In the wild, coyotes can live around 10 years. Deer was the most prevalent food item – occurring in 62 percent of the 98 coyote stomachs that were sampled. "We've chosen to embrace our natural areas. I believe night tracking is easier in some ways. Often, coyote attacks are preventable by modifying human behavior and educating people about ways to prevent habituation. "Coyotes attack deer," Briere explains by phone. Coyotes and Deer A home surveillance camera captured a frightening moment last week when a coyote attacked a toddler in the backyard of a home in Canada. They also attack rabbits and ground- nesting birds. According to research on stomach samples conducted by Shippensburg University, coyotes do indeed eat deer more than anything else. Coyotes are pack animals, and as a pack they'll pick out the ill, the young, and the old." When area dogs respond, coyotes may attack and kill them. But don’t jump to conclusions just yet. Coyotes affect deer hunting, and this year’s fawning season is almost upon us. “Trapping is probably too time consuming and labor intensive for private landowners to adopt, especially when the results are uncertain,” Kilgo said. In urban areas they can live longer. I track other hits that night. Coyote attacks on people are very rare. More people are killed by errant golf balls and flying champagne corks each year than are bitten by coyotes. "It's what they do. Coyote attacks on people. If coyotes are an issue, I agree with those that the only time to leave a deer overnight is when it is an obvious gut shot. Although coyotes rarely take adult deer, they are primary predators of deer fawns. Females have a gestation period of 63 days and give birth to as many as 12 pups. Coyotes affect deer especially during the critical first weeks of the fawning season. Coyotes are ready to mate at 20 to 22 months old. Colleagues from the Illinois Natural History Survey conducted a fawn survival study in multiple locations within the Chicago area and found that coyotes killed 20 percent to 80 percent of the fawns in these various populations. Coyotes take their biggest toll on fawns, but that has not kept whitetail deer from thriving in one of the most coyote-rich areas in the world, South Texas. I have on three occasions left liver shot deer for a couple of hours and them taken up the track to recover them after dark with good results. Coyotes rarely attack adult deer, but they prey on fawns. Briere thinks city policies contribute to a rising population of urban wildlife. When they are hunting, coyotes often howl. There is some evidence of coyotes hunting adult deer in areas without snow, but this is not well documented.. Studies from northern areas show during mild winters coyotes kill less deer and switch to other prey like snowshoe hare(2), and it is hard for coyotes to kill adult deer without snow to slow and exhaust deer. After all, when coyotes attack deer, they invariably affect everything we do to improve our hunting properties for this year … and the years to come. As aside to the ongoing research on predators, coyotes are not alone in causing havoc on deer … (photo by Dan Schmidt) A look at 353 coyote scats collected on two public hunting areas by the University of Georgia indicated that coyotes on one of the sites switched almost exclusively to eating fawns during the fawning season.