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Old February 8, 2012, 03:41 PM   #32
Irish B
Senior Member
 
Join Date: October 10, 2010
Location: Colorado
Posts: 359
Coyotes were not shipped in. Its a response to the lack of apex predator in the area. Wolves control coyote populations. Without wolves we have massive coyote over populations. The population will continue to increase too. People whine and moan about how bad wolves are for the environment and they kill all the livestock so we need to get rid of wolves but then they dont stop and think how that will affect the ecosystem. As soon as you get rid of wolves you're going to have a coyote problem. The difference is packs of coyotes don't have the same natural fear of people that packs of wolves do. Not only that but wolves will not adapt to live in urban environments like coyotes will. Coyotes are NOT destroying deer populations. Its very rare for a coyote or even a pack of coyotes to hunt a healthy deer. They usually take sick or weak animals and most of the time they hunt small pest game. Also coyotes only live in packs the first 2 to 3 years of there life, after which they move on to either a solitary lifestyle or pair up with a mate and the two separate from the pack for good. A lot of places, especially out here in colorado, coyotes are shot as pests. Most people go out and will shoot them just for target practice. They dont eat the meat neither do they use any part of the animal. Usually they just leave them there right where they shot them. The problem with killing every possible coyote in sight is that 98% of the coyotes diet are pest animals. Rats, mice, rabbits, etc. When we see a decline in coyote populations we see an incline in rodent populations and also an incline in diseases that are associated with rodents such as hantavirus, plague, tularemia, lepto, etc.

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If they could only realize how much of a better chance of getting a trophy game animal would be during its season if the yote population was down sized year-round. The yotes kill game animals year-round.
You're joking if you think coyote populations are directly affecting trophy game populations. It is extremely rare for a pack of coyotes to take down a healthy strong trophy buck. Like I said above these animals hunt the sick and the weak. Only a starving pack of coyotes would go after a trophy buck. Here in my little slice of Colorado we have no more wolves and we have not a lot of coyotes. Because of this we have deer EVERYWHERE. We have to rely on bear and lion to control the deer population. On any given day you may see 10 to 20 deer in town just hanging out. The lions wont hunt the deer close to town and the bears have gotten so lazy that they just dumpster dive and we usually go after the trophy bucks or does so the deer populations are at an all time high around here. They're practically pets. Back when I used to work as a medic in the er a few years ago we had a lady come in who was attacked by a buck who tried to wander it's way into her house. To sum all this up coyotes do have an impact on deer population but not directly to trophy buck populations and certainly not to the scale of wiping out deer population. I'm an avid hunter and gun enthusiast but i'm also a wildlife veterinary and environmental biology student so I get to see both sides of the story.
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