My disagreement is mostly that you guys are advocating as if predator control is just another thing that every AL deer hunter should now be doing if they’re to have a well rounded management plan. Its no different than a decade or two ago when folks started preaching about the need to shoot does in order to have a well rounded plan and every AL deer hunter thought that meant them…..even though most of them had no real idea of how to assess their property and determine if they really did need to shoot does. This idea of everyone trapping is not much different. Predator trapping as a necessity is only needed in a small percentage of situations. It would be like if everyone thought we needed to get rid of all the sharks in the ocean in order to be able to fish for amberjack or red snapper.
Look, if you guys want to blast every yote that comes by you or pay someone to trap…..then by all means, have at it. I’m just being realistic about the true impact that’s being made and the true cost I’m paying to implement that change. For most hunters, this issue over the long term with boil down to more trigger finger restraint when it comes to harvesting does than it will to predator trapping. This really is not as big of a deal as most people make it out to be. For many it will be no different than the “doe days” of the past where doe harvesting is no longer and “unlimited” rule like it has been. This will have to happen from an individual landowner/hunting club level too and not just on a state level. Managers and club presidents may have to implement their own doe days. This is what we do at my hunting club. Even though state rules allow us to harvest does all season…..we voluntarily make our own rule to stop on Dec 15.
Heck, if I approach the guys in my hunting club and tell them…”Alright guys, we have 3 choices next year….1) We can either cut our doe harvests back from around 18-20 down to around 8-10…..2) We can spend all summer driving an hour one way back and forth to the club running trap lines….. 3) or we can pay someone $2,000 to trap for us……I’m betting that 9 out of 10 of them are going to choose option 1 and tell me that they didn’t really want to shoot that many does anyways. Think about it like this, if you are in this situation and you choose option 3…..then you are really just paying so that you can shoot more does. Most timber company leases are suffering as much, if not more, from trigger finger restraint as coyote predation. I find that planted pines make for good habitat for deer in several stages of its life.
Nighthunter……..If you had to just take a guess, what percentage of AL hunting properties do you think currently need trapping efforts in place in order to have good huntable populations of deer?
And I appreciate that in your never-to-be-humble mentality that you truly believe that the coyotes on your lease only kill does and inferior doe fawns, and that your attitude that this is acceptable should apply to all hunters in Alabama. I understand that you feel there's some symbiotic agreement that your yotes will only increase in numbers to match your deer herd and stay there, instead of continuing to grow until that particular food source is decimated, the way they seem to do in most of the state.
I think that most of the disagreement you get is from guys like myself who don't trust the coyotes to only take out the inferior fawns or the sick does, instead of the ones who they catch easily because they are protecting their inferior doe fawns and so forth, and we want to be the determining factor of the size of our deer herd. I believe that the coyotes where I hunt kill fawns, both doe & buck, at nearly every opportunity, and I don't want them to kill any. Any at all. I view them as an invasive species, and would gladly eradicate every single one of them, think of it like snake-heads in a lake instead of sharks in the ocean. They just don't belong.
I understand that there are pocket areas that have overpopulation of deer and that some of those leases are held by hunters that don't care to shoot does or control their population, I guess I equate that to guys that want to marry hot highly sexed women, but don't care to service their particular needs and are just as happy to leave it to someone else. It just doesn't make sense to me, and in both cases I'm sure there would be plenty of volunteers to help out if you let it be known that there is an availability. There are hundreds of guys on this board that would gladly drive hours and bowhunt does only if you would allow it, and you wouldn't need coyotes at all. I believe that there are plenty of reasons that "natural predation" and "survival of the fittest" theories don't apply to coyotes in Alabama,but you choose to believe otherwise, and it's fairly obvious that neither view is likely to change the others, all condescension and name-calling aside.
