habitat

Mother Nature: step aside child, I been doing that a lot longer and a lot better than you could ever think you could

Lol

Bingo!!

100%, ranch I hunted in Webb was over run with yotes, as in every hunter pretty much would see one or hear a close one every hunt. Deer population was still growing but in line with harvest. Fawn recruitment was low,

I’ve been on large sheep ranches that where highly effective on yote management,

That’s not yotes, that fire. Hill country is perfect example. Fire suppression has caused CC to go down while populations go up, more deer smaller bodies, then you have a few ranches pushing 160-180lb bucks from investing heavily in CC

Humans prevent or cause extinction in this day in age.

We could cause the extinction of yotes, but we may to cause extinction of a few others species in the process of by-catch, thus why we are limited in means of take.

good point, I've personally seen far more birds catching rodents than I have coyotes doing it.

Most hunters/managers would understand this, but ive never heard it put that way. I like it. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try, just need to think it through.

Freerange, it’s always good to think nature can do a better job at most things than we can. We can adjust or modify things to manipulate nature for some things, but we do a pretty poor job of it most of the time. We need to get out of our way and let nature do its thing. As a biologist, this makes sense to me. Yes I try to manage deer for age and ratios in my neck of the woods, but I can only do so much. The best things I have done is probably some habitat work, hinge cutting and what not, food plots that are multi species, and allowing the pastures to pretty much just grow up into early successional. Let nature do its thing.