Dealing With Predation: doing our part

I’ve spoken many times on my social media about the importance of monitoring predators and doing our part to keeping the balance in order to see good numbers in your coming hunting seasons, and this can be done on your own land (private) and in your preferred public land spots. Dealing with predation and making time to reduce them when you happen to take notice of the signs that their numbers are increasing beyond what is acceptable for the prey in the area is not only good stewardship of land, but VITAL to many prey animals within each individual state nation wide. Currently since many costal states have banned trapping, the numbers of land nesting birds such as Quail, Turkey and Ducks are in some areas disappearing with numbers dropping extraordinarily low in other areas. As with all things hunting, we need to broaden our minds and understand that when we look down the barrel of that riffle, it is always for a reason. Guilt plays no part on a honest heart.

So how do we know that predation maybe getting a bit out of hand on our land or in our favorite hunting spots? The ways to knowing are by many factors of training your awareness and you eye to be able to piece clues together to make up a larger picture of the land.

Our recent trip to A zone, I noticed the most coyote scat (poop) I have ever seen in all my years of working that land. We have always known that they den in a specific section of the property - though we never made it a major priority to find the den seeing as numbers haven’t been interfering with any kind of balance, but this year things were different. Increased piles of scat, major track traffic up and down the dirt roads and many sets of fawn legs found all around specific sections of the 1800 acres that we hunt - all very close to the cabin. Upon our multiple hunts, we also stumbled across at least 10 + piles of mtn lion scat. Granted that the piles had already turned white, indicating that they were at least several months old, pairing this with other sings such as the 4 full grown deer carcasses that we found + all of the deer that we did happen to spot were never paired, all singular and on their own, this tells us that the cat working the area could have caused a rift pushing many of the big buck off the land. Yes, it can take a good while before you see a return.

So you have multiple babies being preyed upon by the coyotes, the lion taking full grown deer for months and deer sign is low + all deer are often alone. These are major signs that predator are increasing beyond acceptable numbers signaling that the balance must be upheld. Without intervention and proper land management, deer could be wiped out or pushed out all together, and numbers will off set.

So in simple terms, your eyes will adjust to what to look for as you work a land enough times. Even if you are new to that location, noticing the amount of lost life + scat and prints will all help point you in the right direction for cluing in on the happenings of where you are.

P R E D A T O R P R E D I C T I O N

What do I mean by prediction?

There are ways of knowing what kind of predator issue may arise by knowing what the main food preference of that animal is and taking notice of the numbers in that area as well. For example -

Some years ago, hunting was an absolute nightmare

We had an explosion in our numbers of ground squirl and their bark alarms gave us away at almost every hill and every tree. We were astounded at the number of these animals that we knew we had to set aside time outside of deer season to manage them. Without this intervention, a dangerous increase in Rattle Snake would have surely followed, leaving it quite unsafe around the cabin especially with our young Fox. How did we know this? We knew that ground squirrels are an easy and preferred target for that predator (as well as Hawks).

All in all you can rest assured that managing your land and being a loving and responsible steward, comes with having to carve out a bit of time to focusing on the things we don’t normally place in our crosshairs. Doing this is save your hunting seasons and ensure healthy, vibrant and balanced eco systems.