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Can someone give me some takes on coyotes migration into your area and affect on deer?

HuumanCreed

HuumanCreed

Well-Known Member
SH Member
Joined
Aug 21, 2020
Messages
2,718
Location
Westminster Maryland
Found a coyote roadkill a few miles from my house. I only live here for a 3 years but this is the first time I seen one dead or alive in the area. Neighbors are telling me they are slowly coming down south from PA. Maryland has year round coyotes season.

But from those of you that been hunting for decades, do you see changes in the deer population as a result of coyote?

I read articles and most say that some present of natural predators so help with population control and healthy herds.

Or should I start to see lower harvests number in the state's annual reports?
 
HuumanCreed said:
Found a coyote roadkill a few miles from my house. I only live here for a 3 years but this is the first time I seen one dead or alive in the area. Neighbors are telling me they are slowly coming down south from PA. Maryland has year round coyotes season.

But from those of you that been hunting for decades, do you see changes in the deer population as a result of coyote?

I read articles and most say that some present of natural predators so help with population control and healthy herds.

Or should I start to see lower harvests number in the state's annual reports?
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We've had coyotes in Western MD for decades. You won't notice a population level impact from their presence.

Page 16 of last years annual deer report briefly discusses your concerns: https://dnr.maryland.gov/wildlife/Documents/MD-Annual-Deer-Report-2019-2020.pdf

Here is MD's Whitetail deer management plan that may also interest you: https://dnr.maryland.gov/wildlife/Documents/2020-2034MarylandWTDeerPlan.pdf
 
I’ve hunted NE Oklahoma and E. Central Kansas for about 25 years and there’s always been a lot of coyotes and deer both places, generally speaking.
 
I agree, we never had coyotes here when I was younger and they're all over now. Don't really notice a difference in deer numbers. Snowshoe rabbits . . . that's another story. Those yotes clean up on them the leading and lagging weeks into the winter where the bunnies are white in a brown woods.

That said, the yotes are definitely targeting and finding some success on deer but I suspect its mostly the young, wounded or weak. When the snow gets deep enough here for the deer to migrate to their wintering grounds the coyotes follow them even though the squirrel, mice, birds, etc. are still around. When the deer tracks disappear so do the coyotes.
 
We had coyotes here in NY for as long as I can remember,and we have an estimated 1 million deer in the state. So coyotes don't do much to the deer population. I have seen coyotes while hunting and not 30 minutes later deer would be on the same trail. They could smell that the coyotes were there before and were alert,but that is it.
 
For the most part they kill young fawns as in this time of year. They don't normally kill adult deer unless they find them unable to flee. Coyotes hunt singlely or in pairs mostly and therefore aren't a big threat to adult deer. But it can happen.
Lots of coyotes and deer coexisting in Illinois.
 
DroptineKrazy said:
I found 2 different adult deer torn to shreds by coyotes by my house last winter.
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Is it possible the coyotes scavenged the carcasses? Not trying to sharpshoot your point, I just don't know how to distinguish killed and eaten by coyotes from just eaten by coyotes.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk
 
HuumanCreed said:
Found a coyote roadkill a few miles from my house. I only live here for a 3 years but this is the first time I seen one dead or alive in the area. Neighbors are telling me they are slowly coming down south from PA. Maryland has year round coyotes season.

But from those of you that been hunting for decades, do you see changes in the deer population as a result of coyote?

I read articles and most say that some present of natural predators so help with population control and healthy herds.

Or should I start to see lower harvests number in the state's annual reports?
Click to expand...

almost every time, folks that laud the beneficial effects of predators use yellowstone as an example, before and after wolves

well, yellowstone did not allow human hunting, so it is an apples to oranges comparison (as human predators perform many of the same roles....funny that humans are never considered a keystone species or whatever verbiage is popular)

also, the folks touting the benefit are not concerned with the number of deer or hunter experience

i went to school in an environmental and wildlife management program (i was in ecology but also took a few management courses).....those folks are often pretty biased....they will not publish something that goes against what they want to be true and they often start with a conclusion and work backwards to support....little better than bad actors in the social sciences

it's bad enough that i've pretty well abandoned the field and am totally different than i was in my 20s and early 30s
 
i wish bucks weren't such dead beat dads, it would warm the cockles of my heart to see a mature buck curb stomp a 'yote while his fawn and baby mama flees

PS....i think more people should coyote hunt, i wish nightvision was cheaper because it seems that's how you really take them out in high volume
 
