00:00:05 Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves. From coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences and life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast that Airwaves had off. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share. Welcome to Part two of This Country Life. It's kind of a different podcast about where I'm talking to somebody and I'm here talking with doctor Drew Ricketts from Kansas State University. He was on last week, it's going to be on this week. And because I am absolutely intrigued and I hope you are too, about how coats affect the landscape, Deer hunting is big. A lot of the folks that listening to my show, large portion of them are in South in the Southeast, and that deer hunting is king down here. And forever you see a coyote, he's got to go because I've got to have He's killing my deer, He's ruining everything that I've been working so hard with and manipulating my forest and planting food plots and doing everything I can to grow big and better deer. And I've got this thief out there that is stealing my boon and Crockett and poping young deer away from me. But doctor Drew Ricketts, Kansas State University, and we're here and we're gonna talk. We're gonna get to the stuff that you've been waiting for, I hope, because I've been waiting for it about how coyotes affect the white tailed deer here on the landscape. Doctor. We met last month on a hunt up here in Kansas with you, a decoy dog hunt with you and Jeff that that's a film that'll be coming out on them and next year in twenty twenty six. I learned some stuff while I was there. Re learned some stuff I was there that I thought was that was that wasn't correct. And that's that's what I want to get out there. And I think a lot of people will get some stuff out of this. Tell me why and how coyotes are affecting the landscape where we're hunting. 00:02:28 Speaker 2: Sure, sure, So you know last time we briefly talked about their diet and just to reiterate that you know, their their diet in the Eastern US, where they're a newcomer, is quite different than it is here in the Great Plains where I'm at. So you know, here they're mainly eating smaller stuff like rabbits and rodents. Out in the east, ungulates like deer are a much bigger part of their diet and they can have an impact on deer populations. And that has led folks to think about coyotes the way that you're talking. You know, they're they're a villain. We got to remove them from the landscape, and I mean, to be honest, when we had We've had armadillus come into Kansas, right, it's a natural range expansion. It's not something that people have done. But that's kind of how I think about armadillus. You know, they're they're not supposed to be here, they're tearing stuff up. They're new. Well, coyotes in in your area are are kind of that same sort of critter there. There have been a lot of studies that have looked at whether or not we can remove enough coyotes to have an impact on deer survival and more specifically, fond survival. They do kill some adult deer Uh, it's not super common for them too, but in the eastern US it's more common for them too. 00:03:52 Speaker 1: More common because of more codes, more deer, or the terrain in which they're hunting. 00:04:00 Speaker 2: More common because those coyotes have longer legs, they're bigger, they're more social in their hunting strategies, so you might get multiple coyotes hunting together more often. And then the other things that it's correlated with that we don't think about a lot of times, are as as your average snow depths during the wintertime increases, then it becomes more and more likely that coyotes are going to be preying on larger deer because they can. When you've got deep snow, those coyotes can chase down a deer more easily and catch it and kill it. 00:04:32 Speaker 1: Let mean something. Let me tell you about something that I observed in central Arkansas where I live. It was a spring evening, I believe, yes, it was. It was just right after Turkey season, so this would have been in May. And I have got a brand new thermal, and I'm sitting out on my front porch and I'm looking at a pasture field across in front of my house and I see seven or eight deer out there feeding, and then I catch a glimpse of a coat, and then I see another one. I see another one, and you got a picture. There's there's seven or eight deer feeding and they're on the west side of the property, and coming from the east is three coachs and they separated. One went around one side of the herd of the deer, one went around the far side, was on the ones on the far side, ones on the near side, and one's right in the middle. And I thought, holy cow, I'm fixing the sea. I'm fixing to see it right here. This is national geographic happening in my front yard, you know, from my front porch. The deer all looked at them, and the coyoats walked right past them on both sides. The one in the middle split right down the middle, and the deer never paid any attention to them other than watching them walk away. And they were fifty yards trotting away, and the deer went right back to feeding. It did not happen like I thought it was going to happen, And there were small deer out there with them. Didn't Why didn't it happen? 