Predator Management

Do any of y'all incorporate predator management into your qdm plan? Has anyone done it on a long term basis, year after year? Results?

Man I have really put it at the top of my list after what's been going on at my place. It sucks checking sets before work and all but my fawn recruitment was terrible last year and I had countless early bow hunts ruined setting under persimmons. I had 4 or 5 trail cam pics of Coyote's carrying fawns around my bean fields and I'm just fed up. I'm also working on the coons with dog proofs I think we've caught 13 of them nest robbing SOBs and like 10 Coyote's so far. I really think it is going to help a lot and should definitely be a high priority don't put if off because you'll be like me. I'm just lucky I have a really good friend that loves it and he does all the dirty work setting them and all.

We’ve been doing it for 3 years now and have seen a big decrease in coyotes this year and our fawn recruitment went from about 10% to over 40% if I remember correctly. In the part 3 years we’ve caught about 250. We’ve only trapped from January-March and into April. We are trying to go a little longer this year. The main thing is you have to stay on top of them, if. It they will reproduce faster than you can get rid If them.

Bigcountry, how big is your place?

That's good work.

As for reproduction, one of the main problems is movement of coyotes from off the property being trapped into the new areas with no competition. Reproduction is often said to be the deal but continued research shows that migration from outlying properties (coyote ranges) into the new, unchallenged, open land is the main thing.

If you can get your neighbors on board with consistent trapping and predator management then you'll really see results. But it has to be a concerted effort. Sounds like y'all have been getting after it pretty good with 250 in the dirt.

250 coyotes is a huge number.

Yeah. Unless you have 15,000 acres, I don't believe anyone trapped 250 coyotes in 3 years.

Hey guys sorry I’m late responding. We are trapping on Fort Bragg, NC, acreage wise we have about 160,000 acers. With that many acers it honestly seems like we’ve hardly made a dent. We trap in sections because of the amount of land and we are limited due to the amount of personnel we have. To trap year around or at least 9 months of it it almost impossible. We brought this up during our last qdma meeting and hopefully we can work something for out. The bigges thing is finding guys that have the time to check traps daily.

It sounds like ya'll are going to have to use drones to check you traps. Set an area and check them with drones and it wouldn't take as long .

Haha.. that would definitely save some time. To do a 30-40 mile radius takes us over 3 hours. Most of the time we have ~30 traps out.