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Later this fall on Big Deer TV we’re airing a show on the extent and effects of coyote predation on whitetail deer across America. We filmed parts of the show out in Montana last winter with our good friend Luke Strommen, who showed us this picture and told us about this coyote encounter on his family’s ranch some years ago:

We’ve had a lot of experience with coyotes out here, both with our deer and our livestock. This was the picture I was telling you about. The cow that had this calf started calving late in the day below Dad’s house. She was away from the rest of the herd. Dad had been having problems with coyotes during calving season, so he tried to move her closer to the rest of the cows, but she wouldn’t go.

Dad came out of the house later that night, made noise and tried to spook any yotes away from the newborn calf, but when daylight arrived we found the calf dead with a coyote still eating on it. The mama had left to water. I snuck around a dike and set up with my .22-250. Shot the coyote at about 200 yards while he was eating the insides of the calf. He just dropped and didn’t even flinch, his head still in the calf.

The Big Deer TV coyote episode will air on Sportsman Channel later in October.