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When dawn broke, Rifkin and a friend were back on the trail and, as Rifkin figured, they found his buck dead, less than 100 yards from where they stopped searching the night before. As the men approached the downed deer, however, their blood started to boil.
“Someone already started to gut and butcher my deer,” Rifkin said.
“Someone started butchering it, all right,” his friend replied, “but it wasn’t another hunter.”
Upon closer inspection, the two men realized that coyotes were to blame. And the amount of damage they did in just one night was unbelievable.
The guts were strewn around the carcass, both hind quarters were chewed to the bone and the back-straps were rendered inedible due to canine bites and urine. The deer was almost a total loss.
Prior to 1970, it was rare to see a coyote loping across an Indiana field. Yet, it was inevitable that the most adaptable wild animal in North America would eventually find its way here, and throughout the 70’s and 80’s, coyote numbers exploded across the entire Midwest.
The Indiana Department of Natural Resources has kept tabs on coyote numbers for years using the eyes and ears of bow hunters around the state. An application for an archer survey is posted every year in the Indiana Hunting and Trapping Guide.
Overall, coyote numbers remain at historically high levels despite the brief dip in numbers. The survey in 1999 revealed 26 coyote sightings per 1,000 hours of hunting. The same survey a couple years later showed a comparative decline with only 20 song dogs sighted for every 1,000 hours of hunting.
That brief dip in numbers means nothing to hunters like Rifkin, who believes there are as many coyotes in Indiana as ever. The damage done to his deer couldn’t have been done by only one or two predators, and the fact that they did it all in one night was a bit unsettling to him. Though they are not pack animals, they often travel in groups, and routinely eat side by side on large carcasses.
Because they are opportunists as much as they are hunters, coyotes increase their patrols during deer season when they must think gut piles are magically appearing out of nowhere. They certainly don’t know why there are more people or free meals in the woods, but it’s a good bet they have come to associate the fall activity with their own version of Thanksgiving.
The increase in daytime movement means more incidental opportunities for hunters to shoot one of the predators but, even when they appear, getting a shot is no sure thing. Unlike even the wariest whitetail deer that still hasn’t learned to look up for danger, coyotes scan the sky for danger on a regular basis. That makes them very difficult to shoot from a tree stand.
Tree stand hunters need to be prepared when a coyote slinks through the woods. If gun or bow isn’t already in place as the song dog nears, a shot opportunity is unlikely.
In fact, given their exceptional senses and wariness, it‘s a wonder any of them are ever harvested by deer hunters. Besides a powerful sense of smell, they are capable of hitting speeds of 40 mph and leaping 14 feet if necessary. Their broad, soft paws also help them to move silently through even a leaf covered forest floor.
But despite their sensory advantages, many coyotes are killed by deer hunters every fall. Perhaps it’s simply because there are so many hunters in the woods during deer season.
Whatever the reason, Stan Rifkin would like to join the ranks of successful coyote hunters soon. Not that he wants revenge on them for taking his deer this year, but because he doesn’t want to donate another one to them next year.
