With Maine's 2007 deer hunting season over and winter coming on, our state whitetail populations face their biggest annual survival challenge: wintering over. Along with availability of shelter and browse, predation by coyotes figures into the survival equation for deer. Coyotes are opportunistic predators. They know enough to team up and travel miles to find groups of vulnerable deer that are more or less constricted in their movements by deep snow and razor-sharp surface crust.

For the past four winters, coyotes have been able to kill wintering deer with impunity. During this period, snarers have been prohibited by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIF&W) from targeting coyotes in deer yards. In the North Woods and in Washington County where coyote predation exacerbates a deer population crisis, trappers who were targeting coyotes in the fall and spring have had their hands tied yet again by a new trap-size regulation forced on them by an out-of-court settlement with an animal rights group.

This whole deer-coyote issue came to a head last spring when the state legislature, pressured by sportsmen to do something, ordered MDIF&W to formulate and implement some kind of coyote control program that actually manages coyote population levels. The result of the legislative mandate was the creation of the Northern Maine and Eastern Maine Deer Task Force.

The coyote control mandate reads:

Commissioner of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife shall establish a working group to review existing programs and efforts related to creating, enhancing and maintaining critical deer habitat in the State and educing predation of deer by coyotes. In reviewing the programs and efforts, the working group shall look for ways to improve and increase wintering habitat for deer and for ways to increase the survivorship of deer on a year-round basis. The working group shall also establish methods of controlling coyote populations and set goals to manage the populations. The working group shall report its findings and recommendations to the Joint Standing Committee on Inland Fisheries and Wildlife by December 30, 2007. The Joint Standing Committee on Inland Fisheries and Wildlife may submit legislation related to the report to the Second Regular Session of the 123rd Legislature.

Sportsmen and lawmakers are urged to pay particular attention to the underlined sentence above. It is worth repeating: The working group shall also establish methods of controlling coyote populations and set goals to manage the populations.

As far back as 1985, another so-called Public Working Group recommended that the Department (MDIF&W) "increase coyote harvest and expand coyote control." Then, again, 10 years later in 1995, after deer biologist Gerry Lavigne told legislators that coyotes account for 30 percent of deer mortality in Maine, the state legislature mandated that the Department "conduct a study to determine impact of coyotes on deer and propose recommendations to encourage coyote control."

You get the point. Despite the jaw-boning, the public demand, and "legislative mandates" to do so, Maine never has had a true management control program for coyote populations. By the end of next week, the Northern and Eastern Maine Deer Task Force will have submitted its findings and recommendations. If the task force did its work, the package will contain recommendations for a coyote management program.

The question, of course, is will something of substance actually be done to control coyotes in deer yards, or will this all just be deja vu all over again?

Stay tuned.