Whitetail Science: Southeast Deer Study Group 2012
This respected group holds an annual conference whereby deer biologists, managers and researchers present their recent findings on deer biology and management. The 2012 meetings just wrapped in Florida. I followed Tweets from the conference, #SEDSG. Some science hot off the press:
• Texas researchers followed tame deer and watched them take 241K bites of forage from 137 different plants! (Your takeaway: Wild deer too are voracious eaters, so don’t just focus your efforts on one or two food sources; hidden patches of natural forage/browse tucked back in the woods and en route to and from primary foods can be killer spots to shoot a big buck.)
• A Delaware biologist said the circumference of some bucks’ necks increases 50% in the rut. (We knew they swelled, but that much? Yes, I’ve seen it.)
• Texas biologists tracked one 3.5-year-old buck that made an 18.2-mile roundtrip excursion to and from his home rage in a 29-hour period during the rut!
• A Louisiana study found that 1 in 15 radio-collared bucks made a 4-mile rut excursion. (Takeaway: Some bucks, but not all, go AWOL in the rut.)
• There was a lot of discussion on predator control. One study found that if you shoot 1 coyote per 100 acres on your property, fawn recruitment can increase 130 percent on that land in the first year. (Takeaway: Whacking just a few yotes is good for the herd.)
I also loved the info. about coyotes. This spring farmers/hunters started putting trail cams outside of coyote dens and were blown away at how many fawns were being dragged in to feed the youngsters. This is why we've called war on 'yotes this off season. My brother has been shooting them up since deer season went out. We've noticed the deer numbers have slumped some in the last couple years. I'm guessing the 'yotes are to blame for some of this.
Very good info. Hanback.
Smoke them yotes!
I personally, hold the belief that a dead yote is a good yote. However, I have been challenged in the last year that shooting only 1 or a few of the yotes on a property actually serves to increase the population due to the fact that the social structure is broken and new yotes are allowed to move in. I was quoted research that stated the population can actually go up by 10% when you shoot a couple yotes, and that unless you are shooting at least 25-50% of the population each year, you are actually serving to increase the numbers. Coyotes also increase reproduction, when the population is reduced.
While I have a hard time believing that, more research is needed to sort out the truth. There are a lot of factors here, both biological and behavioral, but common sense would say if you shoot one, not only do you have one less yote, but any new reproduction would take at least a year before they began actually killing deer fawns themselves. That would at least temporarily remove predation pressure on fawns.
I'm a believer in killing them.