Diet & Food Sources (Piedmont)
Assumes the Hunting Primer. New here? Start there first.
Your objective
By the end, you'll be able to explain the coyote's seasonal diet and predict where shifting food sources concentrate coyotes, so your sound and stand choices match what they're hunting.
You set up at first light and play a rabbit-in-distress call. Nothing. Two ridges over, a buddy plays a fawn bleat in June and a coyote comes on a string. Same county, same week — different answer. The difference is what the coyotes there are eating right now. Learn the menu and you learn where to sit and what to say.
Quick recall
Quick recall from Range & Status — what one word best captures why coyotes succeed everywhere in SC?
Staples: rodents and rabbits do the heavy lifting
Across most southeastern studies, the everyday coyote diet is built on small mammals — mice, rats, voles, and rabbits. These are the reliable, year-round calories. When biologists examine coyote scat, rodents and rabbits show up more consistently than anything else. This is why prey-in-distress sounds (rabbit and rodent squeals) are the bread-and-butter of coyote calling: you’re imitating the food they hunt every day.
Fawns in summer, carrion in winter
Coyotes do kill white-tailed deer — but the picture is seasonal and often misread. Research across the Southeast shows predation falls mainly on fawns, in early summer, when fawns are small and hiding. Predation on adult deer is low. And most deer that show up in winter coyote diet is scavenged carrion — gut piles, road-kill, winter-killed animals — not coyotes pulling down healthy adults.
The why Why this matters for the deer-hunter's grudge
Many hunters blame coyotes for every missing deer. The science is more specific: coyotes can meaningfully reduce fawn recruitment in some areas in early summer, which is why summer/late-winter coyote control is a common management tool. But a coyote feeding on a winter gut pile is scavenging, not hunting your deer herd. Knowing the difference keeps your expectations — and your timing — honest.
Soft mast: the fall food that changes everything
Here’s the surprise. In fall, soft mast — persimmons, blackberries, wild grapes, and other fruit — can become the single most common item in coyote scat. One longleaf-pine study found persimmons in over 90% of fall scats. And fruit doesn’t just feed them; it buffers fawn predation. Studies found that when fruit was in a scat, fawn remains were less likely to be — a coyote filling up on persimmons is a coyote not working as hard for meat.
Deep dive So coyotes are omnivores, not just predators
“Omnivore” means an animal that eats both meat and plants. Coyotes are textbook omnivores: insects in late summer, fruit in fall, rodents and rabbits year-round, fawns in early summer, carrion in winter. The practical lesson is that their location and mood shift with the calendar, and so should your tactics — which is exactly what the Seasonal Behavior lesson builds on.
Poultry, livestock, and the human edge
Coyotes will also take poultry, young or weak livestock, pet food, and garbage where people make it easy. Those losses are real, and they’re a big part of why SC manages the coyote as a controllable furbearer with depredation provisions (verify current SCDNR regulations — these change yearly). For you, the lesson is that a chicken yard or a calving pasture is a coyote magnet worth knowing about.
Diet concentrates coyotes — read the food
The big idea: a coyote goes where the easiest calories are this month. That’s the diagram below — the same observer, reading the ground for the current food. (Diagram, not a photo.)
Explore
Tap each cue — every one tells you what the local coyotes are likely eating, and where to set up.
Match the sound to the menu
Decision
It's mid-June. You're set up on a brushy creek bottom with tall grass — classic fawning cover. What distress sound gives you the best odds?
Now it's October. The persimmons are dropping heavily and you find scat full of fruit seeds near the trees. How do you read it?
Check yourself
Knowledge check
When do coyotes kill the most deer, and which deer?
Knowledge check
What does heavy soft-mast (persimmon) feeding tell you about fall coyotes?
Take it to the woods
On your next scout, find the food. Look for rabbit and rodent sign on the edges, fruit trees and the scat under them in fall, and fawning cover in early summer. Then write down — for the current month — what you think the coyotes on this property are mainly eating, and which distress sound matches it.
Field scout: read the coyote menu
Sources
- Hinton et al., “Coyote diets in a longleaf pine ecosystem,” Wildlife Biology: https://bioone.org/journals/wildlife-biology/volume-22/issue-2/wlb.00144/Coyote-diets-in-a-longleaf-pine-ecosystem/10.2981/wlb.00144.full
- “Seasonal Coyote Diet Composition at a Low-Productivity Site,” NCSU (Albemarle Peninsula): https://faculty.cnr.ncsu.edu/christophersdeperno/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2016/01/PR98-CoyoteDietsSENA.pdf
- Penn State Extension, “The Effect of Coyotes on Pennsylvania’s Deer Herd”: https://extension.psu.edu/the-effect-of-coyotes-on-pennsylvanias-deer-herd
- NC Wildlife Resources Commission — Coyote profile: https://www.ncwildlife.gov/media/1981/open
- SCDNR coyote depredation/furbearer status (verify current regulations): https://www.dnr.sc.gov/wildlife/publications/pdf/coyotecontrol.pdf
If you remember nothing else
- Coyotes are opportunistic omnivores: rodents and rabbits are the staples, but they take what's easiest right now.
- Fawn predation peaks in early summer; most winter 'deer' in coyote diet is scavenged carrion, not killed adults.
- Soft mast (persimmons, berries) is a huge fall food and can BUFFER fawn predation — fruit-eating coyotes kill fewer fawns.
- Diet drives location: a coyote concentrates where the easiest calories are this month — so match your distress sound to the local prey.
- Poultry and livestock losses are real and are what put coyotes in the depredation/furbearer category (verify current SCDNR regulations).
How ready do you feel?
How ready are you to look at the season and the property and predict what a coyote there is mainly eating — and pick a sound to match?
Before you go — a quick look back
Distributed practice: one fast recall from an earlier lesson keeps it from fading.
Quick recall
From Range & Status — the coyote thrives because it is a generalist. How does its DIET prove that?
Done with this lesson?
Mark it complete to track your way through the path. Saved on this device — no account needed.