alleyyooper

Been a lot of deer hang out around the house the last week. Yesterday there were 22 of them with in 50 yards even though I was out with the dog and getting a load of fire wood up for this on coming weeks forecasted cold spell.
Dawned on my as my dog was running across the crust on the top of snow the coyotes were probably harassing the deer who like me break thru the crust.

Time to get out and start after the coyotes and put a bit of a hurt on them.

Al

MZS

Packs of dogs can do damage too, although these days most people do not let their dogs run loose like years back. A nice pet can turn into a vicious deer-killer when it packs up with a few others.

Topgun 3006

For sure, the conditions up here in MI right now are perfect for coyotes to take any deer they come across, regardless of what sex or size it is. We have had over 2' of snow that settled in a 3 day warm spell and then the top froze when the weather turned back to temperatures that we normally have. I can walk gingerly on top of it in a lot of areas and coyotes/dogs can stay on top and run with no problem. If they get a deer up it won't take much at all when it breaks through and they can hamstring it, etc.

Bullcamp82834

It's the fat season for wolves too.
Tough time to be a deer or elk.

alleyyooper

At least we can still do some thing about the coyotes, Michigan also gave those who had a extra 100.00 a chance to do some thing about the wolves in some areas. Sold 1500 permits, once 46 wolves were killed the hunt stopped. Only 23 were killed, DNR said that the extreme weather was the reason hunting was so poor. I disagree with that as I don't think only 23 hunters were not WOOSE'S.
I think since there was so many tree huggers who tried to get the hunt stopped they bought a bunch of the permits.

Al

bucklessyooper

Think your right on the tree huggers getting wolf permits

Where we hunt in Iron county I saw wolf tracks by a couple stands separated by Hwy 141 and around 5-6 square miles of land.

Think the next couple of years are going to be poor deer hunting in Iron county.

Topgun 3006

***That wouldn't surprise me at all and will probably be done more in the future since wolves were delisted and the huggers lost the battles in court. There is not much that can be done to stop a nonhunter from buying a tag either!

Lunkerdog

All the Minnesota tree huggers must have moved to Michigan... Here in Minnesota they've actually exceeded the quotas for the last two seasons... 600+ wolves have been taken.

alleyyooper

Deer hunting in the Whole UPPER has been poor for some time from reports of others who hunt deer up there. Many claim it is the wolves which I don't doubt one bit. Where I hunt it is coyotes. Never heard or seen one when we started hunting there in 1991. Since 2003 you hear them every morning and evening howling away. We usually see and shot 5 or 6 during the two weeks now for the last 10 years or so.

I've been talking to the crew about going UP for a couple weeks just to hunt coyotes. For most it would be a budget problem to go for a week for non game hunting.

Al

flyinlowe

I saw a study that said if you can control your coyote population you can increase your deer heard by up to 60% the first year. That is how many fawns they get each spring, if you have a lot of coyotes. At first I thought that seemed like a high number but if they are getting that many fawns it would only take one season without the coyotes to have a huge increase in the deer that make it to deer season.