Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum interesting qdma article

Well....we could always put up a camera to see just how many plums a coyote will walk right past.

I bet foxes won't be attracted to peaches either Troy.....

eatin plums and eatin plums over eatin a fawn are different things.

didn't say they wouldn't eat plums, etc......

I was kinda just messin with you a little bit. I don’t doubt that if we laid out a baby fawn and a pile of plums right next to each other and had the coyote choose, then he would likely choose the fawn every time…..but…..that’s not the same way a real world scenario plays out. In a real world scenario, a coyote has to travel and hunt much more to find fawns than they do plums. The amount that they have to hunt and travel for fawns also intensifies as more fawns are taken out and there become less of them to find. Plums on the other hand, remain in the same place day after day and produce a constant, reliable food source. Here’s what I’m saying is plausible. How long will a coyote continue to actively hunt and seek fawns, as they become harder to find, when a much easier food source is available in prolific amounts? Instead of taking out 80% of your fawn crop…..would they instead take out just 30-40% if they had another preferred food source to turn to? If we keep coyotes full of plums during the most critical few week period for fawns, then would they actively pursue fawns as hard? Not saying for sure they would or wouldn’t……just a thought. I do know for sure that foxes and coyotes like soft fruit like plums, peaches, and persimmons….and they will also change their normal routines to feed on them.

While i understand what you are getting at it seems that the deer would frequent the plums a lot and cause more interactions with coyotes.

I plant perssimons this year for deer, I dont really expect them to do anything but feed the deer!

Yeah I hear what you saying but I don’t think we are really creating any kind of new situations that doesn’t already exist in nature from persimmon trees, to oak stands, to crabapples, etc...After all, these are wild native plums. These animals share the same food, water, and habitat together 24/7/365. That’s just a scenario that’s created anytime there’s an abundant food source available to drive the system. Our food plots that we plant probably make excellent hunting grounds for predators due to concentrating game in a small area. I don’t think plum thickets are going to have drastic negative effects from that perspective anymore than what already exists on most properties. They will probably add a lot of beneficial cover.

When my fruit is falling I see evidence of coyotes and foxes coming through on a nightly basis to eat the plums, peaches, persimmons….but the deer are still there too. My resident doe groups that I see on a regular basis do not leave or abandon the fruit orchards. They feed in them on the same nights as the yotes. I have not seen a problem with fawning rates either but there is ample fawning habitat. I see twins pretty regularly. This is not to say that there wouldn’t be any problems in other situations though but from what it looks like to me, the yote is just on a routine “scrap” run. You can follow their scat piles full of plum seeds down my driveway and through my property where they follow the same trail every night. That’s why I say that it is for sure manipulating the coyotes in that manner. I don’t know how many piles of fawns he would be willing to jump over to get to them but coyotes definitely eat on plums when they’re available.

Oh i agree with what you're saying and definitely wasn't suggesting not planting plums. One of my favorite parts about deer hunting is working on my land and planting new types of trees. I was only saying I didnt think it would be possible to noticeably reduce fawn predation by going that route. I sure wish it was. Last year was the worst I have ever seen as far as fawn survival around our place. I started hinge cutting some just to try and improve the fawn cover in places since there just aren't enough thick places around my place.

One of the ways that many recommend dealing with coyote predation on fawns is to have a short intense rut so that you will in turn have a short window of time in which fawns are born. The idea is that you are overwhelming the coyotes with more food (baby fawns) than they can consume in a short time period. In the end, more fawns make it through the critical early time period when they are most vulnerable.

Would it not be plausible to think that we could use that same “overwhelming food supply” effect by supplementing them with other food sources that they like to eat such as plums? If ample amounts of easy to find food are available during the critical weeks of fawn dropping, then would coyotes still actively seek fawns as intensly. I know the things you read say that coyotes turn to fawns as their main food source during that time of year but I can assure you that they are still eating plums during that time period too….so its not really true to say that they eat nothing but fawns. Again, I’m just asking the question…not necessarily saying this is for sure true. I don’t really think it’s that far fetched though. Do hunting dogs hunt different on a full belly as opposed to hunting them when their a little hungry?

yotes eat the crap out of persimmons....

Some good points there. I guess in the end it can't possibly hurt. It might not help save fawns in the end but will provide some great habitat either way.

I think yer "theory" may sound good but will not work in the real world. Irregardless of any food sources available every study I've seen show yotes preference during peak fawning is, well you guessed it, ...fawns.

I planted 6 in a 30 acre freshly cut= last december cutover. I couldnt get a tractor in there, So i have 6 perssimons trees and 1 deer feeder! Deer only cross my land. Zero deer live on it. But a friend of mine killed a 140 less than 1/4 mile from my place. I also have 50 acres i lease across the rode from this land. Just wanted some food on it! I can coyote trap it year round.

I hear what your saying, and it might would help, although i would think they would quit eating persimmons to eat fawns, kinda like deer quit eating corn or food plot for acorns.

……but what evidence do we have that coyotes ever “abandon” persimmons and plums when they are dropping? From most of our observations and what everyone is saying, even in just the last few posts….. it’s quite the opposite isn’t it?

The following information was given in the link that started the thread:

Cotton Rats & Persimmons – The two most common food items found in 353 coyote scats collected on two public hunting areas in Georgia. Despite the diversity of food items found, scats indicated that coyotes on one of the WMAs switched almost exclusively to eating fawns during the fawning season (study conducted by the University of Georgia and Georgia DNR).

I’ve read the studies as well that say that coyotes switch to eating fawns when they are dropping and I’m not disagreeing with that…..But maybe they do so, not because they’re so much “blood thirsty” for fawn meat, as it is because fawns are the easiest to catch, most prolific food source in the woods at the time. Coyotes are pure survivalists and that would suggest that they will take advantage of the situation that offers them food that’s easiest to gather without having to burn lots of calories to do so. I can’t believe that they would let themselves go hungry pursuing fawns, while piles of plums lay on the ground……especially as the number of fawns decrease. That’s the thing that I’m saying is the most plausible. As there becomes less fawns, it becomes harder and harder for the coyote to find the next one. At some point he’s going to have to really try hard if he wants another fawn and I have to think that there would become a threshold point for him where it just wouldn’t be logical to keep ignoring another prolific, easier to gather food source that is on his preferred list. Maybe if that other easy to gather food source isn’t present during that small window in time during late July and into August, then maybe he keeps hunting for fawns. Maybe if you gave him another easy option during that specific window in time, then maybe he doesn't keep pursuing fawns as hard. Again, I'm not saying this is true. Just throwing out the idea....

maybe, maybe, maybe....I say a yote will climb thru and over a ten foot pile of persimmons/plums on the off chance he MAY find a fresh born fawn......

Probably the three most important words said by anyone who ever discovered anything.



....but my camera says otherwise. It doesn't suggest that a coyote will climb through and over ten foot piles of plums when they are falling without eating them. It has shown consistently that when my wild plums are falling, coyotes are eating them. They have done so every year they've been producing for the last 3-4 years. Same routine each year. Not saying that aren't catching fawns too, but they do not ignore plums when they are falling.

The idea that the coyote population increases with the available food would make me think that making available plum or other food for them would not be a good idea. If researchers could develop a way to preserve the parvo (or other deadly disease to coyotes) virus so that you could take dead cows or deer carcass and infect the bait so that the coyotes would contact the disease thru ingesting it. Almost all dogs are treated for it, although I don't know if other wild animals contact the disease.