Time to end food plots?

[browndog]

.....coyotes are no joke ....they don't take a lot of adults but they get the fawns......and in time it has a cascading effect on the population .....trust me

I hear ya. I run 10-12 cams year round and the yotes are relentless here. My fawn recruitment has been going down the drain for the last few years. In 17yrs of running cams, this has been the worst year for fawn pics. More yotes on cam this year than fawns:mad:

 

[MRBB]

been proven here in PA< Bears eat more fawns than Coyotes do!
they actually did a study and found, the most common diet of coyotes here is CAT, domestic cats, ??
go figure?
and I wasn't saying coyotes cannot alter deer numbers,
but I also think, many times when deer numbers drop, there are also other things causing it
PA lost more than half its deer numbers, and it was more about habitat loss of GOOD food for deer 365 days a yr, than coyote numbers or other predators
yes the state raised deer tag numbers to get numbers LOW, but when there is LOTS of food for everything, everything has higher numbers, when food drops off, typically so do deer numbers, and as less NON deer meals are about, coyotes and other things adapt and eat what they have to to live!

I've been seeing coyotes in PA< for the past 35 yrs, even when we had a million plus deer state wide>
hunted about 15+ states and seen coyotes in high numbers in many, and still had lots of deer too
all critters do what they need to to survive, were all part of a food chain of sorts

those that have excessive deer numbers KILL more deer, same goes for coyotes, have a lot, get on them, here in PA< there in season almost ALL yr
I only hunt them in the coyote contests, when there is cash on there hides
largest coyote hunt here has a pot, that averages about 33 grand, and thats every yr a 3 day hunt!
a lot of reasons to get off the couch and try and kill some! LOL

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

High coyote numbers are bad, but wolves are far harder on deer numbers. There are some pretty big areas in northern WI and MN with horrible deer numbers. World class whitetail habitat, but few deer. The wolves keep the deer numbers low and dramatically reduce the herd's ability to bounce back after a bad winter. With that many wolf pictures, I would expect that his deer numbers will drop significantly and stay much lower than before a pack was there. It really stinks if that happens and there's nothing that you can legally do.