It was a Saturday morning in early June. A pre-dawn summer rain had just stopped as I drove toward a local cattle farm to do a little coyote hunting.

To me, any time is a good time to hunt coyotes, but this time of year—late May, June and early July—are especially key. That’s because it’s fawning time for Georgia deer, and it’s the perfect time to hunt coyotes that have learned to hunt and kill fawns. Take out a coyote that is killing fawns this time of year, and you can directly improve fawn survival on that tract of land.

The time for debate is over. Coyotes are taking a serious bite out of recruitment rates—the number of fawns that survive to 6 months old. Study after study in the Southeast shows recruitment rates have fallen from about 1.0 fawns per adult doe making it to 6 months old to about 0.2 fawns. Deer populations have been hit hard on many tracts of land. A combination of coyotes and overharvest has...