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
