Coyotes and Deer

   / Coyotes and Deer #1  

N80

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We have a lot of coyotes here. And there seems to be a lot of coyote mythology out there. Latest rumor here is a story about a guy leaving his deer stand in the dark being followed by a pack of coyotes that kept coming back even after he shot at them.

Plenty of farmers claim that the coyotes eat calves. What they usually see is coyotes getting the afterbirth after a calf is born or eating a still born calf. No reliable witness around here has seen a coyote kill a calf. One semi-reliable witness claims he saw one after a calf but the mother cow had no problem running the coyote off.

The local biologist says coyotes primarily eat mice and rabbits. They say they do not attack or eat full size deer. They say they do not hunt in packs. They say they would be unlikely to have any success with a full grown turkey.

Others say that coyotes develop hunting habits based on the environment they live in. So how they behave here might be totally different from how they behave out west.

I bring this up because of one second-hand report and one instance I witnessed first hand. The second-hand report came from my wife. She saw three coyotes chasing a doe across a field in front of our cabin. The coyotes were not close together like an organized pack but they were all following the same doe. My wife said the doe was running but not flat out. She ran in a large circle and came across the field again before jumping in our lake and swimming across. The coyotes did not follow. It was in the spring and I think she was baiting them away from a fawn.

The first hand account was last Wednesday. I was deer hunting and heard something running into the valley I was in and a large doe came flying down the hill, flat out, tail down, as fast as she could. Maybe 20 yards behind here came a coyote. Also full steam ahead, hot on her trail. I whistled several times and the coyote stopped but was out of sight. I heard something else coming and it was another coyote also running flat out behind them. I whistled again and it stopped and I killed it.

So I have no idea what to believe about coyotes and their interaction with deer. Was what my wife and I saw actual 'pack' hunting? It certainly was not cooperative pack hunting like wolves but it was still more than one coyote following the same game. Where they really chasing this deer for food or just because they are dog-like and chase stuff? Can a coyote out-last a deer enough to finally catch it and then take it down? How many coyotes does it take to take down a healthy adult deer....which can fight really hard and be dangerous when cornered. Why would a hungry coyote expend that much energy (long chase, dangerous take down) when we are swimming in rabbits and mice?

Would be interested in any reliable info about coyotes vs adult deer. I'd be willing to guess that we don't really know a whole lot of cold hard info about coyote behavior.
 
   / Coyotes and Deer #2  
The coyotes take the fawns in the spring. From what I have read coyotes kill 40% of newborn fawns every spring in the areas that they established in.
 
   / Coyotes and Deer #3  
Back in the early sixties as a kid on the Kansas farm I witnessed two coyotes taking turns trying to catch a jack rabbit. There was snow on the ground and there must have been 50-100 jack rabbits in a cluster on a hillside. Probably should have just observed but couldn't pass up the chance to bag a coyote with my trusty 22. I missed, of course.
There was a 25 cent bounty on jackrabbits that winter and they were thick as fleas on a hound. I recall coming up on what looked like one but it was motionless, covered with snow and nestled in the side of a shock of cane bundles. I figured it had froze to death but poked it with the gun barrel just to make sure. I probably jumped a couple feet when it suddently came to life, ejected itself and was off like a shot.
 
   / Coyotes and Deer #4  
From what little I know I don't think they take down grown deer unless sick, old, or injured. I don't like coyotes. I have never heard anything good said about coyotes.
 
   / Coyotes and Deer #5  
As a westerner, grew up in AZ, lived in Colorado and now in Northern California,I am now 58. I have hunted and lived around coyotes my whole life. I dont consider them to be a threat to our deer herds. They are very opertunistic hunters, they will often pursue prey just to see how it reacts, if it shows weakness they will continue. They do and will hunt as a pack, but not so much for the purpuse of killing larger prey, but more for flushing and herding towards other members for the kill. Allthough I have seen many singles raid a chicken coup or rush a flock of turkeys. I for one am happy to have them around, to a point, because I can tell when they are not frequenting my land as my rodent population noticably grows. I have even gone so far as to leave a bag of cheap dog food out for a poor or orphaned pup. But have also poped many for being to bold. I dont know if the ones that have migrated to the east behave differantly. I just wanted to share my thoughts.
 
   / Coyotes and Deer #6  
Coyotes are relatively new around this area. I would say they came in about 15 years ago. We didn't have any problems with rodent populations before they came. The only rodent population being reduced by coyotes around here is cottontail rabbits, chipmunks, and squirrels. I would agree that these particular rodents have been greatly reduced here by coyotes. And they take 40% of the newborn deer fawns in the spring. Not to mention that they snatch an occasional cat or small dog out of someone's back yard. What's not to love about coyotes?
 
