Three weeks ago, a homeowner in suburban Birmingham, Alabama captured on video an overnight predator and prey event play out with a Coyote chasing down and killing a deer............Alabama Coyotes tend to weigh 25-45 pounds and the deer in this video appears to be a petite sized doe, roughly the same size as the Coyote...............Biologists from the U. of Georgia conducted the most comprehensive study of coyotes during 2015-17 across parts of Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina and discovered that in addition to Coyotes feeding on newborn fawns in the Spring, they are also chasing and killing adult deer throughout the year...............Even with Georgia hunters killing 40,000 Coyotes annually, the "Peach State songdog" population continues to be stable, likely the same for Alabama and South Carolina............These biologists speculate that thinning thick woodlands would give Deer an added chance of outsprinting the Coyotes with the result being that Coyotes would concentrate more on smaller mammals and rodents.................“(Remember), Indiscriminate coyote harvest is not really that effective for improving things for wildlife"................ "Instead, do your homework and really target the animal that is causing you trouble"................."Even then, the effects of more discriminate trapping are short-lived, given the resident/transient relationship"................."Chris Mowry is an associate professor of biology at Berry College and a founder of the Atlanta Coyote Project"................."Once you understand that dynamic, he asked, why kill coyotes at all?".............. “We just sort of feel like lethal management is futile".............. “There are other alternatives"............."Whatever happens next, it doesn’t look like coyotes — or humans — are going anywhere anytime soon"

click to watch the video of a Coyote attacking and making a deer kill
https://www.earthtouchnews.com/natural-world/predator-vs-prey/coyote-caught-on-cctv-camera-attacking-and-killing-a-deer-in-alabama

Coyote caught on CCTV camera attacking and killing a deer on a Birmingham, Alabama suburban street

11/22/18 Earth Touch News

When Alabama resident Todd Strong spotted a flock of buzzards bustling in his front yard earlier this month, he hardly could have guessed that a dead deer was the cause of the commotion. Assuming that the animal had fallen victim to a speeding motorist, Strong dragged the carcass to the street and arranged for it to be collected. It was only when he reviewed surveillance footage recorded the previous night that the truly startling nature of the incident was revealed. 

Birmingham Alabama-Coyote closes on its Deer prey

While Strong and his family slept, a coyote was prowling the suburban streets of Vestavia Hills. The opportunistic canine set its sights on a deer and – after a lengthy battle – finally brought its prey down in Strong's front yard. "I'm sure it happens every day out in the woods, you just don't think it's going to happen in your driveway," a surprised Strong told a local news agency.

Although it's not unusual to spot coyotes in the Birmingham suburb, this year has seen a surge of reported sightings in the area leading to growing concern among residents that the canines could pose a threat. Strong, too, voiced his concerns about the late-night deerstalker: "People need to see what's going on. You may hear them at night, but these are pretty violent animals and I'm worried about people's pets, or when you go out walking at night you just need to be aware," he told reporters.

Coyotes are highly adaptable and resourceful predators, and these traits have helped the canines colonise much of Canada and the entire North American landscape. While they can be active at any time of the day, coyotes typically hunt under the cover of darkness and may form family packs (particularly in northern regions) to aid in securing a meal. They are unfussy eaters and will gobble up everything from rabbits and rodents to fish and even the occasional helping of fruit. In urban and suburban areas, coyotes are known to raid trashcans in search of food and may even take on bears to get it!

"Make sure your trash lids are on tight and do not leave any pet or cat food around in your backyard if it all possible," Lt. Chuck Nagle with the Vestavia Police Department advised earlier this year when concern was raised over an increase in coyote sightings. Fortunately, these canines will typically run if approached by humans, but small pets may be at risk (not to mention the local deer population).

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https://www.macon.com/news/local/article204345729.html

Seeing more coyotes where you live? Now we know why

Georgia Publice Broadcasting; 3/9/18; Grant Blankenship

Three years ago, a coyote with ice-blue eyes lay stock-still as scientists took her blood, weighed her and fixed a GPS collar around her neck on a dirt road near Augusta.

