Re: Coyote Hunting / Woodlands + Hardwoods
I hunt coyotes in areas like that a good bit. Thick stuff seems to negate the benefits of bait piles. You'd need a lot of bait here to stand a chance of coming back to shoot over it and any being left.
Keys to success:
1- Scent management. Twice as important here as it is for deer hunting in same area.
2- Bring a buddy. If you don't have one, make one. I take my kid brother. He uses a semi auto shotgun, and I use a red dot equipped Ar15. Why is this important? They will come from behind you. For everyone I see in front of us at the call he takes 2 behind me. Doesn't matter if you are upwind or down wind. They will be behind you.
3- They are already there. You aren't really calling them in from way off like they do in the videos shot out west. There is no reason to get one which is capable of loud speaker volume. The FOXPRO Scorpion puts out plenty of sound. You can be laughing talking to your buddy. Take a cell call. Make a ton of noise. Take a piss. Sit down, throwing branches everywhere to clear your shooting lanes. Walk back to the caller because you forgot to turn it on. And have one fly right past you both on the way to the call in the first 30 seconds after you started calling. So fast it will scare the crap out of you the first time.
4- The moment you shoot one, switch to KI YI's which is a coyote in distress sound. Be prepared to shoot immediately as if you hadn't moments ago.
5- Movement. You don't make any. It's important that something around your caller does. It doesn't have to be realistic. I tried the jack in the box and kept loosing decoys to giant birds that you aren't allowed to shoot swooping down. Changed to some feather covered wings attached to a branch by 550 cord and a fishing swivel and the birds stopped. Latest decoy is a cheap battery operated wobbly ball stuffed inside a stuffed animal. It just lays there on the ground and sort of wiggles and crunches leaves. It's easily the most effective thing yet.
Link to ball:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Multipet-Motoriz...=item870dafdbf4
6- Decoy/Caller scents aren't important, masking scent is. You cannot use readily available cover scents as deer hunters use them and predators associate those smells with hunters. You need to make your own. If the predator can smell something other than the human scents left on your decoy and caller it will ignore them. Just spray some branches or tree trunks in something stinky. We have a few spray bottles of deer blood mixed with beer we keep in the fridge at home which we spray on stuff when we put out the call and decoy. We don't spray anything on the call or decoy, scent remover or otherwise and find we don't have to worry about our handling of either.
Our method is simple. Figure out wind direction. Place call up wind. I setup down wind, almost directly, with a clear line of sight 30yds on the opposite side of the caller. This will determine how far from the caller I can be based on how far I can see on the other side of it. That's about the right distance for them to break cover and get to the call or close to it and not escape alive. They will be running full tilt and you won't hear a thing. It's all about seeing the movement. Often times they will sneak in close to it before they realize they've been had and you see them for the first time tearing ass away as they attempt to escape the kill zone.
Kid brother sets up slightly behind me (+/- 10 ft) and off to my right a good 20 ft. He sits looking at the back right side of me and the area behind me. This gives him a zone of fire of everything that will rush the call down wind and subsequently my back. Since bringing him with and setting up in this manner we've taken over 150% more coyotes and multiple from the same stand.
Don't get me wrong. I take a bunch on their way to the call. But when setting up in the thick stuff, it's hard to ensure there aren't some also behind wherever you put yourself. Before him I just thought there weren't any in this area. It's rare for him not to take one every stand that I take one and half of the ones I don't even see any. Usually I'm surprised to hear the shotgun go off behind me and then I immediately see one take off from somewhere full tilt. Or I take one which startles one behind me that was circling down wind. Or I take one and multiples come full tilt from down wind.
Before we took all the scent prep we didn't see that many. Seeing as how about 75% are still coming down wind of the call and me, no matter how far away from it I setup, it is super important.
