ORIGINAL: WNY Bowhunter

Fastfire,

I agree with what you say about larger coyote pop. needing lots of food and coyotes preying on the easiest prey they can get and it's true that a newborn fawn is pretty much helpless to the advances of a hungry coyote. Coyotes certainly do take a fair number of fawns throughout the spring / early summer...but the idea of coyotes killing almost every fawn in the woods is ridiculous. Coyote predation on fawns is just nature's way of thinning out the surplus of the fawn crop. That's why does in good habitat usually have twins to compensate for anticipated natural mortality on the fawns. The reason that farmers get so many fawns while chopping hay isn't because the fawns are totally helpless, but rather because a fawns main defense against predators is laying still and allowing their spotted coat to act as camouflauge until the threat passes by. When the farm machinery gets to close the fawns just see it as another predator and usually hold their ground until it's too late to escape. As far a coyotes go, think about it...if coyotes ate all of the fawns every year, the deer pop would crash within a few years and then in turn so would the the coyote pop. I'm beginning to think that alot of folks believe that there are actually more coyotes in the state than there are deer. The rules of nature dictate that there has to be adequate food sources available for a predator pop. to grow and thrive. If coyotes ate mostly deer and the deer pop. was being thinned out too much up to the point that there weren't enough deer around to feed all of the coyotes, then the lack of prey would cause the coyote pop. to suffer as a result.

Like I said earlier: There's no question that coyotes do in fact kill and eat deer...the more deer that are around the more that coyotes will have the opportunity to take, but the diet of a coyote is very similar to that of a fox which is composed mostly of mice and other small mammals. That's why areas that experience a large increase in the coyote pop. usually experience a similar decrease in the fox pop. due to the larger, stronger coyotes outcompeting the foxes for food (I don't think foxes take too many deer). Predator-Prey relationships are very complex cycles with lots of variables.

I don't live too far from you (about 1/2 hour east of Hornell in Steuben County) and I agree that the deer hunting this year sucked over most of the Region. Last year wasn't that great either (2002 was probably the best take I've ever seen around here) and I don't know why...I saw plenty of deer and videoed lots of nice bucks in velvet around the area for the past couple of summers. This year, once bow season got here most of the deer just seemed to vanish. It was really wierd. During gun season we do alot of deer drives and saw tons of tracks and sign but never really got on the deer that made them. Personally, I think that our main problem was that our best hunting land which is about 250 acres of the thickest, nastiest bedding cover in the entire area was put off limits this year (the guy that owns it wanted to make it into a sanctuary for deer)and the deer really stacked in there and never left the security until dark. I think that alot of bucks made it through season this year which it pretty unusually for this area. We should see some really nice 2 and 3 yr. olds and maybe even a few 4 yr. old bucks around next year. I've been out bowhunting for the past few days and there are deer tracks all over the place! We can only hope that things will be better next season. I just think that too many people are jumping the gun and blaming the entire lack of deer sitings on predation from coyotes