I have a good friend who is a coyote extremist. This “season” alone he has killed over 500 here in North Alabama. All he charges is permission to hunt them on your land. He participates in tournaments that I never even knew existed. He texts me every Saturday morning to let me know how many he killed here around the Shoals area. This weeks tournament he killed 7. I got in touch with him in January when coyotes killed a newborn calf during a very cold streak. I have not heard or seen a coyote in the last 3 months. I used to never see rabbits here and now see up to 8 every time I drive over to the barn. It is unreal the damage the coyotes do to small game and deer populations.
If you are close to the Shoals and need some help, I can give you his number and he will contact you. He has now moved from the ag fields to the fresh cut hay fields as his preferred hunting spots. Once corn gets over knee high he simply can’t see them in an ag field. He primarily hunts at night with the night scopes and he always texts to say he will be coming by so I will know who it is on the property. I highly recommend him if you are close enough. He is a fine young man. Kill em all! I hate a coyote as bad as I do a thief!
This is a great episode on coyotes and other predators……This guy says it makes a big difference to take out the resident females in Feb-March after they’ve been bred…..Says that breeding pairs having to feed pups is what gets a lot of your fawns and such killed…..According to him if you take out that resident female during that time period she will eventually be replaced by a transient but there wont be any pups born in that territory that season......Also the word "linear" is very important in his discussion
First step if you have fawn recruitment issues is to stop shooting does
No... it's to find out WHY you have fawn recruitment issues. You may have fawn recruitment issues because you have a habitat issue. Stopping the doe harvest could actually increase the fawn recruitment issue.
First step if you have fawn recruitment issues is to stop shooting does
No... it's to find out WHY you have fawn recruitment issues. You may have fawn recruitment issues because you have a habitat issue. Stopping the doe harvest could actually increase the fawn recruitment issue.
I thought it was assumed we were talking about coyote predation.....Let me rephrase it then......First step if you have fawn recruitment issues due to predation is to stop shooting doe
I can’t remember the last time I shot a doe-probably with a bow decades ago. The areas I hunt folks have similar ideas about shooting does, we don’t. Our numbers are still going down and it is a direct result of coyotes. My hunting area is wooded and my friend can’t get in the woods with the night vision gear so I’m at a loss. I can remember the 80’s before the coyote population exploded a hunter could see 30 or more deer on a hunt. This was land that anyone could hunt before all the tracts got leased up. I kill every coyote I see when I am hunting.
I can’t remember the last time I shot a doe-probably with a bow decades ago. The areas I hunt folks have similar ideas about shooting does, we don’t. Our numbers are still going down and it is a direct result of coyotes. My hunting area is wooded and my friend can’t get in the woods with the night vision gear so I’m at a loss. I can remember the 80’s before the coyote population exploded a hunter could see 30 or more deer on a hunt. This was land that anyone could hunt before all the tracts got leased up. I kill every coyote I see when I am hunting.
I’m pretty sure a coyote boom accompanied by an increase in doe harvest is the culprit for a population drop off around the plantation belt…..It makes even more sense now that the guy in the podcast mentioned the importance of whether a coyote territory raises pups or not…..That also means that for the ones that do raise pups it matters if they have to feed 2 or 6..... etc
First step if you have fawn recruitment issues is to stop shooting does
Nope. First thing is improve habitat. NOTHING trumps great habitat. No amount of coyote removal will lead to higher recruitment rates than improved habitat.
Steve brought up another point in the podcast I posted about coyotes that is getting to be more and more relevant and apparently its not just me that recognizes it. He mentioned an episode he had on quail management. The guy that he had on was someone who had developed a product to use to treat quail for parasites or something like that and Steve was talking about all the backlash he got about that episode from habitat managers who were appalled that he would promote anything other than “habitat first”…..I think he said it struck him as a little strange.
As someone who understands the whole gambit of variables…..the importance of habitat is not lost on me…..But I also recognize that we’re just dumbing it down to sell a product now too…….and in the process ignoring some of the most important nuances at play with “habitat”…….Things such as the impacts that an overabundance of grass creates…… or the impacts of linear lines of travel everywhere……. or the lack of interior use of a stand….etc..etc……We’re conveniently ignoring any negative impacts and just selling the dumbed down version of burn baby burn as the cure all elixir for $25 per acre……..Meanwhile the area of the state with the most burned acres just had the deer population crash and the worst turkey season of any counties in the state for the very reason of not recognizing those nuances
Since we’re already down here in the rabbit hole……this is really the root of a lot of our issues……The habitat manager on the other side of this argument will likely say something like “Yes, I agree that what we’re doing isnt perfect but the good outweighs the bad……Just look at Property X as an example”
The reality though in many situations is that the good does NOT outweigh the bad when our implementation become flawed past a certain threshold or at a large enough scale…..For example, the habitat manager will point to the turkey hens that are now nesting in his burn unit as the metric for measuring success…….though in many, many cases all he has really done is drawn in the bait to set in the trap he just created……More turkeys are seen on that particular property but overall less turkeys are created at a landscape level because you just drew in a bunch of hens and set them on the linear edge of the stand to be predated on by the massive predator population you’ve also created……This is exactly what we currently have going on…..The bad is outweighing the good and we’re just plowing forward with it instead of trying to tweak our approach.
