I know for a fact at my house anyway, between doe days and coyotes, a dent gets knocked in the population.. But with that said, I wonder how many deer and especially fawns just die of natural causes? I mean in the livestock industry we have calves, lambs, etc etc, to die, even with a vet, some still die, so I know they have to in the wild.. Now this is my question or even statement I guess, I wonder how many yotes eat a sick deer???? I know for a fact if we have a cow or calf to get sick and die, a buzzard or yote neither one will eat it. It will lay there and rot before a scavenger eats it. I guess what I am getting at is, if a coyote eats a fawn, then it caught it alive. If a fawn dies of sickness or infection, I don't think a yote will eat it. SO, therefore IMO, if you see a yote caring a fawn in its mouth, then it caught it alive and killed it, not found it already dead then eat it.. JUST my $.02..

Interesting. I guess that makes it even worse when a yote gets an otherwise healthy fawn.

Your yotes must not be as hungry as our's.

We killed 5 feral hogs several weeks ago and dumped them at the gut pile, and there is STILL fresh coyote crap with hog hair within 500-yards of where we dumped them. They were eating them fresh and apparently now that they are good and ripe.

Yotes will catch a perfectly healthy fawn. They will also catch a sick, diseased, or weak fawn. They will also scavenge on dead fawns. Just because a coyote is in possession of a fawn doesn't mean it actively pursued and killed it.

I disagree on sickness.. Just my opinion..

Re read I said SICK DEAD ANIMALS.. not just dead

DW ,,, i've seen/killed yotes on dead cows , killed a few in fact . aint been much i aint saw eating on a dead cow , even hawks .

Ok, let me type real slow where yall can understand it.. A dead cow is one thing, now a dead cow that had SICKNESS AND INFECTION, is different.. Like I said, just going off what I have seen. And my opinion..

But I see yalls point of view also. I just think it's wierd. From my expierace with what I've seen.

DW i don't doubt that they prefer live healthy meals at all . and stop talking so fast . lol

i never saw why a yote would be no different than me . their are things i like and things i don't like but i never go hungry either .

wild fawns die of all types of diseases. EHD strikes in July/Aug/Sept and kills some...and/or the mothers so the fawn dies anyway. They can get other bacterial infections that can, and do, kill them. They get pnuemonia, worm infestations, ecoli, any of which can kill them.

I found a fawn in the woods this year with a massive fusobacterium infection of the mouth. Lower jaw was swollen to two inches wide. I treated it with antibiotics but it died that night, too late with medication.

Fuso bacteria is naturally found in Alabamas soil but usually does not affect most fawns.

I've seen several wild fawns with total blindness cause by a lack of thiamine in their nutrition. Thiamine is deficient in a lot of Alabamas soils and too little causes the cornea not to function corrrectly, causing blindness. Good thing is that it can be corrected most of the time by Vit B-12 shots in a matter of hours. I'd guess that 0% of wild fawns survive blindness.