You are Dreaming if You Think Shooting Coyotes Will Improve Your Deer Herd
The Take home Message
- Coyotes have become a bogeyman for hunters in the United States, and many hunters shoot coyotes because they think it will improve the health of the deer herd.
- As a landowner or hunter, you simply do not have the means to decrease the coyote population on your property.
- The evidence that coyotes serve as a top-down regulator of deer populations is equivocal.
- There are far more effective means to manipulate the size of a deer herd than by controlling coyote populations.
The full story
Perhaps the most hated species in the United States is the coyote. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a fellow hunter tell me they go out of their way to shoot every coyote they can to protect the deer on their property. If you follow any hunting interest pages on Facebook, you've certainly seen a picture of a dead coyote or two with comment after comment congratulating the poster on good deer management. Taken to an extreme, this behavior has resulted in "varmint" hunting competitions popping up all over the United States, often justified as a method to improve deer hunting.
I remember the exact conversation when I was first introduced to the idea that shooting coyotes should improve deer hunting by my Uncle Bob. It made sense to me then, and I can see why it makes sense to people still. The logic is pretty straightforward: coyotes eat deer fawns and shooting coyotes means there are less of them. Easy enough, right? Unfortunately not.
This is a long story, so I'll give you the conclusion first, and then explain in detail why this is the case. You are absolutely wasting your time shooting coyotes to improve your deer herd.
There are two parts to the justification that shooting coyotes will improve deer hunting. Both must be true for coyote control to serve as an effective deer management strategy. First, shooting coyotes must lower the population density. Second, coyotes must act as a top-down regulating pressure on deer populations. Let's take these in turn.
Common sense would tell you that killing coyotes should lead to fewer coyotes. It doesn't. It probably leads to more coyotes in fact. Coyotes tend to form social structures similar to the packs formed by wolves, but much looser. Usually, territories are controlled by a breeding pair and their offspring. Larger groups only occasionally interact. When you shoot coyotes, one of two things is likely to happen: compensatory reproduction or increased immigration. Compensatory reproduction occurs when birth rates, litter size, or juvenile survival increase as populations decrease. This happens in many species, and coyotes are prime candidates because of their social structure. Under equilibrium conditions (like when they aren't being hunted), the reproductive rate of the population is probably held at something less than maximal by social hierarchies. When the social structure is disrupted, you should expect the reproductive rates to increase sharply.
If your goal is controlling coyote populations, the reproductive rate might actually be irrelevant. Instead, increased immigration (the movement of individuals into the population) from neighboring populations might happen before increased reproduction can occur. In one particularly telling experiment conducted in South Carolina, researchers paid commercial trappers to remove coyotes across a huge area of federal land at a rate dozens or hundreds of times higher than you could ever achieve through shooting coyotes from your deer stand. Still, they were able to trap about the same number of coyotes every year for three years. They weren't driving huge decreases in population density even with intense trapping. It appears that juveniles from surrounding populations almost instantly filled the vacated territories.
I remember the exact conversation when I was first introduced to the idea that shooting coyotes should improve deer hunting by my Uncle Bob. It made sense to me then, and I can see why it makes sense to people still. The logic is pretty straightforward: coyotes eat deer fawns and shooting coyotes means there are less of them. Easy enough, right? Unfortunately not.
This is a long story, so I'll give you the conclusion first, and then explain in detail why this is the case. You are absolutely wasting your time shooting coyotes to improve your deer herd.
There are two parts to the justification that shooting coyotes will improve deer hunting. Both must be true for coyote control to serve as an effective deer management strategy. First, shooting coyotes must lower the population density. Second, coyotes must act as a top-down regulating pressure on deer populations. Let's take these in turn.
Common sense would tell you that killing coyotes should lead to fewer coyotes. It doesn't. It probably leads to more coyotes in fact. Coyotes tend to form social structures similar to the packs formed by wolves, but much looser. Usually, territories are controlled by a breeding pair and their offspring. Larger groups only occasionally interact. When you shoot coyotes, one of two things is likely to happen: compensatory reproduction or increased immigration. Compensatory reproduction occurs when birth rates, litter size, or juvenile survival increase as populations decrease. This happens in many species, and coyotes are prime candidates because of their social structure. Under equilibrium conditions (like when they aren't being hunted), the reproductive rate of the population is probably held at something less than maximal by social hierarchies. When the social structure is disrupted, you should expect the reproductive rates to increase sharply.
If your goal is controlling coyote populations, the reproductive rate might actually be irrelevant. Instead, increased immigration (the movement of individuals into the population) from neighboring populations might happen before increased reproduction can occur. In one particularly telling experiment conducted in South Carolina, researchers paid commercial trappers to remove coyotes across a huge area of federal land at a rate dozens or hundreds of times higher than you could ever achieve through shooting coyotes from your deer stand. Still, they were able to trap about the same number of coyotes every year for three years. They weren't driving huge decreases in population density even with intense trapping. It appears that juveniles from surrounding populations almost instantly filled the vacated territories.
I love watching coyotes from the deer stand.