00:05:55 Speaker 2: Well, that those to the average coyote, an animal that big is not a prey item. It's more risky in terms of energy expended and the potential to get hurt than it than the reward is and and so it's just coyotes aren't aren't naturally hunters a big prey. It's it's more of an acquired thing. And I hesitate to say it's learned, but you know, it's it's a process of getting up to gumption to try and kill something bigger, whether it's deer, livestock, it's it's learning how to do it in addition to that, and so there's lots of different things that come into it. 00:06:39 Speaker 1: I saw a deer on a decoy dog hunt one time with Jeff. We did a fallen in distress call and there was a dough deer that came in there and about the same time that the kyote did. And that I'm assuming, now you know, I'm not reading the deer's line, but I'm assuming she's looking at that predator over there and thinking he's causing the distress that she's hearing. Yeah, and that deer ran that coat out of sight. As far as I know, they're still running and that was ten years ago. Sure, yeah, I mean they are they are not a submissive prey at them. You know, they're they're not just going to lay down a little them. They'll fight and they're they're pretty ferocious themselves though. Deer is, so it only makes sense that that they're you know, the coach are not just going to say, well, what are you doing, Frank, I'm not doing nothing. Let's go kill a deer, all right, Well let's go right. It doesn't happen that way now now. 00:07:40 Speaker 2: Now with fawns, on the other hand, if Coyle comes across faun, it's going to catch it and kill it if it can. And you know those fawns, especially when they're brand new, uh, their their defense mechanism is to hold still, even once they get something gets a hold of them. I mean, my decoy dog, any when we're out poking around, I always hate it when she finds a fawn because she'll she'll grab a hold of it and try to bring it to me. And and it's just natural for them. That's their their defense. 00:08:08 Speaker 1: It's just to hold. 00:08:09 Speaker 2: Still, and it's not it's a good one to keep from getting detected. But once they're detected, they're they're pretty vulnerable. 00:08:17 Speaker 1: So there, I mean, obviously there is an impact there there. 00:08:22 Speaker 2: It depends on where you are. We go back to that, it depends So if you're thinking about an impact in the Southeast I, like I said, those studies absolutely show that there can be and that's why that's why those states have really focused on trying to figure out what to do about it, you know, thinking about the impact elsewhere in areas where we've had coyotes for a long time. One of the things that I find interesting is to look at the long term data that we have in Kansas. Two sources of long term data that we have in Kansas or deer vehicle collision data that comes from the Department of Transportation and then Wildlife and Parks gathers what they call the roadside index. So the roadside index is as biologists are driving around, they write down how many live coyotes they see and how many roadkill coyotes they see. And so these are not you can't compare apples to apples, but the trends hold true. Right, So when we look at these data, we can see that coyotes have about tripled in terms of their index from nineteen eighty six to twenty twenty three, which is when these data end that I've got right here, So they have increased fairly linearly during that time. If coyotes are controlling deer populations in Kansas, we should see that deer vehicle collisions go down as coyote as coyote numbers increase, and we don't see that. If you look at that deer vehicle collision data, what it looks more like like is deer populations have leveled off and stabilized and they're probably hovering around carrying capacity. So that's one line of evidence that in Kansas, at least if we look at it at a broad state level, then coyotes probably aren't limiting the deer population. They pray on fawns, but they're not having enough of an impact to limit the population most likely. Another thing to look at is that meme that we've talked about a few times, and it says it shows a picture it's a pyramid of deer fawns with a coyote at the top, and it says during the coyote innning season, studies have found that female coyotes average killing nineteen fawns to feed their offspring, keep doing the good work. 00:10:46 Speaker 1: Fellas. You know that's not true, is it. 00:10:48 Speaker 2: Well? You know I saw that and I thought, man, that's some research that slipped through the cracks on me because I don't remember ever seeing it, and I don't even even really know how you would do that. You know, to be able to do that study, it's not as simple as people might think it would be. You would have to have camera callers on the coyotes because you would need to be able to distinguish between dead fawns that they found in fawns that they killed, and you would have to be able to keep track of it on an individual basis. 00:11:18 Speaker 1: Right, So there you're cloudness issue with facts. 