One thing everybody has to keep in mind is that a midwest coyote is nothing like a northeast coyote that myself and @DroptineKrazy have to deal with, we have coyotes that reach 50 lbs, not often but it happens, a midwest coyote, unlike the bucks lol, will be quite smaller in comparison, deep snow and even a mature deer is no match for a couple of coyotes in our country. We hunt coyotes like it’s our job from the second week in December to the end of March, 25 years ago I would have agreed that coyotes mostly kill wounded deer and obviously fawns, not so much anymore… I’m not sure if they are evolving or what but the past few winters they have really put the thump on our deer herd, it’s nothing for me to jump on my snowmobile and in 30 minutes find a dead deer or turkey from coyotes. I like deer hunting a lot and post on this forum often about it, but my brother and I are known for predator hunting, it’s what we do, we’ve slowed down some the past few years but my phone still rings 4 times a week from farmers wanting me to come kill coyotes, they raise heck with the young livestock here. A lot of people hate coyotes, I can understand that, I hunt them like I do also…but I don’t, I actually have a lot of respect for coyotes, always working seasonal my whole life it’s just something that is almost tradition around here in the winter time, after the long grind of a deer season it’s a great feeling to be out in the woods when it’s cold and hunt places that are normally off limits during precious whitetail season lol.
 
I hope I was clear that adult deer are not normally susceptible to coyote predation except where they're escape is impeded. Deep snow would be an impediment to escape.
 
Topdog said:
One thing everybody has to keep in mind is that a midwest coyote is nothing like a northeast coyote that myself and @DroptineKrazy have to deal with, we have coyotes that reach 50 lbs, not often but it happens, a midwest coyote, unlike the bucks lol, will be quite smaller in comparison, deep snow and even a mature deer is no match for a couple of coyotes in our country. We hunt coyotes like it’s our job from the second week in December to the end of March, 25 years ago I would have agreed that coyotes mostly kill wounded deer and obviously fawns, not so much anymore… I’m not sure if they are evolving or what but the past few winters they have really put the thump on our deer herd, it’s nothing for me to jump on my snowmobile and in 30 minutes find a dead deer or turkey from coyotes. I like deer hunting a lot and post on this forum often about it, but my brother and I are known for predator hunting, it’s what we do, we’ve slowed down some the past few years but my phone still rings 4 times a week from farmers wanting me to come kill coyotes, they raise heck with the young livestock here. A lot of people hate coyotes, I can understand that, I hunt them like I do also…but I don’t, I actually have a lot of respect for coyotes, always working seasonal my whole life it’s just something that is almost tradition around here in the winter time, after the long grind of a deer season it’s a great feeling to be out in the woods when it’s cold and hunt places that are normally off limits during precious whitetail season lol.
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If coyotes in Maryland are like the rest of the critters, they'll be dinky.
 
Topdog said:
I know your a trapper, my brother used to put all our coyotes up and ship them to Fur Harvesters I think it was, I think the guys name was Tobey that always picked them up, I can’t remember I’m not a fur man my brother is though, anyways one year when he got the grade slip back after the auction they graded one of our coyotes as a “brush wolf” I think they called it, it must have been a big male or something who knows, we used to hunt all day every day and my brother would skin half the night, he had a Dakota fleshing machine and we made a tumbler.
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Might be more of a grade referring to the fur type. obviously we get some brutes up here, more so in New York/PA/Maine corridor. I occasionally get a 40# coyote, only one legit weighed 50# here in SE Ohio. We helped with collecting coyote tongues for the coyote ancestry project and it came out that most of the coyotes east of the Mississippi are basically mutts with dog and wolf genetics.

Your brother must of been a taxidermist or tanner, or have more money than sense to have a Dakota flesher. Nice tool but I don't do near enough tanning to justify it.
 
SNIPERBBB said:
Might be more of a grade referring to the fur type. obviously we get some brutes up here, more so in New York/PA/Maine corridor. I occasionally get a 40# coyote, only one legit weighed 50# here in SE Ohio. We helped with collecting coyote tongues for the coyote ancestry project and it came out that most of the coyotes east of the Mississippi are basically mutts with dog and wolf genetics.

Your brother must of been a taxidermist or tanner, or have more money than since to have a Dakota flesher. Nice tool but I don't do near enough tanning to justify it.
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He got a deal on the Dakota from a taxidermist going out, he used to put up and sell ton of fur back in the day, I can remember one coyote that broke 50 in all these years, I think it was 52, and this is from a large sample size, the past few years a lot of our coyotes have been dirty and little, probably getting overpopulated is my theory. We were also part of a Cornell study on coyote ancestry, they wanted the whole skull, never heard anything back.
 
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