The relationship between coyote and game species has long been of interest to naturalists and hunters. Plate from Four-footed Americans and Their Kin, published 1898. Image courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library (biodiversitylibrary.org)
In a similar example, one of my predecessors intensively trapped coyotes, red foxes, and grey foxes nearly year round on a single farm over a 15-year period in the 1950's and 60's. He was collecting specimens for the university mammal museum, and in most years, he deposited 25 or more grey foxes in the collection. For 15 straight years! There was a strong shift toward young animals after the first few years, almost certainly because juveniles were immigrating from neighboring, unharvested populations. Still, the population density apparently didn't decrease much over that time even has he removed 25 or more individuals each year.
If trapping at those levels was unable to decrease populations of coyotes or grey foxes, you will have little or no effect shooting coyotes that happen to pass your deer stand. Even light trapping or predator hunting is futile if coyote control is the goal. Attempting to control coyote populations on your 40 or even 400 acres is like trying to remove a beach by carrying away one cup of sand every day. Controlling coyote populations, especially where they are expanding in the eastern United States, would take an almost unimaginable level of effort spread across vast geographic areas. States would have collaborate to lower the population on a regional level. Coyotes would quickly recolonize any area where trapping was suspended, so the effort would need to be maintained indefinitely. It simply isn't possible. Most states realized this decades ago, which is one reason bounties on coyotes fell out of fashion.
Now, for argument sake, let's pretend you could lower the population density of coyotes on your property. Would it have an effect on deer populations? In some populations, coyotes do cause substantial mortality of deer fawns, but the predation rates vary widely across the eastern United States. Generally speaking, predation rates are lower in northern states and the Midwest and higher in the southeast. In some populations, fawn predation rates are well below 10%. In others, they are above 50%. In populations at the upper end of that range, coyote mortality could feasibly depress the deer population to a degree.
When coyotes are removed, deer fawn survival does usually increase, but not always as much as you would expect. In the South Carolina experiment I mentioned above, fawn survival varied widely from year to year, and in one year was basically identical to the year before trapping began. Coyote removal had little to no effect on fawn survival that year. That experiment represented an absolute best-case scenario. There was high fawn mortality attributed to coyotes and the researchers (or their trappers) were able to subject the coyote population to intense trapping for multiple years. Still, fawn mortality didn't increase across the board, suggesting fawn survival is also affected by many things other than coyotes.
Let's take this one step further and assume that you can control coyotes and controlling coyotes leads to increased fawn survival. Well then, now we have an increasing deer population, right? Not necessarily. Demographers (scientists that study population growth and characteristics) long ago realized that population growth (or decline) is determined by the cumulative effects of many things including survival at different ages, reproductive rates at different ages, death, immigration, emigration, and others. In some species, survival of young is very important for population growth. In others, survival of adults is far more important. That means increased fawn survival doesn't necessarily lead to increased population growth rates in your deer herd. Many researchers assume that adult female survival is the most important factor in population regulation of large ungulates. Spending effort and money to decrease fawn mortality rates might be a waste of time if survival of does is limiting population growth. Think about it; when your state management agency wants to decrease the deer herd, they increase the bag limit on does. When they want to increase it, they do the opposite. There's a reason for that.
This might all seem too convoluted to be true, but it isn't. There is evidence that coyotes don't really provide top-down regulation of deer populations in the eastern United States. Coyotes were historically much more prevalent in western and Great Plains states. Over the last half a century or so, they have expanded rapidly into the eastern United States, creating a sort of natural experiment. The prediction of this experiment is straightforward: if coyotes suppress deer populations through top-down regulation, deer populations should have decreased as coyotes moved into new areas. They didn't. The deer population has mostly been growing over the time when coyotes where moving east. It's even possible that deer populations were at or near all time highs in the late 1990's, before declining slightly over the last two decades. On a continental scale at least, increasing and expanding coyote populations have done little to dampen the growth of the deer population.
It is not surprising then that in recent years, a number of scientific papers have concluded that coyote control is very expensive and yet still largely ineffective for increasing deer populations.
I'll be honest, I don't see coyotes as an issue for deer hunters, and in truth, I don't think most hunters really do either. You don't have to look very hard on the internet or in the literature of hunting-interest groups to find the argument that hunting is necessary in part because it serves to control populations of white-tailed deer, which would become overabundant without hunting. Harvest regulation is a far more effective tool than predator control for manipulating the size of the deer herd, and in general, we've seen a fairly steady liberalization of harvest regulations over the last 50 years. Hell, in Alabama you can shoot a deer a day for weeks on end if you like. In other words, management agencies have tried fairly hard to keep the deer herd from getting much larger because deer are problematic in many areas. That clearly wouldn't be the case if coyotes were suppressing deer populations alone.
I can fathom only two reasons why there is such a fascination with coyotes among hunters:
1) Some people just like shooting animals, but most don't like doing it for no reason. The 'shooting coyotes helps deer' story can serve as justification to make shooting coyotes more palatable.
2) Coyotes have become a sort of a bogeyman to deer hunters. Humans have long feared and loathed predators. In 2020, predators are rarely a threat to humans directly, but they are often perceived as competitors because they do kill livestock and game species. Shooting them might simply be the inevitable result of cultural norms that apply evil or mischievous intent to some species.
