Wildlife Meeting

The meeting I attended in Birmingham Tuesday was the Wildlife Committee meeting with the Alabama Farmers Federation on which I am a committee member.  The county wildlife committee chairmen and vice chairmen were also invited.  The meeting was at the Health South Building.

Our first speaker was the assistant chief law enforcement for the Alabama Fish and Game Department, he spoke on dove hunting.  He pretty much said until they heard back from the Feds on the ruling on the dove field the Alabama Department of Conservation sponsored for the youth, they don’t really know.  What happened was they had a field for the youth prepared by the Department of Conservation and Auburn University and the feds came in and said they could not shoot it was baited.   They were so embarrassed and were shocked.  They had to turn the youth away!  The Chief Law Enforcement for Alabama was there.

Alabama has appealed this and it is being investigated but they just don’t know.

The second speaker was a wildlife biologist from the Barbour County Management Area.  He cited three studies on coyote predation.  Some studies showed that coyotes were taking 65-85% of the fawns.  Another study showed it took 28 does where predators were not controlled to produce what 3 does produced where predators were controlled. 

Coyotes were the main cause of fawn mortality but habitat could help in that matter.  Fawns need tall grasses like what you would find in a two+ year old cutover.  Another thing noted was where deer are fed; coyotes would stalk that area because they know fawns would be there. That is why so many coyotes are seen on game cameras near corn.