Your area is going to lose ~10-20 fawns this year per coyote.
Studies have shown that ~40% of all fawns born will die to coyotes.
Good! I won’t have to shoot as many does next season…..oh wait….yotes got 40% of the fawns last year too and the year before and the year before🤯. And I’m needing to shoot more does every year too🤔.
The habitat must be over compensating for the yotes and nanny whacking🥳
Since we’re already down here in the rabbit hole……this is really the root of a lot of our issues……The habitat manager on the other side of this argument will likely say something like “Yes, I agree that what we’re doing isnt perfect but the good outweighs the bad……Just look at Property X as an example”
The reality though in many situations is that the good does NOT outweigh the bad when our implementation become flawed past a certain threshold or at a large enough scale…..For example, the habitat manager will point to the turkey hens that are now nesting in his burn unit as the metric for measuring success…….though in many, many cases all he has really done is drawn in the bait to set in the trap he just created……More turkeys are seen on that particular property but overall less turkeys are created at a landscape level because you just drew in a bunch of hens and set them on the linear edge of the stand to be predated on by the massive predator population you’ve also created……This is exactly what we currently have going on…..The bad is outweighing the good and we’re just plowing forward with it instead of trying to tweak our approach.
Well there you go! Shoot all the hen turkeys and they won't be drawing in coyotes to kill the fawns.
The true mark of a man is not how he conducts himself during times of prosperity, but how he conducts himself during times of adversity.
Well there you go! Shoot all the hen turkeys and they won't be drawing in coyotes to kill the fawns.
What needs to happen is that every place using fire to create massive stands of grass need to have the footholds broke out Feb-April to take out the resident females and keep those 4-6+ pups from being born, fed, and exported…….Maybe at some point we can also look at reducing the amount of grass we’re producing and leaving to stand....
What's strange about my place, I hardly saw or had any fawns on camera last year. I see a decent number of coyotes, but nothing extraordinary. The outlier is that I have a ton of extremely dumb rabbits. They will let you walk or ride right by them. Can't believe the yotes, bobcats and raptors haven't picked them off. It would seem if you had tons of rabbits, your predators can't be too out of control, which in turn you would assume would mean decent fawn recruitment.... I guess I'll see what happens this year when they drop.
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"Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?"
What's strange about my place, I hardly saw or had any fawns on camera last year. I see a decent number of coyotes, but nothing extraordinary. The outlier is that I have a ton of extremely dumb rabbits. They will let you walk or ride right by them. Can't believe the yotes, bobcats and raptors haven't picked them off. It would seem if you had tons of rabbits, your predators can't be too out of control, which in turn you would assume would mean decent fawn recruitment.... I guess I'll see what happens this year when they drop.
Watch that Meateater podcast if you get a chance…..This is addressed on there…..He basically says that what a coyote preys on is a function of what the circumstances force him to have to feed on…..In an ideal situation he just sits back and gets fat on the easy to obtain stuff……Its only when they have to feed pups and/or the easy things run slim that they are driven to go after items that require a higher risk or higher caloric expenditure…..
Rodents are the base staple of their diet in many of our ecosystems……If rodents are in abundance then yotes likely sit back and get fat on rodents and fruit and don’t have to chase rabbits……Its probably only after 4-6 pups get conceived and have to be fed that the food requirements increase and the alternate, harder to acquire prey is targeted more heavily
Well there you go! Shoot all the hen turkeys and they won't be drawing in coyotes to kill the fawns.
What needs to happen is that every place using fire to create massive stands of grass need to have the footholds broke out Feb-April to take out the resident females and keep those 4-6+ pups from being born, fed, and exported…….Maybe at some point we can also look at reducing the amount of grass we’re producing and leaving to stand....
I was trying to make a funny but.......
The true mark of a man is not how he conducts himself during times of prosperity, but how he conducts himself during times of adversity.