00:11:23 Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but that's what I'm supposed to do with it is. 00:11:31 Speaker 1: And it's interesting to me, and I hate to interrupt you on no no, no, go ahead, but it's interesting to me that you know that that's a female coat is getting blamed for that during dinnin season. What's a female coat doing during didn't season? 00:11:47 Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean I alluded to that a little bit in that previous episode, but during during that time right before she gives birth and then up until that not weaning time that would be too long, but up up until those those pups are at least have a little bit of independence, she's got to be provisioned with all of her food. 00:12:07 Speaker 1: So that means clay provision to mean that somebody's bringing her her groceries. She's not leaving. 00:12:14 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So that's part of why that that family structure, that family group structure is so important for coyotes. She's getting food from the male that she bred with, and she's also likely getting food from one to a few of what we would call helpers, and helpers in that family group are part of the previous year's litter that, rather than dispersing or being forced to disperse by the male and the female, decided to stay around. And their role is to help provide food to that female and the pups until they're raised, and then they're going to go ahead and disperse that following fall when they're about a year and a half old. Most of the time, and when we think about dispersal, we see male bias dispersal in most mammals, so it's it's most likely that those helpers are going to be female pups from last year. They don't have to be there's there's never a has to be right. But it's more likely that they're going to be females than it is that they're going to be males. 00:13:26 Speaker 1: But as far as the meme goes, it's not nineteen coats per per our, nineteen fawns per code that are female kyd during dinning season. You did the numbers. You did the numbers on the population of deer, you did the deer studies on the on the fawn, how many fawns are born every year, and the number of and the number of coats on a or estimated number of coats in a particular area. Stopped me when I'm when I say something wrong. And then you put those numbers together and you came up with a more accurate depiction or number of what that impact is on codes to fauns. 00:14:11 Speaker 2: And that number is what that number for Kansas, the maximum value that it could be is three point two four Okay, I break that down for So this is based on the deer surveys that Wildlife and Parks does every year, and it's it's average average number of dos and fauns from that data across ten years. So it's pretty good data. This is not published, it's not peer reviewed for any scientists that might be listening on here. Okay, this is just numbers I went and got from wildlife and parks. So if we assume that there's about seven hundred thousand deer in Kansas, which is what it says, forty two percent of those should be does okay, a good round number to put on what we think we should see. In terms of fauns, Purdue is one and a half fawns per doh. Okay, So that gives us about four hundred and forty thousand fawns produced in Kansas every year. No, sorry, let me, let me, let me look at this again too. So we've got two hundred and ninety thousand dos. At one and a half fawns per doe gives us four hundred and forty one thousand fawns in that fall survey, twenty five percent of what we see is fawns. Okay, okay, So what that tells us is that one hundred and seventy five thousand fawns out of four hundred and forty thousand fawns made it from birth to fall in an average year. So the maximum number of funds that could be lost in an average years two hundred sixty six thousand. A good round number to put on how many coyotes there are in Kansas is five coyotes per square mile. And we won't go into how I got those snths, but I can tell you it's it's similar to how I got the deer values. Right, So that gives us a little over four hundred thousand coyotes in Kansas. At five coyotes per square mile and eighty two thousand square miles in Kansas. If we divide two hundred and sixty six thousand fawns by four hundred and eleven thousand coyotes, that gives us zero point sixty five fawns per coyote. Okay, and that's assuming that one hundred percent of the fawns that died were killed by coyotes. 00:16:34 Speaker 1: Right. 00:16:35 Speaker 2: If we say, if we go back to that female thing and assume that there's one family group per square mile, which is probably two dense, but that's what we're going to assume to make the math simple, then the maximum number that a female could kill on average across the state would be three point twenty four if we adjust all this for the fact that in the study that I did, the highest predation we saw on fawns was forty percent. Then that gives us an average of zero point two six fawns per coyote across the state and one point three if we look at it on a per family group. 