Killer Coyotes

Killer Coyotes

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, there's still some debate about the origin of Eastern coyotes. In the early 20th Century, Western coyotes expanded their range eastward through Ontario along several routes. Along the way, there was some intermixing with wolves, and eastern coyotes still carry varying trace levels of wolf DNA, but they are a distinct species. They continued east, into New York in the 1920s, Maine during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and then on into Atlantic Canada. By the late 1970s, they had spread into southern New England and beyond.

Meanwhile, coyotes advanced on a southern front, crossing the Mississippi River around the mid-1960s and rapidly expanding eastward from Arkansas and Louisiana. Eventually, they linked up with their northern cousins during the mid-1980s in the central Appalachian mountains of Virginia and West Virginia. Some Western coyotes, transported east and released into dog-training pens, escaped and established wild populations.

Eastern coyotes are also built differently from Western coyotes. On average, they’re about 10 pounds heavier. They show more color variation and have larger bodies, skulls, and jaw musculature, better suited to taking down and eating larger prey, like deer.

While they may possess varying trace levels of wolf DNA, eastern coyotes are still coyotes.

How Bad Are They?

The impact of Eastern coyotes varies across their geographic range. A U.S. Forest Service study in South Carolina found that coyote predation may be responsible for measurable declines in some deer populations. According to results, coyote predation accounted for between 46 and 84 percent of all deer mortality. Even more significantly, somewhere between 47 and 62 percent of all fawns succumbed to coyote predation, most within the first three weeks of life. While causality can't be confirmed, the statewide deer population in South Carolina has declined approximately 30 percent since eastern coyotes arrived in the mid-1990s.

Another study in southwestern Georgia found similar, though less dramatic, results: lower deer densities and fawn: doe ratios in areas with higher coyote populations. Researchers at Auburn University found coyote predation to be the leading cause of fawn mortality in suburban areas around Auburn, Alabama. All of the above occurs in regions with a favorable climate for deer.

Coyote predation can become oppressive when deep snow impedes a deer's ability to escape.

20,000 Deer Down

Maine lies at the northern fringe of the whitetail’s range. In a 1995 report, former Maine deer biologist Gerry Lavigne said coyote predation in Maine accounted for nearly 30 percent of annual deer mortality, or more than 20,000 animals, as many deer as hunters kill. The report further noted that deer may represent 50 to 80 percent of the coyote’s diet, and predation is highest in winter and early spring when deer are hindered from escaping by deep snow. Lavigne added that deer (both adults and fawns) may make up 90 percent of the coyote’s diet in the heavily forested parts of the state in late May and early June.

Studies show that coyotes may kill as many deer as hunters do in some areas.

Predators Can Be a Positive?

Having some predators on the landscape is not a bad thing. They keep prey populations in check. They also promote healthier individuals in those populations by culling the sick and the weak. However, when predator populations grow, so does their impact. In some areas of northern and eastern Maine, coyote predation is so severe that it is holding deer populations at artificially low levels, below a number where the herd can sustain itself – a situation referred to as a predator pit. Furthermore, coyotes sometimes practice opportunistic killing. As long as deer are easy prey, like when concentrated in winter yarding areas, coyotes will continue running them down and killing them, far more than they can consume or need to survive.

Many deer hunts suddenly turn into coyote hunts when one of these four-legged predators arrives on the scene.

Bottom Line

The simple fact is that Eastern coyotes are here to stay. Countless efforts to cull them and their Western cousins have proven largely ineffective. In some cases, intensive predator control can have a localized and temporary effect on reducing coyote numbers, but they quickly bounce back. Fortunately, nationwide deer populations seem to be doing just fine, with a few noteworthy exceptions.

 

 

Source: Killer Coyotes