I mentioned being naïve to the current situation in an earlier post and what I think will come of that will be a lot like our situation a decade or two ago when we thought we couldn’t kill too many does……..It’ll be another situation that slaps a lot of folks in the face before they see it coming…….
Now this is just my personal observations and theories but what I see happening is I see us in an evolutionary period of time where the southeastern coyote is learning how to pack up and impact the deer herd much more dramatically than this idea we’ve been debating over about merely fawn survival. Something to really keep in mind with this too is that when I say evolutionary change or evolutionary time period we have to start thinking in terms of 10 years really being nothing……We’re talking about a slow change over at minimum of a few decades or maybe a century or more to reach a point of equilibrium and even still then the coyote will remain a highly adaptive creature to any further change……..
So right now I believe we find ourselves in the early years of coyotes learning to pack up and target any deer they deem to be “the weak”… What you end up getting is basically a few dogs or packs here and there across the landscape learning the behavior out ahead of the rest of the population and having a disproportionate impact within the range where they exist than what others may be seeing where this behavior is not occurring. This is why I think some may be slapped in the face overnight at some point…..That dynamic in the coyote population may suddenly change within their particular area with one pack that uses their property……
A lot of this comes from the things I see while out tracking for folks……It’s a really common story for folks to tell me that while they were searching the night before that they had coyotes just going crazy in the direction where there deer ran……It never fails…..those tracks typically end up with no deer to be found or at best a carcass a good ways from where the deer was shot…….
One particular buck this happened on was a massive horned buck I tracked for a guy a couple years ago……He had shot it with a 300 mag and we would later find out that he hit way back in the hind quarter and the back of the guts…….The search led us 300 yards to a bed but no buck in it…….The guy tells me that the there was a pack of yotes going crazy in that same spot the night before……When we finally found his buck the next day and a lot of searching later…….it was just shy of 1200 yards away and not much left but hide and coyote poop.
This is where I think some trapping would really be beneficial in ways that we havent previously considered and I’ll even recant my past opinion on shooting random yotes as making an impact…….I think it could have a huge impact for some folks who are in the range of one of these packs by simply breaking it up……..keeping any coyotes that use the property constantly be new coyotes and young dogs, etc…….I think the worst case scenarios are where these packs figure it out and then go unchecked for several seasons and begin to basically start producing offspring that perpetuate the practice within a territory that they are very familiar with.
I also think there is some dynamic in this that is just like the wolf documentaries you see about Yellowstone and how the wolfs are very much individuals…….I think coyotes are likely not much different in this regard and therefore you may have some coyotes packs even amongst the ones who have figured it out that are worse than others…….This is why I say don’t be naïve and get complacent because I feel like its just a matter of time before everyone sees it happen…….Again though, were talking about nature’s time clock so this change may play out for a good while yet into the future.
Last edited by CNC; 10/11/21 03:20 PM.
