Originally Posted By: Bucky205
We do not lose as many to coyote's as you might think. A deer fawn has absolutely no scent. Unless a predator falls over it they do not often fall prey. Vehicles do in more deer by far than do predators. A fawn will scream sometimes when a predator gets it. I have only heard it a couple of times in 40 years of hunting. I don't see as many coyote's any more either. See the hog population exploding in some places though.
i think in certain areas you're losing a large portion of your fawns to coyotes - add heavy predation to habitat loss, competition from hogs and a liberal doe season and you have very low deer numbers in some areas - the only way to effectively reduce coyote numbers is through intensive trapping - some of your better managed properties have made professional predator control part of their management program - on properties with high coyote numbers, predator control can have more of an impact on your deer population(fawn recruitment) than any other type of improvement - as coyote populations boom and more people become aware of the damage they can do, predator control will be used more often - that being said, i don't think that coyotes are a problem everywhere - some areas can handle heavy predation and still produce high numbers of deer - imo a bounty is not the answer - all we need is a state full of "educated" coyotes that are almost impossible to trap or call in - i don't buy into the theory that the govt or anybody else released coyotes to control the deer population - i think as the deer herd and other prey animals rebounded in alabama and other states that coyotes followed and increased with an expanding food source

Last edited by slipn; 02/08/11 10:44 PM.