The first two fawns we saw this Spring were in the mouths of coyotes on the game cameras. It’s a data point, not necessarily proving any trend – but it does support my hypothesis. Coyote predation has changed – and here’s the story as I see it.
For several years, we had a pack of two elderly coyotes on the hill. He was buff – several times I had folks who glimpsed him tell me of a wolf. I had better views – for some reason of his own, watching me on the tractor was a worthwhile activity for him. I don’t know why -with his deep chest there may have been a little bit of dog in his genetics. Makes no difference – he knew he coexisted with humans, and left the house and my little dogs alone.
His consort was missing an eye – the sort of thing it takes a lot of observation and trail camera time to observe. When they hunted, he was invariably to her left. If she did any tractor watching, she picked better concealment than he.
I don’t know what took out the old coyotes – it could have been someone with a rifle, but it is probably just as likely that it was old age. If he went first, the wild life would have had no place for her disability. For whatever reason, my small pack of neighborhood coyotes is gone.
In the absence of a resident pack, the trail cameras show that we now are included in the overlapping ranges of 3 larger packs – one group comes from the north, a second from the southeast, and the third from the west. Where we once had a pair of coyotes making a living full-time, we now have over a dozen hunting on the edges of their expanded ranges.
The prey species has changed – the trail cameras show that the new packs have all focused on feral cats. Non-ferals, too – we don’t know how Cream disappeared, but circumstantial evidence points to the west coyote pack. And the population of feral cats living in downtown Trego is declining on the trail camera. I don’t know which pack has developed a taste for skunks, but fewer skunks are showing up on the cameras (I can’t believe we would have three packs of skunk-eaters.) I suppose that reducing the skunk and feral cat populations does help keep the area free of rabies.
I kind of miss the old pair of coyotes that coexisted well with us – on the other hand, an uncontrolled population of feral cats pretty much calls for something to start preying on them. Studies in Chicago show that coyotes keep cat populations confined to residential areas.
Trego's Mountain Ear 