Continued over from the Fetal Study thread...........How densely populated would the wolf had been compared to coyotes??.....I'm just guessing here but one would think that our coyote population is much more dense.

There is no way they had the population density that coyotes do today. They weren't much bigger than coyotes, and the few isolated pockets of red wolves that remained were out competed by coyotes when they arrived. I'm guessing coyotes put more pressure on deer than red wolves ever did.

There used to mountain lions in every part of the state. That would have been the main threat to deer.

Another thing to consider is coyotes today are often part wolf and/or domestic dog. I've seen a few in the HSV area that were over 60lbs.

This is the same thing I was thinking as well. From what I’ve seen coyotes are highly efficient at targeting and taking out the weak and wounded. They’re taking out a portion of the fawns off the top and then another portion of adult deer on the back end…….driving “reproduction of the fittest”…….

You know what I’ve been pondering on is how estrous dates are supposed to be able to naturally shift if predators are clipping off the outliers??.......I think that must be what the boom/bust cycle accomplishes though……You have a “rebuilding” process that is supposed to periodically occur from the "fittest" in the herd after the population goes through a bottleneck and this is when the shift occurs…..or something like that……I’m not sure if that’s correct but it sounds good anyways.

This should be how the deer adjust to long term changes is climate warming and cooling. In a natural herd you should see, for example, the late Jan estrous line move north during this warming trend we're in as the cycles turnover. I'm not sure though that the deer can adjust in the same manner the way things now exist.....

Eastern coyote DNA has been studied to death and they are up to 13% red wolf if I remember correctly. Coy dogs are not as common as the myth would lead you to think. At least according to the data.

The various color phases of coyotes common in the south and east are from remnant wolf origins.

So theoretically speaking here……we’ve actually just gone through somewhat of a boom/bust…..or expansion/deflation cycle across much of the state…..If all of this is true then it should mean that if we now pulled the reigns back on shooting does AND coyotes….. and let the herd grow with the yotes able to do their job of clipping off the outliers as the herd expands……then we should see a move to more conformity within areas…….And moving forward into the future every time we go through a “breath cycle” of expansion/deflation…….. inhale/exhale …….things should become more and more conformed……

I’ve always been told it’s due to weather. We don’t have the die offs like upper Midwest. Late born fawns don’t make it as well as compared to here. Our winters are pretty mild by comparison. Therefor the skewing continues over and over until you have what Alabama has. A highly managed property is gonna out perform one that is not. One just has to stay after it year after year after year. Mother Nature ain’t gonna help you here.

CNC what you are suggesting is never going to happen.

Yeah, I think up north there’s a different controlling factor at play with the cold……I think down here in the deep south the controlling factor is the timing of spring green-up and the summer vegetation cycles. I would bet that there are certain points during a doe’s pregnancy that are supposed to line up with certain stages and flushes of vegetation growth to provide optimal nutrition. When the population is growing, the females most in line with that timing should be the more successful ones having twins and triplets while the ones out of synch maybe only have singletons……This would create your situation where the healthiest ones most in line the climate produce the most fawns dropping during a short time frame while the outliers produce stray singles.

What are you referring to Matt??

I believe he's referring to this:



You're never going to get people to stop killing does or coyotes.

I'm just thinking out loud here but I don’t think as a whole we’re really doing much to impact the overall coyote population……There’s probably only a handful of folks intensely managing their number enough to prevent them from having this influence across the board.

As far as the not shooting does part of it…..I don’t think it would require having everyone completely quit shooting them……All you would need to have happen is for there to be the potential for growth or expansion occurring in a bubble…..

I’m not saying it’s for sure happening but maybe its plausible. I’m trying to figure out if hunter’s indiscriminate harvesting would completely throw it off. Seems like that might be the monkey wrench……But what if a huge plantation decided to do such?? Wouldn’t that still drive conformity for their bubble as they became the major exporter of doe groups for the properties around them?? I think that might actually be occurring or has occurred in some places

Birthing time was probably controlled by the vegetation cycle at one point, but I doubt we'll ever get back to that with agriculture and invasive plant species.



You ever see any data about domestic dog in coyote genes? The bigguns I see around here look to be part domestic. Which makes sense, way more of those around to breed.

What I’m referring to is this conformity as you call it. Within a localized population the outliers are most often the results of second or third estrous cycles. You correct that with more bucks in the population. Coyotes are not a player in changing rut timing. They simply take advantage of a long fawn drop in areas where it occurs.

It’s extremely uncommon. Almost nonexistent. There’s more wolf DNA in coyotes than domestic dog.

What I mean by “conformity” is the basically the width of the bell curve for the 1st rut cycle and exactly where the peak occurs over time…….this is a whole separate concept at play than your 2nd and 3rd rut outliers.

In all honesty the bigger hunting clubs I’m aware of lack in doe killing numbers. Where as the mass killing of does happen in small acreage blocks where each block kills what they think they should and overall the doe population gets hit hard. What should happen is the landowners all get together and talk about goals. That’s what some friends around here have done.

Hogwild kept pointing this out and he made a good case I didn’t realize at the time.

That’s a fact. I get hammered for recommending doe harvest on LARGE properties where it’s nowhere near as detrimental as the 40-100 acre landowners thinking they can all kill 4-5 each and it be sustainable. It’s simply not. Moderate doe harvest on large cooperatives is a good thing and makes for some dang fine hunting. Moderate harvest on every small farm parcel is a disaster.

I’ve preached cooperatives to every ear that would listen for a decade or longer. I say it in every deer management presentation, club meeting etc. Folks are likely sick of hearing it, but without good communication and similar objectives neighbors make enemies rather than friends and cooperators. Then ppl start killing out of spite. Which is insane and childish.