Head to the barber shop, newsstand or corner greasy-spoon and you’re bound to hear discussion about coyotes — a hybrid wild canine that appeared on the local scene some 40 years ago, when loggers, hunters and farmers occasionally encountered what was then referred to as “wild dogs,” believing German shepherd-mix strays had adapted to the wild and were living on the fringe of civilization.

When it later became apparent that we were dealing with a new species, not a domestic mongrel gone wild, the beasts were called “coy dogs,” the prevailing wisdom speculating a midsized wild canine of coyote/domestic-dog mix. Then, as the population exploded and it became clear that these “coy dogs” were, indeed, a new wild canine species unique to the Northeastern, biologists called them Eastern coyotes, larger versions of the the Western coyote. Why these animals were larger than their cousins was puzzling, but some scientists believed we may be dealing with a Great Lakes cross between the Eastern timber, or gray, wolf and the Western coyote. The logic was that the gray wolf had been driven west by early New England colonists, the Western coyotes were driven east by Western settlers, and the two species collided and bred in the desolate Great Lakes region. The new species first appeared around the Great Lakes, migrated into New York and Vermont by the mid-20^th century, and showed up here slightly later. Eastern coyotes are found statewide today, inhabiting even metropolitan areas, where they are a common sight along the highway and at the rubbish bin.

Our coyotes are known killers of house cats, livestock and fowl, and are believed to have a negative impact on our deer population despite a lack of scientific evidence. Still, with or without hard evidence, if you want to get a good lively coffee-shop or tavern discussion going, suggest that coyotes are not killing deer and brace for the argument.

During my decades-long keeping of this space, no subject has attracted more attention than the coyote/deer relationship. “Why don’t you write about coyotes killing deer?” the readers implore. The answer is that it’s difficult to assess an issue without facts on which to base a conclusion. Simply stated, despite what hunters tell you, the fact that they routinely spot coyote tracks following deer does not prove that coyotes are doing great damage to our deer herd. What you need to find is deer carcasses and blood and body parts, and the fact is that few woodsmen — including the most outspoken coyote haters — seem to be finding much evidence.

“Surprisingly, not much real research (on coyote predation of deer) has been conducted in the Northeast,” reported United States Fish & Wildlife biologist and former MassWildlife deer project leader John McDonald. “Some work was done in New Brunswick in the late 1990s, but nothing really in the New England states.”

Even the state’s deer-radio-collaring project has provided no useful information regarding the issue. That statewide initiative has proven that coyotes eat deer, not that they kill the deer they eat.

“I don’t know that any of the radio-collared deer that were obviously fed on by coyotes could be said to have been killed by coyotes,” McDonald wrote in an e-mail. “I know that a couple that died had been dead too long by the time we got to them to determine what killed them.”

If coyotes are only scavenging weak, injured or road-killed deer, then who could have a problem with that? The answer is nobody. But there’s also the contention that coyotes are taking their share of newborn spring fawns, which is always a possibility, and there’s no data available to dispute that claim. In fact, a recent fawn-survival study conducted in Pennsylvania reported that coyotes did indeed kill fawns, as did black bears. “However, deer densities there are much higher than we have here,” wrote McDonald, who went on to address the bear issue.

“When I led the (Massachusettts) bear-research program, we looked at hundreds of scats over several years and only found fawn remains in one that I can recall,” he wrote. “For bears, predation on deer fawns can be opportunistic, i.e., if a bear runs into a fawn it can kill, it will. But for them to learn how to hunt them and be regular predators, there has to be a lot of fawns around. Then it would be worthwhile and possible for the bear to learn how to do it.”

Hmmmm? A new twist, huh? Now we’re bringing bears into the equation. Like coyotes, bears are a relatively new phenomenon to this state. They are indigenous but had been scarce until the past two decades; similar to the gray wolf, which was wiped out by colonial bounty hunters and has now been replaced in the predatory chain by the “brush wolf ” or Eastern coyote.

Can there be any doubt that as the bear density increases and spring forage is at a minimum, they will or already have learned to hunt newborn fawns. It makes sense. So does coyote predation. But it also seems unlikely either predator will make too dramatic a dent in the expanding deer population. Nature has a way of figuring out the right formula.