deer

It's taken about a hundred years for coyotes to move in and fully saturate every corner of the South. As coyotes settled in, they began putting predator pressure on the still-growing white-tailed deer population that it hasn't experienced in a long, long time.

Now, a new analysis of the of coyotes caught and released in the largest study of coyotes in the South suggests that as they change the ecology of deer in the region, deer are in turn changing coyotes.

There's no shortage of deer in the wild and semi-wild places in Georgia. But as time marches on, the people that hunt deer are growing increasingly rare in the landscape.

Georgia deer hunters are helping to feed families in need.

The Georgia Wildlife Federation’s Hunters for the Hungry program contracts with meat processors throughout the state to process deer meat at a discount. Hunters deliver deer to the processors, who pack and distribute venison to food banks across the state.

Three years ago, a coyote with ice blue eyes lay stock still as scientists took her blood, weighed her, and fixed a GPS collar around her neck on a dirt road next to a field near Augusta.

The numbers are in after four months of a six month experiment in promoting coyote hunting in Georgia. The results are mixed.

Trappers have turned in 176 coyotes to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources since March in what DNR is calling the Coyote Challenge. Jennifer Wisniewski, communications manager for the DNR Wildlife Resources Division, says that may sound like a lot until you consider what deer hunters do every fall.