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12-14-2011 | 05:07 AM

#32

Champlain Islander

Dominant Buck

Joined: Dec 2004

Posts: 23,840

Likes: 11

From: On an Island in Paradise

Quote:

Originally Posted by mlo31351270

I AGREE 100% Why would coyotes go for the strongest,a mature buck at this time of year ? It is unnatural. And so what if coyotes kill deer.. We kill them too! They are just trying to survive.

Yotes are opportunists and will always survive. They will eat anything and have no problem killing deer especially when in a pack. One day several years ago with 6” of fresh wet snow on the ground I was hunting along a field edge and came across a spot where a deer had been killed. There was blood all over the place and bone parts were scattered in an area about 25 yds wide. Legs were separated and parts of the backbone was broken and all were picked clean of meat. All that was left was part of the hide and separated bones. There were coyote tracks and scat all over the place so I decided I would try to figure out what had happened. I back tracked the scene until I left the area where the struggle had occurred. There were 2 deer that were obviously feeding along a wooded section of field. By the age of the sign I figured it had to be the late afternoon or evening of the day before. Along a stand of tall goldenrod I could see belly prints of the yotes as 2 or 3 lay in wait and another few sets of running tracks that came in at an angle towards the feeding deer. It looked to me like the running yotes chased the deer towards the other members of the pack who were laying there. One deer track left the area running and the other was caught and you could see where it struggled all the way to the area where it was eaten. I have no way of knowing the age or health of the deer that was killed but looking at what was left of the carcass it appeared to be a yearling doe probably about 80-100 pounds. A large percentage of the northern New England coyotes have wolf DNA mixed in and are quite a bit larger than their western cousins. I have personally seen a 70 pound male that was killed near my camp and weighed in at a local sport shop. That lay in wait while the others chase is quite common around here. One evening while I was in a bow stand along a field edge I saw 2 coyotes walk along a woodrow and lay down right where it joins the swamp. 2 others went down into the swamp and about 15 minutes later I could hear them coming and a doe popped out with them about 50 yds behind. They all ran and I could see the other 2 yotes try to cut that deer off. It looked to me like the deer got away but there is no way of knowing how long that chase went on.

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