Will a spike in coyote population cause deer to become more nocturnal? Has this ever been witnessed? If so, whats the reasoning behind it?

I dont think so. They both see much better than humans do at night, anyway. Being Crepuscular, it's just in their nature to move in low light conditions.

I’ve wondered about this too……This is just a theory of mine but what I think might happen is that the presence of abundant predators….whether it be human or coyotes…. may cause the deer to move less. The more a deer moves around in the open, the more it exposes itself to danger. Staying hid and still is where it feels the safest. I have no idea if this is actually happening or not but seems to me like it’s a possibility. The presence of “wolf” type predator would have to have some kind of an effect on them similar to how the heavy presence of a human one does.

Maybe not nocturnal, but it adds stress to the deer. Making them move slower, eat less and always be weary. You want peaceful stupid deer.

Hunting pressure or the presence of man turns deer nocturnal. For some reason, they don't like loud booms are being shot at. Go figure!

i have also noticed deer during spring when fawns are born that deer stay closer to cabins and homes if you don`t have a dog. i believe the reason is coyotes stay away from places where people are more. i have a cabin with about 15 acres with thick woods around my cabin and always have does with fawns every year by the cabin. i always keep a bait site out 300 yards from cabin window all winter and my 220 swift is always handy !

Riding ATVs, constantly checking multiple cameras, target shooting, stomping all over the woods.
Im always amused by the theory that coyotes somehow affect deer movement.

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I've seen deer run coyotes, foxes, bobcats off all the time. Those critters don't bother a healthy deer

Now now...don’t bring actual science to the discussion.

CNC, without me reading the whole article, can coyotes make deer nocturnal?

Only time i witnessed deer leave a food plot because of coyotes was when i hunted near Scotch mgt area.

I didn’t read the whole thing word for word but I don’t think it mentioned a change in nocturnal behavior. From what I gathered it was saying that coyotes would reduce how long deer fed and reduce how much space they used. It said that it effected what they called “vigilance”…..which I gather to mean how nervous and on alert the deer act. It seemed like according to them that it came from negative interactions over time just like with humans. So lets say you don’t have many yotes and one just passes through one day…the deer may very well not care much about it or be effected. But let’s say your property is covered up with yotes year round and the deer are constantly being harassed by them….then over time their behavior will change in response to it. This is my understanding of it. The older deer showed more of a reaction to the yotes presence than the young deer.

One other thing I suspect may have an effect from one place to another is how much food the yotes have to eat from other sources and how much they aggressively pursue the local deer herd. I would bet that if they had plenty of other food sources available for the amount of yotes present in the area….then they wouldn’t try to mess with deer to much because trying to kill deer poses a pretty high risk for injury to them. The hungrier they get though, the more desperate they become and the more willing they are to risk it for a meal. I also hear people telling my about seeing packs of yotes chasing deer. That seems like the worst case scenario to me. A big pack of yotes constantly running around harassing the deer on your place day after day would suck.

I have watched coyotes walk right by yearnings and does and neither doe nor fawn got spooked, they kept eating while the coyotes dug in rotted logs. They dont affect the deer like most hunters think they do. People are the reason deer become more nocturnal.

Coyotes won't hardly mess with a healthy adult deer unless they are in numbers. They are rough on fawns though and the fawns are your properties future.

My wife saw a spike in a green field at the beginning of rifle season and two coyotes came out and tried to surround it. The deer bolted and they chased it out of the field but returned a couple minutes later obviously not successful. I asked her why she didn't light them up and she said she didn't know if I wanted her to mess up a deer hunt over a coyote. I told her for future reference that any deer hunt that a coyote is spotted on automatically becomes a coyote hunt.

Nope. Humans make them go dark

I have seen deer walk right past coyotes and coyotes walk right past deer and one not even look at the other myself. What im wondering about is kinda different. Say 5 cows die and are left to be consumed by coyotes and buzzards over a winter right in the center of the area you hunt, maybe 200acres, this would surely cause a spike in coyote population for that small area. Maybe the deer pays no attention to a single coyote but when theres several running around on a regular basis, I would assume the deers reaction would be different.

Sometimes you have to consider things from a perspective other than just what you saw happen one time or haven’t ever seen, etc…..Just because you see a certain result in one area doesn’t automatically mean the same result will hold true for all other areas.

There’s a number different variable involved that may change from place to place that could effect what others see or don’t see. I agree that a healthy deer would probably not be a major food source for yotes because there’s just too much effort and too much risk for injury for them to try and take one down. However, I know for sure that coyotes will target weak deer and take them out. As quickly as I’ve seen them get on leg shots and other such hits we track where the deer was wounded but still alive for long periods after the shot….I’m pretty sure that they’re heavily targeting the weak deer in the herd and preying upon those deer in some areas. What I think is also very likely to be happening in areas like this is that the yotes will probably give chase to healthy deer for a little ways from time to time just to test it’s ability to get way and see if it’s a weak or injured one. I've been told by a number of hunters now about witnessing such. If the yotes are harassing the healthy deer in this manner then that’s where the possibility would exist for a change in deer behavior according to what the research article I posted reported finding.


Did anyone anybody read some of that article? Don’t take this as the gospel….I’m just giving a quick book report on what I read…..but from what I gathered, their findings showed that a change in individual deer behavior occurred over time and it was basically a function of how often each deer had a negative interaction with a yote or pack of yotes. It’s a learned behavior and I’d think that being chased by them would be a negative interactino. In the study, young deer that hadn’t lived long enough to have many of those negative interaction didn’t show the same response as the older ones. There are a number of different variables involved in this equation that could vary from place to place and affect the frequency of negative interactions the deer experience from one area to another.

So any and all deer populations are not just going to automatically be scared of yotes due to some type of natural fear from birth. They’re gonna develop it over time just depending on how often they may or may not get harassed. If a deer keeps having negative experiences, then they start perceiving the yotes as a threat and the presence of them can change their feeding and movement patterns. Since the frequency of negative interactions are influenced by several different variables….its possible to see completely different results from one area to another. If I’m understanding the article correctly then its just a matter of how the different variables in your area effect the total amount of negative experiences placed on the individuals in the herd. Just as a simple example. If you had very few coyotes with plenty to eat and a lot of deer…then maybe in this situation the yotes rarely chased and harassed deer and there just isn’t enough negative interactions on each individual for the deer to perceive them as a threat and show any behavioral change. On the other hand lets say that you have a lot of coyotes with a moderate sized deer herd… and maybe you’ve even seen yotes in packs chasing deer….In this situation each individual would likely experience many more negative experiences over time and start associating them with danger. Then they may change their patterns as a result.

I may be completely interpreting it wrong but that makes sense to me when you think about how they react to human pressure. Deer aren’t necessarily scared of humans across any and all situations. Its when they perceive us as a threat that they change behavior and go nocturnal. To me it seems logical that they go nocturnal because the thing they perceive as a threat is only present during the day.

A couple of years ago, I watched from a shooting house a large adult bobcat stalk and then charge a doe with a fawn in a greenfield. The doe absolutely turned inside out throwing a fit and attacked the bobcat kicking and blowing as the fawn loped off into the weeds. The cat quickly gave-up and went back the direction that it came from. Predators that live in the wild are looking for weakened prey. They can't afford to be injured or expend more energy than necessary for a meal. Opportunist more or less.