STANFORDVILLE — A cloud of white powder puffs into the air as James Kelly shakes limestone from a huge bag onto the ground by the side of a dirt road. His fellow graduate student, Will Gulsby, leans forward and, with a pair of tongs, drops a tablet into the middle of the white circle.
It stinks.
That’s no surprise, since the tablet is made of putrefied egg extract.
But to a coyote, it smells like dinner. And the point of the whole exercise is to preserve the footprints of that elusive predator after it strolls through the limestone powder to check out the smell.
The researchers will continue to set up scent stations, checking them the next day for coyote visits, every other month for several years. It’s part of a study of the Middle Georgia coyote population and the effect that coyotes have on deer. The $300,000 study, funded through federal grants, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the University of Georgia, will take place at Cedar Creek and B.F. Grant wildlife management areas in Putnam County.
Charlie Killmaster, Georgia state deer project coordinator, said the study aims to improve our understanding of coyote behavior in the East and particularly in the Piedmont region. The ultimate goal is to learn how to better manage land for deer hunting in the presence of these predators, he said.
Blessing and a curse
Although coyotes are often viewed as a nuisance, “Really, in the Southeast, coyotes have been a blessing and a curse,” Gulsby said. “Through restocking efforts, deer have grown locally too abundant, and coyotes are helping bring them to more sustainable levels.”
In other areas, coyotes are likely suppressing deer populations more than desired, Killmaster said.
The size of the coyote population within the wildlife management areas will be measured using a combination of the footprints recorded at scent stations and DNA analysis of coyote feces.
But a key aspect of the study involves killing as many coyotes as possible on the wildlife management areas, starting in spring 2011. Then researchers will compare the size of the deer herd, and fawn survival, before and after.
This past fall, cameras with motion sensors were set up over piles of corn and snapped photos of deer. The unique antler characteristics of bucks in the photos will help researchers to gauge the number of deer in the herd, Killmaster said.
The trail camera surveys will continue each fall for three more years to provide a comparison after the coyote extermination. That removal will probably be done either by hired professionals or the Georgia Trappers Association, Gulsby said.
But Gulsby emphasized that killing coyotes is not a practical — or even desirable — long-term approach.
“That’s the difference between a responsible management strategy and research,” he said. “At the end of this project, we’re not going to call for a bounty on coyote heads across the state. We just want to be able to say: ‘This is how you alter your management strategy if you have a lot of coyotes.’ ’’
Adaptable predators
Generations ago, Georgia was almost wiped clean of predator species such as panthers, bears, bobcats, alligators and red wolves. While some of these species have made a comeback, others such as the red wolf left a hole in the food chain that coyotes began to fill about a decade ago.
It’s been an adjustment for Georgians, and even deer managers. “It used to be back in the day, humans could be the only predators, especially in the Southeast, because it’s been so long since we had predators. ... These days, biologists in general are willing to step back and look at the broader ecological implication of predators.”
Long associated with the West, coyotes migrated east while hunters imported them as prey for dog hunts. Coyotes now live in every Georgia county, and they sometimes kill small pets in urban areas. But generally, little is known about how their behavior may be different from coyotes’ in other regions, Killmaster said.
Coyotes seem to thrive more in the Southeast because of the diverse food sources, mild winters and abundant rain, he said.
Although they eat fawns, rodents make up the bulk of their diet, and they also eat some insects, grasses, seeds and fruit, Killmaster said.
“Coyotes and deer have a lot in common,” Gulsby said. “They are both adaptable and both survive in a variety of habitats.”
The two wildlife management areas are near each other but are managed differently.
B.F. Grant is managed for high-quality bucks, is logged more often and has much more open land, while Cedar Creek is managed to maximize the number of deer and has a denser forest, Gulsby said. The contrasts might help researchers figure out which habitats give deer an edge over coyotes.
Gulsby said some of the information collected at the Putnam sites will be used to make a map of the coyote population in Georgia’s Piedmont region.
The frequency that coyote tracks appear at scent stations is one population measure. In addition, a canine geneticist at the University of California at Davis will use coyote scat to identify the DNA of individual coyotes, Gulsby said. (Gulsby and Kelly will also analyze the coyote’s diets based on the content of the scat.)
Killmaster said there have been two other studies of coyotes’ impact on deer in Georgia, but both were in the coastal plain, where habitats are different. Those also both included killing coyotes.
John Kilgo with the U.S. Forest Service is a lead researcher in a coyote study at the Savannah River Site.
The most significant finding in that ongoing study, Kilgo said, was that coyotes were killing far more fawns than anyone had envisioned. Coyotes were responsible for 60 to 85 percent of fawn deaths, he said.
To contact writer S. Heather Duncan, call 744-4225.
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