Backspace, congrats on your first kill. Consider yourself officially addicted. I hope you kept a trophy.
Eastern coyotes genetically are very slightly different from western coyotes (all eastern 'yotes have a touch of wolf in 'em) but behaviorally they are
very different. And they're as different to hunt as ducks are from quail.
Eastern coyotes on occasion will walk around in the open, but you'll have more opportunities on them if you go into the woods to stir them up. They tend to spend days in thick undergrowth, and it's enough of a chore just to coax them out of the brambles.
A coyote's ears make him curious but his nose makes him comfortable. He trusts his nose explicitly, so he wants to circle downwind to "nose" his prey before he risks an approach. You can't fool his nose. Bathe and launder your clothes in scentless soap, spray the soles of your boots with rabbit urine before you walk in, and then pour a quart of doe estrus scent over your head once you've reached your stand, and if he gets downwind of you, he still will smell the Brussels sprouts you had for dinner three nights before. So you HAVE TO play the wind to your advantage. Every time. If he winds you, you're burned. Every time.
Coyotes have survived so successfully because they'll eat anything, cabbages as well as cottontails. All their senses are keen, and they're wary to the point of paranoid. And the stimuli from every near miss are locked in their memory vault forever. The same tricks never fool them twice.
I have managed to kill one coyote I previously had shot at and missed. Even though it was two years later, I know it was the same 'yote because it was an old dog, its red coloration was rare hereabouts, it was in the same general area, and he was missing the same two toes from his left hindfoot. But my stand was in a different spot, my e-caller was in a different spot, and I was calling using different sounds. So I only got the second opportunity on account of I was using different lures in a different fishin' hole.
But I also have educated probably 50 others. Called them in and they winded me, or spotted me moving, or just plain got the heebie-jeebies and bolted. And I never saw any of them again. Those ones have got my number.
And when they're subject to intense hunting pressures, they breed like rabbits. Litter sizes go up, pup mortality goes down, and females (which normally are monogamous) become promiscuous. So you have little hope to eradicate them through hunting alone. Which is good news if you're hunting them for sport, but bad news if they're preying on your livestock. But hunting pressure will cause them to move off, in search of a safer place to make a living.
I use both an electronic caller (FoxPro Spitfire) and mouth calls. One of the advantages of the e-caller is that it doesn't draw the coyote straight to you. The "experts" estimate a coyote's stereo hearing can pinpoint the bearing to the source of a sound to within 1°. Positioning the e-caller some distance away from your stand gives you better opportunity to get the drop on him without him detecting your movements.
With an e-caller, you can play all manner of strange and exotic sounds, like "Lucky Bird" (a woodpecker sound) or fighting crows (a sign there might be carrion to steal) without having to buy additional mouth calls, and without having to practice to perfect playing them.
I also have a foxjack2 decoy that attaches to my e-caller. It was fairly inexpensive for a remote-controlled decoy (~$50) and the movement is totally random. It draws its power from the e-caller's batteries and isn't particularly rough on battery life. Since it is co-located with the e-caller, the coyote's eyes confirm what his ears already have told him. It's much easier to employ than the decoys I used to use that were based on the weasel ball, FAR easier on the batteries, and the randomness of the movement looks less artificial. Coyotes don't seem transfixed on the decoy like bobcats do, but I do think it somewhat distracts them from their surroundings (meaning me). I've had bobcats walk right up to the decoy, then stand there, sniffing of it. Poor kitty.
I like to set up my e-caller crosswind to my stand. If an upwind coyote tries to sneak past to the e-caller's downwind, as they are prone to do, he's either got to come down my side of it, or on the side of the e-caller opposite to me. I try to play the terrain and vegetation so that the opposite side offers the better concealment in the hope he will elect to sneak down that side. That maximizes his opportunity to U-turn and return to stalk the e-caller from downwind, as is his want, without getting wind of me. If he follows my plan, he'll walk straight into my "kill zone" without ever getting a whiff of me.
If he comes on my side of the e-caller instead, he either runs slap into me, which is a good thing, or he swings wide and puts me between him and the e-caller. Then when he makes his U-turn to return to the e-caller, he winds me and I'm burned. But coyotes rarely appear from the direction you'd expected them in, and the only way possible to lay out a stand so there's no opportunity for him to circle downwind of you is to face into the wind and sit with your back to a river. So the crosswind set-up is what I've come to regard as my least worst option.
I didn't have a coyote coach when I started predator hunting, and I was concerned that if I didn't blow a mouth call correctly, it might scare them off instead of attracting them. So I started with an e-caller. Once I'd got comfortable I knew what they sounded like, through listening to lots of e-calls and real live coyote vocalizations, I started futzing with mouth calls. Sometimes now I'll leave the e-caller behind because I'm going into a spot where I know it just won't be workable, but I never go without a mouth call (two, in fact). Sometimes I play a mouth call in conjunction with the e-caller, typically playing the opposite sound to what I'm playing on the e-caller. IOW, if I'm playing a predator sound on the e-caller, I'll blow a prey sound on the mouth call. Or vice-versa. Double the stimuli, double the curiosity factor.
You can put a mouth call into action as quickly as you can light a cigarette. For that chance encounter, on the spur of the moment, you just can't employ an e-caller as quickly. I also thought that the e-caller's ability to play a wide variety of sounds would be a bigger advantage than it actually is. Most any call I have found productive on the e-caller (and there are only five or so), I also have learned to blow on the mouth call.