The scientists were from the University of Georgia’s Warnell School of Forestry, and they were adding the coyote to what would be the largest study of the animal in the South.

For the next two years, scientists followed coyotes like it across parts of Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina to try to answer questions they had about how coyotes have become so ubiquitous across the region.

Michael Chamberlain, lead scientist on the study, already knew some things.

“Well, for one thing coyotes in the Southeast are relying more heavily on deer as prey than Western coyotes do,” he said. Deer hunters, among others, wanted to know more about that. That’s why natural resources agencies from Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina helped pay for the study.

Back then, as far as anyone could tell, the deer that Southern coyotes ate were newborn fawns in the spring and whatever they could scavenge during hunting season. The coyotes in the new study showed Chamberlain something new.

Coyote in one ouf our southeastern states with a deer dinner

“By and far white-tailed deer were the most important prey resource for resident coyotes,” he said of the study results. And this wasn’t just during hunting season either. “The constant, consistent use of adults throughout the year is something you can't just describe ... (as) scavenging.”

That Southern coyotes hunt deer is probably not the news that hunters wanted, but there’s no love lost. Already Georgia hunters kill about 40,000 coyotes annually, and the state is in the second year of a bounty contest.

Even so, the effect on the coyote population is negligible. The population is stable, maybe even growing. To understand why, you need to understand the study's other key finding.

“What we've ended up figuring out is there really are two types of coyotes,” Chamberlain said. There are resident coyotes, perhaps a quarter-million strong in Georgia. Those are mated pairs on territories of about 10 square miles that typically have farmland and hedgerows and maybe some forest. The typical rural, Southern, man-made landscape.

"Imagine a puzzle with pieces that don't fit tightly together, and the puzzle pieces are these resident territories," Chamberlain said. In the deep, wet woods, you see the big shift to (coyotes') deer hunting. Otherwise they stick to small animals such as rabbits. Resident coyotes avoid people.

Then there are the other coyotes.

“There are these transient animals which are somewhat nomadic. They don't maintain space,” Chamberlain said. Transients are young animals just leaving home or maybe formerly resident animals who lost their mate. There’s something like 90,000 of them in Georgia.

Transients move in the spaces between the puzzle pieces. Those are power-line cuts, highways, neighborhoods and cities. These are very human places through which transients move 60, 70, sometimes 100 miles at a time.

So when a resident coyote dies, there’s a transient coyote in the wings who hops into a puzzle piece and settles down.

“It essentially means that you need to put a 50- to 70-square-mile circle around your property and recognize that that's what you're actually managing,” Chamberlain said by way of advice to owners of hunting land. It makes coyote management feel like a game of whack-a-mole.

Charlie Killmaster, lead deer biologist for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources agreed. “Yeah, it does,” he said. “At the property level it does.”

Killmaster said you have to think bigger than your hunting club, like statewide bigger. Hence the open season on coyotes in Georgia and the bounty contest. But ironically, shooting every coyote on sight doesn’t accomplish much.

“Indiscriminate coyote harvest is not really that effective for improving things for wildlife,” he said. Instead, do your homework and really target the animal that is causing you trouble. Even then, the effects of more discriminate trapping are short-lived, given the resident/transient relationship.

Chris Mowry is an associate professor of biology at Berry College and a founder of the Atlanta Coyote Project. Once you understand that dynamic, he asked, why kill coyotes at all?

“We just sort of feel like lethal management is futile,” he said. “There are other alternatives.”

Which brings us to what Chamberlain said is the next question in the research.

“It’s to try to understand whether we can alter the landscape in a way that benefits species we are interested in at the detriment of the coyotes' ability to prey on those species,” he said. That is to say if the deep woods where deer have a hard time escaping coyotes should be regularly thinned out, it might push coyotes to prey on rabbits or other small game instead.

Whatever happens next, it doesn’t look like coyotes — or humans — are going anywhere anytime soon.