Keith M. Blanton

Coyote Use of White-tailed Deer Fawns in Relation to Deer Density

We detennined summer diets of coyotes (Canis latrans) from analysis of 523 scats and 9 stomachs collected on 7 study areas in Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee from May 1985 to September 1986. We compared coyote diets among 4 areas where white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) occurred in high densities (HDA's) and 3 areas with low deer densities (LDA's) during prefawning, fawning, and post-fawning periods on each study area. Important coyote foods (by frequency of occurrence) were fruit (45.7%), insects (36.5%), rabbit (Sylvilagus ssp., 31.6%), deer (30.8%), and rodents (23...