Couple thoughts:View attachment 80301View attachment 80300
Probably the main reason, below, my fawn recruitment is so low
My fawn recruitment over the past ten years has run from .4 to .6 - with the last few years being closer to the .4 fawns per doe number. We dont shoot but one or two does a year off 350 acres. Personal opinion - I dont feel like we have a lot of coyotes - and our coyotes have always fed fairly heavily on piglets and scavenged pig carcasses the land owners killed. But over the past year or so, USDA and NRCS have concentrated hog trapping in my area. I have gone from killing 153 hogs in six months to getting a picture of the same four hogs twice in the last six months. I think the yotes have lost a huge component of their food source and they are having to rely on other food sources, now. We have very few rabbits, mice, rats, game birds, etc for coyotes to eat.Couple thoughts:
1. Looks like recruitment was pretty good fairly recently.
2. If I were a coyote, you have at least one excellent spot for them to target.
Seems to me if population of coyotes has been inflated by the abundant hog population then it will fix itself in a few years as the carrying capacity of the land has changed for the otes. The coyote population should drop naturally although it may take a few years.My fawn recruitment over the past ten years has run from .4 to .6 - with the last few years being closer to the .4 fawns per doe number. We dont shoot but one or two does a year off 350 acres. Personal opinion - I dont feel like we have a lot of coyotes - and our coyotes have always fed fairly heavily on piglets and scavenged pig carcasses the land owners killed. But over the past year or so, USDA and NRCS have concentrated hog trapping in my area. I have gone from killing 153 hogs in six months to getting a picture of the same four hogs twice in the last six months. I think the yotes have lost a huge component of their food source and they are having to rely on other food sources, now. We have very few rabbits, mice, rats, game birds, etc for coyotes to eat.
I dont really think so. I asked our state’s head deer biologist if fetal or birth rates in does tended to decline as population density increased and he said no unless they were really stressed. The g&f has been out on the next door neighbors 1000 acres - where deer population is an estimated deer per five acres - and they said the habitat did not show excessive deer utilization.Do you think there's any density-dependent processes coming into play along with predators? Seems like a pretty good number of deer there.
Depending on the birth date, the fawns may still be in the staying away from deer other than their mothers. On our place, I'll see pictures of adult does similar to this one (minus the feeder) with no fawns. However, on the trail cameras I see fawns with their mother. I did notice a reduction in the number of does with two fawns this year. This past season we harvested a couple of older does that were "homebodies," including one that had triplets last year. Most of the does with fawns are younger ones this year, so the single fawn is not surprising.
You are correct - but also realize those numbers are very local to specific properties and all the deer dont stay on those properties all the time. My 1000 acre neighbor allows three people to bowhunt his place - one of which is me and I am confined to his 100 acres that join me. No guns. You can kill one deer - any deer - as long as you mount it. In six years I have hunted the place, I have not killed one, his nephew has killed six, and one other hunter has killed one. Seven deer off 1000 acres in six years. None of those were does. Off my 350 acres, plus another 70 acres I control, we probably ave two bucks and one doe per year. So yes, we have a lot of deer. But, properties around us do not have that many deer. I work hard to keep as many on my place with a lot of cover, 30 acres of food plots, and six bait sites. We rarely hunt the bait sites - maybe one of the grand daughters - we do hunt the food plots. On my camera survey last year, I had 68 unique deer - which would theoretically be very close to your number quoted. But to be honest, I consider my camera surveys more for trends and an indication of buck:doe ratios and fawn recruitment. I have seen, on a number of occasions, more than 50 deer on an evening ride around the place. It has taken a long time and a lot of effort to get here. We did not kill a doe for seven years.Swampcat your estimated deer numbers per mile are 128 based on your equation above. Please tell me math is wrong.
This was an excellent episode, where they dove into the studies showing just that, and how burning reduced predator numbers.The studies on turkey and deer recruitment all indicate quality habitats and predator control is best supported by a burn rotation. Trapping and shooting coyotes and other predators is a piece of the puzzle, but burns are the foundation. I am actually surprised how little we discuss burns on this forum.
But, you have much better groceries than he does, so I would think the nutritional plane is higher because of your work. Just think if the nutritional plane was raised on that 1000 acres too. The deer would definitely have a better diet than they are getting now over there. Diet makes a big difference in what deer exhibit in both body and rack.But something that always kind of lets the wind out of my sails when I think of how successful my deer management program has been - is my 1000 acre cattle ranching neighbor who sprays broadleaves and plants fescue. No food plots. No feeders. He does one thing for the benefit of deer - and it takes him no effort or money to accomplish a deer density the same as mine - trigger control![]()
Thanks for sharing. I hope many of our forum members will give this episode a listening. The research Craig Harper has done (and will be publishing soon) supports the same conclusions for deer.This was an excellent episode, where they dove into the studies showing just that, and how burning reduced predator numbers.