When you consider wildlife management, the first things that come to mind may be how many food plots you’ll plant for the next season to entice and feed big bucks near your deer stand. But keeping fawns alive and healthy long enough to grow into bucks worth hunting should be any hunter’s true top priority, says Outdoor News’ Keri Butt.

“Healthy fawns and high survival rates are where it all begins. The two major contributing factors that have the greatest impact on the number of fawn survival are predation and overall health. Coyotes are a detriment to the fawn population. In some areas, coyotes are responsible for up to 90 percent of all fawn deaths… We should be diligently hunting predators!”

Photo by: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife