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  • From: road's end farm <organic101@linkny.com>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] people, piglets and deer
  • Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 10:24:06 -0500


On Sunday, February 8, 2004, at 05:08 PM, Peter Knop wrote:

We now have cayotes - anyone with experience in what they will do to
the deer population?

We've had coyote for some years; hear them often. We also have lots of deer. I think the coyote are mostly eating mouse and rabbit and maybe woodchuck; though we still have plenty of those, too. Where I suspect they may have actually made a significant dent is on the wild turkey population. Turkey had been very rare most of my life; then became briefly very common a few years back -- it wasn't unusual to have to stop the car in the road to let a flock of twenty or so turkeys cross; now, while they are still around, there don't seem to be anywhere as many of them as at peak. I don't know for sure that the difference is coyote, of course.

Coyote I think is a beneficial for the produce grower (and I do like to hear them sing). My neighbors with sheep think differently, though. Guard donkeys kept with the sheep seem to help; as does shutting the sheep in the barnyard at night. I think the confirmed canine attacks on sheep in the Northeast are mostly actually domestic dog.

I've heard that coyote learn what to hunt and what to leave alone from their parents, and that if you have a pack which isn't bothering domestic animals you should leave them alone; if you kill them, another pack will almost certainly move in, and they may have eating habits you like less. Makes sense to me; though I'm sure that a coyote that's hungry enough will change habits.

Oh yes -- we almost certainly also have at least an occasional puma / mountain lion / cougar / cat-of-many-names. My guess, from what I've heard of the history of reliable reports, is that these have been here all along, remnants of the original population. Very shy, though. No Eastern reports of attacks on people.

--Rivka
Finger Lakes NY; zone 5 mostly





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