00:17:14 Speaker 1: Basis, So it's not near I mean, that's eighteen less coyotes that are being I mean the fawns that are being killed, So that ratio is nowhere near the level at what is purported and what social media is putting out there. And while they are they are having an effect on the landscape, it's not near like what is led to believe. And that was something that I learned from talking to you back when we were hunting here. 00:17:46 Speaker 2: Sure. Sure, and remember this is based on Kansas numbers. In an area where deer are a more important food item for coyotes, it's going to be higher. But that meme, there's no way that somebody did the project that that meme is reporting, and that number, even if you're in an area where where fawn predation by coyotes is important, it's not going to be that high, right, Yeah. 00:18:10 Speaker 1: Because it's just not their natural not the number one thing on their list to eat. 00:18:14 Speaker 2: Well. No, and if you think about fond density on the landscape, it's not very profitable for a coyote to leave and decide that's the main thing that it's going to go looking for. 00:18:23 Speaker 1: Sure, because he's going to walk by food looking for food. 00:18:26 Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah. And the reason though that those bigger prey items like fawns and lambs and calves are important during that spring time frame is because they need to bring that more food back to that female and potentially pups. 00:18:42 Speaker 1: Okay, that's going to lead us into what we were hunting up here and why we were getting the reactions that we were getting. Yeah, you talked about that helper that stayed. So you got the female that's nursing pups, you got the male that's there, and they they mate for life until one of them, to one of them dies, Is that correct. 00:19:02 Speaker 2: Probably the best data that we have for that comes out of a study in Chicago. They're the only place really that's got enough mated pairs that they've tracked through time and has the DNA off. 00:19:12 Speaker 1: Of Okay, so that's probability, yeah, more than likely that they stay together to one of them dies. Yep. 00:19:20 Speaker 2: And then once that one dies, it's going to get replaced thee like. 00:19:24 Speaker 1: They're not in mourning or anything like that. Yeah, correct, But that helper, the one that stays there, male or female, those are the that she that code, the helper code is responsible and a large majority for feeding that nursing mother in the den. 00:19:44 Speaker 2: Correct, Not just the helpers, also the male. Okay, so both of them. Yeah, you got both of them there. And those are the ones that are responding to the calls. Those are the ones that are territorial and aggressive, and those are the codes, not all of them, but those are the ones that are probably causing the issues with livestock and the ones that are snatching fluffy out of the backyard, the more aggressive ones. 00:20:13 Speaker 1: Is that correct? 00:20:13 Speaker 2: In his study in California where they had radio colored coyotes and they were tracking sheep losses, one male was responsible for seventy one percent of the sheep losses. 00:20:23 Speaker 1: Is that right? 00:20:24 Speaker 2: A year and the losses didn't stop until they killed. 00:20:27 Speaker 1: That coyote and then it stopped. So on a micro scale, you can make a difference calling a coat with a predator collar or a decoy dogar using it and taking it out of the herd on a micro scale is not even going to be a blip on the radar. 00:20:47 Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know the studies that have looked at livestock losses and how to deal with livestock losses, the number of coyotes removed is not related to win losses stopped. You have to remove the individuals that are causing the problem because, like we said last time, most coyotes aren't killing livestock, and probably your average coyote is not killing fonts. They get them when they find them, but it's not the thing they're going looking for. And so when we do have problems developed with livestock, you deal with those individuals. And that's on the lethal control side of things. There's all kinds of non lethal stuff that we can do that prevent the problems from ever even occurring sometimes in some situations, but from lethal control, it doesn't make sense for a livestock producer to make coyote killing a job. Now, if it does make sense for a cattle producer or seat producer to have a good friend that's good at killing coyotes and having decoy dogs and being able to call coyotes and effectively this time of the year makes it more likely that that person is going to be better at solving livestock damage issues than someone who isn't able to target those more aggressive coyotes that are more aggressive because they have a litter of pups. 00:22:20 Speaker 1: Right, yeah, okay, so and that's why it's important that we hunt them. Yeah, and there's a reason. And some folks will say, you know, I've had people ask me about crow hunting and stuff. So you like to crow, and oh, I love them? Like man, you eat them? Like, no, I don't eat crows. Well, you know, I was raised that if we don't eat it, we don't hunt it, which is fine. But tell me give me the argument of why because I'm not eating this code The furs down here in this part of the world are not, and especially in Arkansas, the furthest south you go, the worst the fur is or the less quality the fur is, and the fur market, which is you know, at an all time load. Just about why why is it going to go out hunt? Kyle? 00:23:04 Speaker 2: Sure? Well, I mean it goes back to what I was saying about being good at taking coyotes this time of the year, right, And and I think you know, one of the reasons to hunt is to become better at it. And when hunting with a decoy dog or hunting during during pupp bearing season or or whelping season, you know, that's very, very different than calling coyotes in the fall, and so. 00:23:38 Speaker 1: One's food related, one's territorial Yeah right. 