Batteries run down, sometimes unexpectedly, everything mechanical eventually breaks, and there are no "waterproof" e-callers. You can't manipulate the buttons on your e-caller's remote AND keep your eyes on the coyotes, but you
can change the volume or the tune on a mouth call without ever taking your eyes off the prize (FWIW, FoxPro sells an AR15 grip that lets you control your e-caller without ever taking your eyes off the rifle's sights). Cold temps shorten battery life but they also can cause your spittle to freeze up in your open-reed mouth call. Neither solution alone is perfect. You places your bets and you takes your chances.
I don't think there's an e-caller on the market that costs less than a FoxPro that's worth what you'd be paying for it. And yes, I have tried quite a few of the el-cheapos. FoxPro's low-end model, the Wildfire, is a replacement for the Spitfire. They look almost identical and they functionally are very similar, but the Wildfire holds more sounds (not that I ever thought my Spitfire didn't hold enough -- 24) and has more bells and whistles (more steps to volume level, and the "foxbang" feature). The FoxPro factory still has refurb Spitfires for ~$125, which I think is a steal. Refurb Wildfires are an extra ~$25. Refurbs only come with a 1-year warranty (vice 3 years for factory new), but the device is sturdy built, it only has one PC board, and any e-caller that survives the first year probably is good for at least 10. A Spitfire isn't especially fancy, and it doesn't have enough volume for blasting across the Kansas prairies, but in the eastern woodlands, its performance needs no apologies.
If you get a cheap e-caller without a remote, you compensate for its lack by playing sounds that begin with a couple of minutes of silence. That gives you time to set it up, turn it on, then sneak back to your stand and prepare to shoot before it begins playing. But you can't change the sound or its volume (or turn it off) without going back to the e-caller. None of the ones I'd tried were loud enough to suit me, and all of them had noticeable distortion when played at max volume.
FoxPro's factory sound files are a proprietary (.fxp) format and will not play on anyone else's e-caller, or on your PC. But FoxPro e-callers will play .mp3s and .wav files. You can use a Windoze freeware called
Audacity to create custom mp3s, combine existing files, add or remove silence, or make a loop repeating the same sound or alternating between multiple different sounds. I'm a sound file slut and I have collected more than 2000 sound files, mostly on offer free from eight or 10 online web sites. Some are good for squirrel hunting, some are good for turkey hunting, some are good for deer hunting, and some are good for coyote hunting, but the majority of them are good for nothing but spooking trick-or-treaters on Halloween.
Whichever call you use, be ready to bark. With your mouth. Try to sound just like the missus's yappy little lap dog. Yeah, it sounds corny, but they might fall for it. If they're about to trot out of sight, and you're out of position and don't have time to draw a bead on 'em, and you're out of options, bark. LOUD. He just might freeze for an instant, and look back, and that instant might be enough.
Most 'yote hunters I know think 30 minutes is about the right length for a stand. I think the coyotes where I hunt are more patient than that, and 30 minutes is only half enough. Rule #1 of hunting coyotes is coyotes can't read the rule book. YMMV.
Don't get wrapped around the axle about camouflage. Coyotes are red-green colorblind. So are dogs. They see the world in shades of blue, yellow and gray. And their vision is not very acute but they can detect very subtle movements. I know successful coyote hunters who never wear anything but brown Carhartt clothes. All you need is something to break up your outline. And regardless of the color, it should be dull, nothing glossy.
And because they are COMPLETELY unable to see red, don't fret over having to wear blaze orange during big game season. Or any other time. Just make sure there's no sheen on it. I once was in a stand, all cammoed up, calling, hunting in some really thick crap, and I started hearing a turkey caller maybe 50 yards to my back (he wasn't very good, so I could tell it wasn't real turkeys). For some reason, it put me on edge to be sitting in some turkey hunter's kill zone and me dressed like a tree stump. So now I like to wear the blaze during turkey season, as well as deer season. I know one serious predator hunter who swears a red Pendleton wool coat is the best coyote camo there is.
The color of a red Pendleton shirt looks the same to a coyote as the color of a cedar thicket. And the cross-hatching breaks up your silhouette. And you can wear a Pendleton shirt to the store without looking like a Duck Dynasty reject.
You shouldn't confuse the inability to see
a color with an inability to see
a thing of a certain color. Just because grass is green doesn't mean coyotes can't see grass. They just can't tell what color grass is. Or your red Pendleton coat.
Eastern coyotes have about a 25-square mile hunting range, so it isn't uncommon for them to range several miles every day in search of a meal. So just because you've spotted one while scouting doesn't mean it lives anywhere nearby. And they will pick up and relocate their den in a heartbeat to move further away from hunting pressures, or toward more plentiful game. So you shouldn't hunt the same spots too frequently. I like a two week cooling period. If you find a "honey hole," best to only hit it once a month or so, else they might pull a Jed Clampett (pack up the whole family and move clear across the country).
), and a diaphram for hands free calling. Just get out there and settle in then start crying like a baby on your caller. As stated, keep yourself still and expect the unexpected. Try the Shotgun across the lap and the Rifle on the sticks/bipod. In the brushy county here they can and do show up "very" close. Fun part also is you can, and will, end up with a heck of alot more than just Yotes. Think Bear, Bobcat, Deer, Crows, Ravens, Elk. Exciting stuff.
