Eddie Stevenson of the Big Deer Hunt Team texted from camp in Oklahoma last fall: Guy shot a nice buck, but coyotes found it before we did, meat half gone.
Another text from Eddie 2 days later: Coyotes got another buck, this one in less than an hour and during middle of day…just like on the blog.
A month earlier I had blogged about how coyotes were finding and devouring bowshot deer at an alarming rate. I asked people to share any such predator stories they had. Hunters from North Carolina to New York to Kansas wrote and confirmed that the new coyote problem is very real. Two more examples:
—a buddy of mine arrowed a 160 class buck one evening last year and went back the next morning…the coyotes had eaten it all…
–shot a doe one morning and watched it die in the field…30 minutes later two coyotes circled downwind and walked right up to my deer…had to yell and scream to get them away…wild to see how quickly they can get on that smell and sense a free meal…
Coyotes are thick in many areas, and they seem to be getting more aggressive. Back to that text from Oklahoma: Coyotes found and ate that buck in the middle of the day and in less than an hour.
So what to do?
John Jeanneney, a New York breeder of top blood-trailing dachshunds, tracks more bowshot whitetails in a season than most of us will in a lifetime. In his book, Dead On!, John says it’s time to re-think our deer-tracking strategies. With most arrow hits, even marginal ones in and around a buck’s vitals, John says to get on the blood trail and go. No more waiting 30 minutes to several hours. And no leaving your buck until the next morning. John and his dog-tracking colleagues from across America have compared notes, and they report that 35 to more than 50 percent of deer left overnight may be lost to coyotes.
Tell us if you’re having trouble w/coyotes in your hunt area.
This site was… how do you say it? Relevant!! Finally I have found something that helped me. Thanks!
With havin so much content and articles do you ever run into any issues of plagorism or copyright violation? My blog has a lot of exclusive content I’ve either written myself or outsourced but it looks like a lot of it is popping it up all over the web without my agreement. Do you know any solutions to help protect against content from being ripped off? I’d definitely appreciate it.
Hey Mike, I’ve got a wirehaired of John’s breeding through Vern Hansen in the UP and have done limited tracking with him so far, but he found me my best deer yet…my girlfriend who owns the kennel and grooming business five miles down the road ;). Zach’s turn this year again after a dry year last year.
Been lucky to not have a hunge coyote problem where we hunt but I know many people that do.
My 2011 KS buck was arrowed in the morning. I waited a half hour, started on the trail and the blood looked marginal, so I backed out. I came back 3 hours later and picked up the trail again. I followed it about 70 yards into thick willows and heard growling/yipping and other coyote sounds ahead. I broke into a small clearing and there were 4 coyotes working over what was left of my buck. There wasn’t much meat left that wasn’t chewed on.
Looking back at it, my hit was good and I should have followed up right away. He was dead. I followed my conventional wisdom and backed out because the blood wasn’t great and I hadn’t found the arrow yet.
We’ve killed about 2 dozen coyotes/year on that property for several years but it doesn’t seem to make much impact.
I agree about the quick follow ups. If a good hit was made, follow up in 30 minutes. This wait-till-the-morning stuff they do on TV (the majority of the time now) will waste a lot of meat.
We have a lot of coyotes around, but as long as the deer is recovered that day, we usually find the deer intact.
In north central Pa. we contend with both ‘yotes and bears to which I’ve lost deer to both.Where I hunt if you don’t see the buck go down you have a 50% chance of losing some meat.