So what do I suggest you do next time you see a coyote? Watch it. Enjoy it. They are fascinating creatures. I'll let Jerry Jeff Walker describe what you are doing when shooting coyotes to help your deer herd:
If trapping at those levels was unable to decrease populations of coyotes or grey foxes, you will have little or no effect shooting coyotes that happen to pass your deer stand. Even light trapping or predator hunting is futile if coyote control is the goal. Attempting to control coyote populations on your 40 or even 400 acres is like trying to remove a beach by carrying away one cup of sand every day. Controlling coyote populations, especially where they are expanding in the eastern United States, would take an almost unimaginable level of effort spread across vast geographic areas. States would have collaborate to lower the population on a regional level. Coyotes would quickly recolonize any area where trapping was suspended, so the effort would need to be maintained indefinitely. It simply isn't possible. Most states realized this decades ago, which is one reason bounties on coyotes fell out of fashion.
Now, for argument sake, let's pretend you could lower the population density of coyotes on your property. Would it have an effect on deer populations? In some populations, coyotes do cause substantial mortality of deer fawns, but the predation rates vary widely across the eastern United States. Generally speaking, predation rates are lower in northern states and the Midwest and higher in the southeast. In some populations, fawn predation rates are well below 10%. In others, they are above 50%. In populations at the upper end of that range, coyote mortality could feasibly depress the deer population to a degree.
When coyotes are removed, deer fawn survival does usually increase, but not always as much as you would expect. In the South Carolina experiment I mentioned above, fawn survival varied widely from year to year, and in one year was basically identical to the year before trapping began. Coyote removal had little to no effect on fawn survival that year. That experiment represented an absolute best-case scenario. There was high fawn mortality attributed to coyotes and the researchers (or their trappers) were able to subject the coyote population to intense trapping for multiple years. Still, fawn mortality didn't increase across the board, suggesting fawn survival is also affected by many things other than coyotes.
Let's take this one step further and assume that you can control coyotes and controlling coyotes leads to increased fawn survival. Well then, now we have an increasing deer population, right? Not necessarily. Demographers (scientists that study population growth and characteristics) long ago realized that population growth (or decline) is determined by the cumulative effects of many things including survival at different ages, reproductive rates at different ages, death, immigration, emigration, and others. In some species, survival of young is very important for population growth. In others, survival of adults is far more important. That means increased fawn survival doesn't necessarily lead to increased population growth rates in your deer herd. Many researchers assume that adult female survival is the most important factor in population regulation of large ungulates. Spending effort and money to decrease fawn mortality rates might be a waste of time if survival of does is limiting population growth. Think about it; when your state management agency wants to decrease the deer herd, they increase the bag limit on does. When they want to increase it, they do the opposite. There's a reason for that.
This might all seem too convoluted to be true, but it isn't. There is evidence that coyotes don't really provide top-down regulation of deer populations in the eastern United States. Coyotes were historically much more prevalent in western and Great Plains states. Over the last half a century or so, they have expanded rapidly into the eastern United States, creating a sort of natural experiment. The prediction of this experiment is straightforward: if coyotes suppress deer populations through top-down regulation, deer populations should have decreased as coyotes moved into new areas. They didn't. The deer population has mostly been growing over the time when coyotes where moving east. It's even possible that deer populations were at or near all time highs in the late 1990's, before declining slightly over the last two decades. On a continental scale at least, increasing and expanding coyote populations have done little to dampen the growth of the deer population.
It is not surprising then that in recent years, a number of scientific papers have concluded that coyote control is very expensive and yet still largely ineffective for increasing deer populations.
I'll be honest, I don't see coyotes as an issue for deer hunters, and in truth, I don't think most hunters really do either. You don't have to look very hard on the internet or in the literature of hunting-interest groups to find the argument that hunting is necessary in part because it serves to control populations of white-tailed deer, which would become overabundant without hunting. Harvest regulation is a far more effective tool than predator control for manipulating the size of the deer herd, and in general, we've seen a fairly steady liberalization of harvest regulations over the last 50 years. Hell, in Alabama you can shoot a deer a day for weeks on end if you like. In other words, management agencies have tried fairly hard to keep the deer herd from getting much larger because deer are problematic in many areas. That clearly wouldn't be the case if coyotes were suppressing deer populations alone.
I can fathom only two reasons why there is such a fascination with coyotes among hunters:
1) Some people just like shooting animals, but most don't like doing it for no reason. The 'shooting coyotes helps deer' story can serve as justification to make shooting coyotes more palatable.
2) Coyotes have become a sort of a bogeyman to deer hunters. Humans have long feared and loathed predators. In 2020, predators are rarely a threat to humans directly, but they are often perceived as competitors because they do kill livestock and game species. Shooting them might simply be the inevitable result of cultural norms that apply evil or mischievous intent to some species.
So what do I suggest you do next time you see a coyote? Watch it. Enjoy it. They are fascinating creatures. I'll let Jerry Jeff Walker describe what you are doing when shooting coyotes to help your deer herd: