Coyotes

[StraitUpSlayen1]

I've hunted the same land for over ten years now and it's always been great deer hunting. I have used trail cams religiously for four or five years always tons of deer around really start showing there faces alot by mid August to check out my food plot and eat at the many apple trees around. This year zip, I literally have about 95% less pics of deer than prior years. I've got about 30 coyote pics in the last month and a half also hear several packs of them howl nightly. Enough to keep deer away?  I Don't understand any other reason for deer not being around. Any suggestions or ideas on wut i should do to save my season would really be appreciated thanx..

Edited September 19, 2014 by StraitUpSlayen1

[PREDATE]

Listen closely.

The deer DO NOT belong to you. They are wild creatures that roam to the areas that suit them best. Maybe you're your own worst enemy by trapsing around so much fiddling with trail cams.

I cannot let this go unsaid, IF you did this in NYS, you just lost all respect from me. It may be "just a coyote" in your eyes, but I happen to enjoy them quite alot and only a poacher kills out of season. If you joined the white tail contest, you should be immediately DQ'd for being a known poacher!

[PREDATE]

furthermore, I originally opened this thread to actually help you, but you blew that bucko!

[Four Season Whitetail's]

I've hunted the same land for over ten years now and it's always been great deer hunting. I have used trail cams religiously for four or five years always tons of deer around really start showing there faces alot by mid August to check out my food plot and eat at the many apple trees around. This year zip, I literally have about 95% less pics of deer than prior years. I've got about 30 coyote pics in the last month and a half also hear several packs of them howl nightly. Enough to keep deer away? I sat in one of my stands and called one in a few days ago and shot it. Arrest me... Don't know wut to do keep killing them and putting scent and gunshots in the woods to get rid of some or stay out and hope the deer show up magically. I Don't understand any other reason for deer not being around. Any suggestions or ideas on wut i should do to save my season would really be appreciated thanx..

Can say i feel your pain and have been there. I do the same just S.S.S although i have a farm with animals and nightly visits from the pack as well. I contacted some guys that run dogs and let them run the dogs and snowmobiles on the farm the last couple winters. Pack numbers have dropped big time. Keep stackin them up! 

[wooly]

Glad I stopped writing my novel when I did.

Well said Predate!

 

[HuntOrBeHunted]

My best suggestion is don't kill out of season. And deff don't put it online you might just be surprised !!

[PREDATE]

I contacted some guys that run dogs and let them run the dogs and snowmobiles on the farm the last couple winters. Pack numbers have dropped big time.

In another perspective, you're just making it easier for other predators like fox to move in and decimate your small game species. Yotes have a home range of 10+ sq. miles and travel many miles every night. Fox on the other hand are crafty and will live under your barn if they want to. Fox will relentlessly hunt the small critters, where yotes are opportunists and are always on the move eating whatever they can find. Predators play an important role in a well balanced ecosystem.

[growalot]

Here's my take..Stop being illegal...go get your trapping license or take a year off of deer hunting. Then Hunt yotes legally,taking a deer if it shows during season, then  do this:

 

1) Get on line and see what tanned yote hides are selling for..I looked 150-200      

     dollars

2) learn to properly skin and prepare the hides

 

3) Sell as many as you can hunt or trap

 

4) use the funds from sales to plant more plots...

[Curmudgeon]

Thanks Predate. If people are going to behave as criminals, someone needs to call them on it. Any ECOs reading this?

 

I have many coyotes around. The wife and I took a walk last week. We counted 14 fawns on adjacent properties while we strolled the grounds. Not 14 deer, 14 fawns! I like coyotes too. However they are failing to control the deer population. I need to make sure all the DMAP tags get filled again.The coyote "problem" is overblown hype. There are too many deer in all but the big woods of the state.

 

I also have a flock of sheep. I never let them lamb outside so don't have a problem with coyotes. In cold weather, I have gone out in the morning after a light snow. Just like with deer, you can see the beds where the sheep had slept in the pastures. One morning I found coyote tracks 50 yards from the sheep beds in the fresh snow. The sheep didn't even get up. The coyote didn't stop.

 

These predators are filling a niche we opened for them. Give them a break. They eat a lot of woodchucks.