00:23:41 Speaker 2: Yep, for sure, and having that skill and honing that skill is the important reason to hunt at this time of the year. And from from my point of view, the thing that a lot of people probably don't realize about most decoy dog hunters is that they're not taking most of the coyotes that they call in. 00:24:02 Speaker 1: For sure. 00:24:03 Speaker 2: You don't reward a dog for not decoying a coyote and doing what its job was. 00:24:08 Speaker 1: Well, so take our hunt for insistence, without giving too much away, we called seven or eight coats off of probably ten stands, six or seven coats and we walked out of there with I'll put it this way, we could we could rode in the cab of the truck with all the coats that we shot that day, Yeah, and say it's not an automatic. It's not an automatic thing. 00:24:35 Speaker 2: Sure, sure, So that part is more about honing a skill. If if someone is trying to take enough coyotes that they can have an effect on fawn survival, then late winter probably actually early spring, so so March leading up to fawning season, so March through August or September is when you should be taking coyotes. If you're in an area where they really are having an impact on deer numbers, like the southeast or potentially the northeast US, then that is when you can get something done. Because we talked about those transients in the first episode about half the coyotes in most populations are transients, and those transients are just floating around waiting to take somebody's spot when they die, okay, and so for every kyote you take, there's at least one transient waiting to fill that gap on the landscape. And so what we see most of the time is just really high immigration rates that are replacing those coyotes. So if you're killing them fall through the end of what we would typically think of as first season, like February, those kyotes are going to be replaced before its faun eating time, so you're not really getting anything done there. So that's another potential reason to hunt them this time of the year. If you're doing it for that reason. In the Great Plains or most of the Southwest, you've probably got your priorities in the wrong place. If you want to manage for deer or pronghorn in those places, then you ought to be managing habitat for those species, right And really you can get the most bang for your buck everywhere by managing habitat because habitat management, improving fawning cover and improving food is predator management. We just don't think about it that way exactly. 00:26:28 Speaker 1: You think of predator management as putting a bullet in the cove or the nest predator or whatever it is that you're trying, you know, to raise, whether it's turkeys or quail or deer or whatever. But that what you covied right there is absolutely more important than any number that you could shoot coming into a call yep, because you're absolutely going to have a larger effect on the landscape by doing that than you are out there with a rival. And it is fun and I love it. I love doing it. How'd you get into decoy dog hunting? 00:27:06 Speaker 2: When when I started this role as the extension wildlife specialist and started helping people with kyo problems. I started driving the state so much that I was lonely. Not a sob story, but I just you know, I was gone all the time, and I wanted to have a buddy with me. And I've got a friend from that I went to high school with who's really into decoy dogs. And we started talking. He said, I need to get a dog in your hands. Man, you do so much coyot hunting, especially at the time of the year when decoy dogs are are are good that you know it could be good for you and you could be training dogs and all this kind of stuff. And so I got Annie, my current dog, from him. I was supposed to be training her, and about the time that we got her really good at decoyn he said, Okay, I think it's about time for training to be done. I need her back, man. She's been traveling the country with me. She's good with people. She's just a great dog. She's also a good trap line dog. Man. She finds coyotes, scats and you'urine posts and all that kind of stuff for me. But yeah, I mean, just she's she's a companion, she's a tool, she's a hunting partner, and she helps me be more effective at that part of my. 00:28:19 Speaker 1: Job keeping coyotes in check, keeping their population numbers in check is is serving what greater purpose? 