Talking to a butcher at the gun shop yesterday, he normally butchers 120-150 deer over the 3 month bow and 2- 1 week shotgun seasons. Last fall he only did 69 deer, of which only 2 where fawns. Everyone at the gun shop was pretty much in agreement, that most of the coyote kill's came last spring, the coyotes ran the does until they aborted, then they had a hot lunch. One of the guys compared the size of today's herd to the size it was in the 70's . . lucky to see a deer!
With my afu knee all I can do is drive around the usual deer yarding areas. The difference in the amount of road crossing tracks is amazingly different from this time last year. The one spot there was 2 trails 4 ft wide coming out of a swamp into a corn stubble field, was not uncommon to see 20-30 deer there last year this time. This year there are a few tracks but no where near the number of deer tracks as in years past, have only seen 1 deer in that corn stubble this year. All I'm seeing driving around deer yarding areas is turkeys in a ratio of about 15 turkeys for every deer I see. If it cannot fly it is dead. Nothing is safe on the ground I cannot remember the last time I seen a rabbit track in the snow, the dam coyotes have cleaned them all up as well.
There is a bounty here on coyotes. . in name only. . not many go for it after their first experience with all the BS paper work.
A lot of the coyote problem around here I believe was helped out by a MNR CO, he turned a blind eye to the live trapping of wild coyotes, they would run coyotes down with dogs (switching out dogs as they get tired) until coyotes hold up( in a den, under a log, someone's garage, someone's barn . .etc), then grab them with a noose, then use the live wild coyote to train dogs in a fenced in enclosure, basically by letting them fight it out, they went through a lot of coyotes. They could make a lot more money "training" dogs than from the bounty and/or pelts. When some guys where questioned coming across the border about their "coyote dog training" the Federal Government investigated, stepped in and stopped it, the coyote population has since exploded without this pressure on their numbers, with no charges laid the old blind CO was just asked to retire early and everything is hush. . hush.
CzY Horse