Coyotes and deer

The carrying capacity depends on many factors.  Food supply being just one of them.  The main thing that keeps a coyote off your land is another coyote already on that land and defending it as his own.  Other coyotes will be forced off that territory.

I don't see many people out hunting rats and mice or voles.   Competition to catch and eat these creatures (mice and voles) comes more from mother nature than from man.  IE hawk and owls and other  predators help to control the rodent population and compete with the coyotes for this food source. 

Farmers have many enemies and mice and voles along with things like Ground Hogs are enemies to the farmer. Why do you think that the farmer keeps so many barn cats around the place? They eat mice just like the coyotes.  So both the house cat and the coyote can be a benefit to the grain farmer.  But the cattle farmer probably would rather have the house cat around eating the mice than the coyote as the coyotes also kill the farmers young cows.  The house cat is safer to have around. Unfortunately the coyotes kills the house cats too.  So IMHO the coyote has to be shot or trapped and  eliminated.   

I'd love to see Stanley's research notes and documents.  I have a feeling that coyotes kill a lot more deer fawns than he thinks.  I learned that from my College Wildlife Biology Professor, who taught me and the current Director of IDNR's fish and wildlife agency.  Professor Weeks stated that he observed rouge dog packs chasing deer and killing them way back before coyotes were a problem here in INDIANA. That was way  back in 1975.  I'd bet that he wrote about that somewhere in the literature. That's what PhD college professors do. They do tons of research along with their teaching duties.

I can easily see how a couple of coyotes or a pack of 4 or 5 yotes could kill a lot of deer fawns if given the chance.   The only thing that deer fawn have in their favor is no scent to smell and they stay hidden with little movement. They naturally know to stay very still and let their natural camouflaged hair blend into the forest floor. The little white dots mimic spots of sunlight hitting the forest floor though the tree canopy.  But, if they are discovered by the coyotes their only chance to survive is the mother protecting them from the pack of coyotes. And that's not going to go well for mother or fawn. IMHO.  Even though the deer fawn don't have much scent they coyotes nose is excellent and their eye sight is great too. So they probably do find a lot of fawns. Especially since they know that the mother doe is always going to be near the fawns.  Coyotes are pretty smart too.

You are right about one thing.  When animal population plummet the number of follicles that develop in the females ovaries increase in number. That equates to more young born. This is caused by an increase in food supply and quality since there is less completion for brow than if there were more deer around.   But, if the habitat is not there to support the increase in numbers of deer then most won't make it through the first few years of life.  The web of life is delicate and complicated.  Less food equals less deer. Less deer means more food will be available.  Just like the lemming and the fox up North. The predator prey balance is a cycle.  With the predator increase in population lagging behind the prey population increase in numbers. IE the prey population has to build up to big numbers before the predator population can do the same. Then as the prey population decreases and crashes so do the predator population.  This cycles  continues over and over again.

There are biological feedback mechanisms that help control the population of White tail deer.  Increased numbers of deer leads to lower food supply and thus lower birth rates.  This is what I learned in the Wildlife Biology class at Purdue back in 1975.  Less food equals more stresss on the deer and poorer health which in turn lowers the number of eggs that the female deer produce. Thus less fawns are produced.  Then there is less pressure on the deer's food supply and the browse recovers over time.  As the food supply increases again the deer become healthier and then start to produce more eggs in the ovaries.  The cycle is repeated again and again.  Predator's help control the deer population and thus help protect the deer's food supply.   This is going on in Yellow Stone National Park today.  With the reintroduction of the wolf back into the park the population of browsing animal (Elk) are under pressure and the weak elk are being killed reducing the elk herd and also moving the elk to new territory. They want to stay away from the wolves.  So the plants in the vicinity of the wolf pack's territory are growing back. Before they were being eaten by the Elk herd.  Predators have a place in the balance of life.  But hunters are also a PREDATOR. We men are the biggest Predator around.

Man has taken over the place of the other predators in a sense.  We are the top dog now.  We hunt the elk and rabbits and just about everything else for food and sport. We really don't need to have the coyotes around to do that job.  But they are hear non the less.  They are persistent little buggers.

Deer that have been harvested are studied and one can count the number of foilcals on the ovaries to determine how many eggs they produced .  This can be compared to the food supply research in the territory.

Take for example the over crowded deer population at Harmony State Park. I personally observed the browse line up at the park years ago when the deer population was way over the carrying capacity of the park.  Below a certain level that matched up with the height that he deer could reach the browse there was very little vegetation left. I could literally see the browse line and everything that the deer could eat below a certain height was gone.  I could see for many yards though the lower parts of the brush or small trees that grew in the park. And deer were every where in that park. They were out in the open during the middle of the day. A lot of the deer were small in size too. They were starving to death.  Which is why IDNR had open hunting seasons on these deer to help reduce the population and protect the plants that the deer were browsing on.  They could have used a few more coyotes up that are that park.

There are some good books dealing with predator/prey population studies and how they affect each other over time. 

Mar 29, 2014 7:45:58 GMT -5 throbak said:

I was at a work shop in Carrollton Ky last wk end one of the speakers was Stanley Gehrt he did the work on the special Coy Wolf some interesting facts 80% are less than 1 yr old,,,all are monogamous,will NOT exceed the carrying capacities,,,home range around 7 miles,,,diet 42% rodents,,Kill VERY FEW deer,,,less than 10% in studies in Canada,,,Fawn Diet on Average less than 10%,, increasing fawn survival has NO effect on OVERALL POPULATION,,,You want to help the deer enhance the Rodent population ,, removal has unintended consequences in a urban setting they were very effective in Canada goose control the do hurt grey fox and feral cats which they kill but dont eat ( competition for the Rodents) peak deer in scat.. October( archery seasons) and May, Fawns .after fawns are 18 days old no depredation by coyotes,, another interesting coyote fact if you kill alot of the resident population the ones left will have up to 12 pups to replace the ones killed .. left alone 3 or 4 remember they will not exceed the carrying capacities ,,It was a very interesting topic And I asked, he said,, Killing Coyotes will not help the deer population