00:28:28 Speaker 2: Well? And that's I don't want to say that it's not keeping the numbers in check because people typically aren't going to harvest enough coyotes to keep their numbers in check. Okay, it's more about if you're thinking about a greater purpose. Yes, we are playing a role in wildlife management, and when we're taking out those problem coyotes, we are. We are providing a service to livestock producers and that sort of thing urban residents sometimes, but you know, we we are. We are providing so much of a greater purpose as hunters and trappers by all of the things that we do, the money that we pump into local economies, the service that we provide through population regulation where coyotes that that you know, depending on who you talk to, they may not hold that up right, but you know, the money that goes back into conservation of all species, from what we spend on on the calls, the camo, the guns, the ammunition, all that that's the stuff that funds conservation. And then just being a part of that broader community uh, and I think that, you know, the big thing that I sure hope people think about from this. I'm not telling you don't hunt coyotes. If you like to hunt coyotes, if you're doing it for deer, then go manage deer, right, But if you like hunting coyotes, hunt coyotes because you like coyotes. They are an incredibly fun species to hunt and trapped. They're smart, They're just they're a cool species, absolutely, yeah, And they are a formidable opponent because they're smart, they're wary. 00:30:10 Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, they're going to see lots of evidence of that here next year when this film comes out there. They are very cool to interact with anything as we close out this thing, anything that you want to touch on before before we close the show out, Doctor. 00:30:27 Speaker 2: We talked a little bit about livestock damage, but I want to make sure that folks don't think I'm minimizing that, you know, and if we calves are the thing that people talks about the most. Cots probably have more of an impact on sheep and goats than anything. You know, Predator losses can be thirty to forty percent when we're looking at sheep and goats. Yeah, whereas with cattle, if we're looking at Kansas, it's like it's less than five percent of the calves that are lost in a given year are lost to predators. Coyotes are responsible for most of that. One of the things that you mentioned to me was wanting to correct something that you had said in a previous episode, and you said that eighty four percent of the calf losses in Kansas were due to coyotes. Yes, and the difference is and that's one of those things about interpreting this. These big stats print outs, right, So about a little less than five percent of calf losses in Kansas reported by producers are due to predators. Eighty four percent of that five percent is due to coyotes. 00:31:33 Speaker 1: That's where I got that number. Yeah. 00:31:34 Speaker 2: Yeah, But at the same time, at twenty fifteen market values, the calves lost, the cattle lost, and the cattle that were injured but not killed but had to be put down by predators in Kansas amounts to about four million in twenty sixteen market values. 00:31:54 Speaker 1: Wow. 00:31:54 Speaker 2: I did a calculation last night, and I don't know how correct this is, but if we look at the market now versus then it's about double Wow. So somewhere between six and nine million is what that value is, even at only less than five percent of calves being lost to predators, and coyotes are responsible for about eighty four percent of that. 00:32:17 Speaker 1: So you look at that five percent and you think, well, that's not near as bad as I was. And then you look at nine million dollars or possibly nine million, and it's a pretty big effect. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely, Well, I learned some stuff. I relearned some stuff. I appreciate you being here. I hope the folks enjoyed this different kind of format. It's not just kind of a special thing that we did because I wanted to talk to doctor Drew because I'm so interested in these in the coyotes, and you know, it's I'm an old dog learning new tricks here and learning new things. But I appreciate it. Drew. Tell me where we could find folks that are listening, can find other information or videos, or where can they find you? Sure? 00:33:00 Speaker 2: Sure? So we have a podcast that comes out every every other week at the Pawn Specialists from k State, and I are He's fishery specialist is probably a more appropriate term. It's called Finns fir and feathers. Uh. It's everywhere you can get podcasts. It's also on our YouTube channel. Ks r E Wildlife Management is our YouTube channel and that, like I said, the podcast is there, but we got lots of other wildlife management content there. One of the only places you can find videos that are research based about dealing with wildlife damage. There's a few other spots out there, but that's one of the main ones. 00:33:37 Speaker 1: Hey, as stewards of this creation that we're all blessed to have, I encourage you to look these up. These little Riva's going to put the links in the show notes on Spotify and they'll put the links on the on the YouTube channel as well. But check them out. It's great stuff. Learn something. Let's all take care of these these critters ourselves. Thank you doctor, thank you sir, thank you all for listening. And until next week. This is Brent Reeve. You've signing off. Yeah, be careful.