Evaluating potential altered harvest and predator management strategies to increase white‐tailed deer population growth in the Southeastern United States

White‐tailed deer ( Odocoileus virginianus ) populations in the southeastern United States have declined from highs in the 1990s, in part because of lowered recruitment via coyote ( Canis latrans ) predation on fawns. Reducing coyote density with the goal of increasing fawn survival is not an effective long‐term management strategy, with some suggesting that alterations in adult deer harvest and predator management strategies are needed. Accordingly, our objectives were to estimate adult female survival and predict population growth rates under scenarios that differed by adult female harvest, fawn survival, and fawn sex ratio in the Piedmont physiographic region of South Carolina, USA. We found that annual adult female survival was high (0.801), and the deer population was declining by approximately 2% annually. Through simulations, we found that eliminating adult female harvest was most effective at achieving a stable population, and a combination of reduction in adult female harvest and habitat management to increase fawn survival could help achieve a growing deer population. In combination with other recent findings that suggest fawn survival could be increased with less disturbance to maternal care and the availability of alternative foods for coyotes, our results highlight an important path forward for coyote management in the Southeast that moves away from longstanding efforts for localized control or eradication of coyotes to learning to manage deer and coyotes to achieve management goals.