   / Coyotes and Deer #7  
Last year I got involved in a predation problem on a local sheep farm. The farmer called me and said that during the previous year he had lost 80% of his lambs, mostly one at a time, sometimes 2 at a time. He had also lost about 20% of his adult sheep in the same period. Clearly, they felt that their farming operation was not going to survive under this kind of pressure.

I have spent a lot of time investigating the situation. It is a 100 acre property and unlike what is typical for Michigan and Ohio, the property is not at all flat. There are 2 major "draws" more than 50ft deep from where the homestead is to the farthest boundary. The historical problem is that both of the owners have "regular" jobs and have very little time to spend out on the land to interact with the predators. Both are also familiar with firearms but neither are hunters. The couple had lived on the farm about 5 years and prior to them the original owners had gotten old and frail and let a lot of maintenance slide. There was a lot of brush encroachment, to the point that access to certain parts of the property was really only possible on foot. Some areas around ponds were so brushed in that they are basically completely inaccessible. All the brushed in areas provided great cover for coyotes to set up and wait for the sheep to walk by.

I walked the property extensively and did a lot of observation and determined that no coyotes were actually living on the property. There was a lot of hunting activity around most of the periphery of the property by hunters who had access to the neighbors land. There is swamp to the west and a huge section of wild wooded property to the east where the coyotes seem to live. Unfortunately, the relationship with both neighbors means that we cannot access either property to get to the root of the problem. I tried using electronic callers to either call in the coyotes or get a vocal response from them in the evening and determined that they would not come out in the open during daylight hours. I spent many hours sneaking in before dawn in winter and observing any activity in proximity to the sheep. Typically, the coyotes arrived in pairs and sometimes they had a partially grown pup in tow. In my observation, they always made directly for the sheep. At dawn the sheep would be inside the barn and many of the coyotes I ran into were near the barn.

The first time I spotted a pair, they were at 250 yards from my blind, in the draw where they could not be seen from the farmhouse, going towards the barn. I fired and wounded what must have been the female. The male ran about 50 yards then stopped and looked back. I fired at him and missed. He ran another 100 yards and stopped again. By now he was at a range of 350 yards. I missed again. For the next month I had no sightings. Then I began running into a lone coyote in the dark while on my way to the blind. I personally believe this was the survivor and he possibly had pups to feed. We laughed about it, but I said that one of my primary weapons against the coyotes was drinking a lot of tea and marking my territory in all the areas we believed they were entering the property. A few months later, I killed a second coyote which was in the process of attacking turkeys. It was a dry female and she was pretty old. Her teeth were in bad shape. I have kept up my routine of tea drinking and territory marking and in the meantime we have started clearing brush with an emphasis on allowing access to the perimeter with a UTV so that the owners will more regularly get out there and be aware of what is going on.

This year we did pretty well in that only 2 sheep were lost through the lambing season and in late fall a single attack resulted in the death of another 2 sheep. Of all the sheep killed, only 1 was consumed. 1 died after being chased by 2 or 3 coyotes in the hotter than normal fall, possibly to a heart attack. In the same attack, a yearling was bitten multiple times in the hindquarters and died the following day due to blood loss and shock.

So, in my humble opinion, coyotes absolutely can and will kill turkeys and sheep. It may not take 2 minutes, but sheep are pretty stupid animals who have no idea how to defend themselves. The coyotes appear to try to separate one from the herd and then either run it down, taking turns like wolves do with elk, or by inflicting many individual bites until the animal is weakened. This is classical dog/hyena style behavior. Coyotes will pick what they consider easy targets. If they get shot at while on your property, they are going to more readily become discouraged and go after mice or rabbits. In areas which are intensively farmed, once the crops are harvested there tends to be a big decline in the critters supported by the crops and then they turn their attention to whatever is left. Depending on whether the sheep are sheltered at night, coyotes will also move the activities to night time. In cold winter conditions, cold and hunger drives them to go out in the day anyway. The last 2 winters have been mild, so that pressure has not been as intense as what it will be in a "normal" winter.

That is my 2c on this topic.
 
   / Coyotes and Deer #8  
I'm sure this story could be looked up and verified... About 2 or 3 years ago in Greensburg, PA a pack of coyotes where supposedly harassing cows in a pasture. They chased the cows through a fence causing one of the cows to be struck by a STATE POLICE OFFICER!!! This occurred on route 30 in Greensburg.
 
   / Coyotes and Deer #9  
I walked out on my elevated deck overlooking a 600 foot path out to a pond and wooded area and saw a big yellow lab be chased flat out down the path toward me by a lone coyote. I called out and the dog kept coming, coyote stopped.
 
   / Coyotes and Deer #10  
Go to google, type in "coyote kills deer you tube"...multiple video/trail cam photos of coyotes killing full grown deer...they can and will kill and eat anything they can get their lips on, just a part of nature...
 
 
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