[stoneam2006]

Depending on where you are there might be someone here with a trapping licence willing to take them off your hands....I'm in southern tier near olean if your around her I could help.....lol

[PREDATE]

I don't mean to scold people or make them leave the site, but admitting that you poach(especially when you acknowlede that it is wrong) is not gonna fly around here.

2 of the OP's 18 posts are trail cam pics of bald eagles & yotes on a deer carcass... well there's your problem!

Edited September 19, 2014 by PREDATE

[Curmudgeon]

Consider this: all research suggests that persecution of coyotes results in no long term change in the population. Coyotes respond by reproducing faster. Any reduction is short-lived and local. Attempts have been made to wipe out coyotes for over a century. It works well with wolves but coyotes will not go away.

 

Here's a mental exercise for those of you who think coyotes are problem: 43% of the 243,567 deer taken legally in NYS last year were adult bucks. 57% were antlerless deer. If all coyote hunting, and all hunting of anterless deer was stopped immediately, what do you think would happen to the deer population? How does hunting coyotes help your deer hunting. I believe that much of the emotional response to coyotes is just a selfish reaction to competition. The facts don't matter.

Edited September 20, 2014 by Curmudgeon

[New York Hillbilly]

   Do the right thing and wait until season starts. Once it is open however, have at it and kill everyone you can lay a bead on. Whether you love them or hate them is a personal matter, and I for one don't judge people either way. As a beagler who has had one good bitch killed by coyotes, and had several other real close calls with my beagles while rabbit hunting, I fall into the hate them camp.

 

   Over the years most of my beagle buddies have had the same bad luck dealing with coyotes with their hounds either tore up or killed. Even recovering deer on my property has taken a new direction. There is no such thing as sitting and waiting a bit before you get on your deer following the shot anymore, because you will show up and find the deer ripped open and half eaten. 

 

   To each his own I guess. 

[Curmudgeon]

Interesting Hillbilly, you are in Sangerfield. I'm in northern Otsego County not far away. The only time we had a problem with coyotes eating our deer was when it got dark and we had to wait until morning to find it. This was many years ago. Since we switched to copper ammo, hardly a deer gets out of sight before dropping.

 

If coyotes were killing my dogs, I would hate them too. My springer once came face to face with one and ran behind my legs. The coyote walked towards us but broke off at about 30 yards and left.

 

Hating them and killing them doesn't change their population, or their impact on the deer population in any significant way.

[518BowSlayer]

am I missing something??? where in his post did it say anything about shooting them out of season?

[Kot2B]

The OP edited it out

[518BowSlayer]

The OP edited it out

oh ok, makes sense now

[New York Hillbilly]

Yup, I'm in Sangerfield. The beagle of mine killed actually happened in Deansboro and was years ago. Since that time though I have had close calls with them coming in on my hounds. It has always been the early morning first runs or the last ones of the day. Attacks on my hounds has been more related to a territorial thing not to eat. I have witnessed on one occasion several of them actively zone in on my beagles as they were running a rabbit, and I had to race in shouting to break up the party. 

 

About recovering deer, I was referring primarily to archery season. Yes, darkness was involved. I used to sit and wait a half hour before going after a deer once I shot it just to be safe, but it is tough to do these days. I also used to gut my deer and take a slow relaxed stroll back to the house to get my four wheeler or truck, rather than drag a deer so far through mud and weeds, but not anymore. The only firearm killed deer we had coyotes get to was my brother in laws first buck that he hit it to far back and then bumped it from its bed.

 

I'm not an expert about their breeding habits and numbers but did here a theory out there that the more you shoot the more there will be, and that their population ebbs and flows with the deer population. Interesting thoughts! However, I hear that stuff from the same experts who used to flat out argue with me that there were coyotes even in NY when I was representative, and then an officer for the Oneida County Federation of Sportsman back in the 1980's and 90's. 

 

 

[PREDATE]

I used to hate them too for killing our Jack Russell. I waged war on them and quickly found them to be a worthy adversary. Now I respect them as great hunters that are very smart and cunning. I enjoy hunting them and love when they come trotting in just to get wailed by my shotgun!

[New York Hillbilly]

I agree fully Predate that they are extremely smart and cunning hunters. I also am very happy for guys like you and some of my buddies who actively pursue the buggers. Keep up the good work!