mama looking for fawn

Makes me want to drop napalm on them all.
http://habitat-talk.com/index.php?threads/looking-for-her-fawn.11029/#post-200917

that right there is why we hunt them.

Or try to hahah

Looks like she has a pup in her mouth.

Agreed....the legs do not look like a deer.

Thinking rabbit or pup.

Really? You want coyotes to be vegans? They evolved together long before we were here and maintain their own balance, especially considering how bad we mess it up.

Yep.

I agree, pup not fawn.

Yep, the Texas hill country is a living example of what happens when you remove the coyote.........went from rolling grass covered hills to nothing but rock and prone to flash floods as well as too many deer which has destroyed much of the native browse.

Is that from too many deer or maybe it has something more to do with the introduction of livestock?

I don't know much about not having enough coyotes- but I lived in Fayetteville NC when they banned coyote hunting on Fort Bragg for only 2 years. A university had applied to do a study on the coyotes there.. We had so many coyotes living in the city, the rate of rabies I forget the exact number but it was well above 50%. Neighbors pets killed all the time, coyotes roamed streets of the city literally in packs and I occasionally saw them in my subdivision in broad daylight! So the city of Fayetteville put their heads together and figured it out- hired "pros" to come to Fayetteville, NC all the way from- you guessed it- Texas to kill the coyotes in the city.

I'd like to see how well those areas of the hill country "recover" if coyote hunting were banned there for a couple of years.

Fayetteville, NC is where I learned the meaning of "SSS".

Your post is very spot on. Nature was already doing its part, rabies is almost always fatal, just wasn’t fast enough for it to balance out. Think of it like the stock market when you have high volatility followed by relatively stable ups/downs. Coyotes litter sizes and general survival success are directly correlated to abundance of prey. Once their populations are too dense prey becomes scarce and disease are more prevalent. Government stepping in on behalf of an ignorant general population is nothing new. I do not mean ignorant in a belittling way, simply they do not understand the complex yet ultimately simple relationships in nature. Like economics 101.

Also in NC there used to be red wolves, they would also play their part keeping coyote populations in check. Remove the apex predator and it creates that much more room for the 2nd in line.

The thing you missed is that we are a part of nature and are a part of that "complex yet ultimately simple" relationship.

If we stop killing coyotes, there won't be any deer before too long. What's left to eat is is our pets, our trash, and our children.

In regards to the red wolf- it isn't extinct and it never was, contrary to the propaganda spewed by liberals and anti hunters for many years. Thankfully at least part of our taxes fund scientists using science and fact to figure out what is really going on. Red wolves are small (comparatively to grey wolves) and frequently mistaken for coyotes by people that don't know what they are looking at- typical of liberals and anti-hunters, and others that spend little if any time in the woods but a whole lot of time on the internet spreading propaganda!

Also a lot of coyote populations are rich with dna from red wolves. Big surprise. They "breed like dogs", anything that walks. Breed the females and kill the males. Nature, evolution, whatever you want to call it.

Which side are you on?

Both. Sheep and too many deer. Where I hunt in the panhandle the coyotes keep the deer population in check. We have a great buck to doe ratio, lots of grass and browse. Very few rocks.

That does kind of make sense. I have seen a lot more deer carcasses roadside in the hill country than I have elsewhere. But Oklahoma has us beat by a mile for roadkill deer- and the whole state is covered with cows and beautiful green grass...

Well what I have seen so far tonight walking around in Marble Falls confirms they have a ton of deer- in the center of the city! Texas being so big, they ought to break it down by region and put slot limits on the deer. Kind of like the slot limits on largemouth bass at lake fork. If they put a slot like no daily bag/no annual possession of spikes in marble falls, but only spikes allowed for taking, rednecks like me would fix it in one season, rotfl!

Ok well not necessesarily spikes but wherever you draw the line genetically on a cull- just gotta make it easy for the layman that can't age a deer by looking from a distance. By points and width etc. let the does ride. Those genes will get mostly culled out quickly. Make the trophy bucks a lottery system harvest. We be having some damn nice deer on public land before you know it.