Wonder Why Fawn Numbers Have Crashed?

Wonder why the fawn recruitment rate is so low? In an all-too-common scene these days in the Georgia woods, this young Harris County fawn didn’t survive very long. Barry Brooks got this trail-cam picture at 11:56 a.m. on May 19 at his hunting club. “Just in the last couple of years the coyotes have gotten bad,” Barry said. “We shot a doe last year and couldn’t find it at first, and then we heard what sounded like 15 coyotes on it—there was nothing left.”

We may be a bunch of dumb rednecks, at least in the eyes of some of the establishment elitists. Yes, apparently there are those in the wildlife world, too. But at least hunters can recognize the obvious, that coyotes are hammering the deer in Georgia.

The new normal this time of year is a flood of trail-camera pictures from all corners of Georgia showing young, dead fawns being carried in the mouths of coyotes. 

Lisa Bray, of Dalton, said she thought at first the photos above and below were of the same coyote and same dead fawn. Unfortunately, these pictures were taken on different days. Possibly the same coyote—but sadly it was two different Chattooga County fawns.

The pictures speak for themselves about a major change in the Georgia deer woods, but let’s review:

• Coyotes are not native to Georgia. They are an invasive species that directly impact deer. We know from scientific research that coyote predation on fawns is dramatically high in the vast majority of study locations and at least significant in each study. 

Did you know the federal government doles out millions of sportsmen’s tax dollars (your money) to fight invasive species?

• Killing too many does on a tract of land in the South that has coyotes can lead to a Predator Pit, a situation where once the deer population gets too low, it can’t recover, regardless of how low the deer harvest gets. The only hope for deer recovery is doing something about the coyotes.

Meanwhile, who knows what the coyote impacts are on turkeys, rabbits, quail or pets? There’s no scientific research or data, so we can only imagine.