10 Tips to Help you Kill More Coyotes this Winter

10 Tips to Help you Kill more Coyotes this Winter

By Troy Hoepker

With winter looming heavy ahead of us and other hunting seasons soon coming to a close, more and more hunters turn their attention to hunting coyotes as the weather turns colder and the deer seasons are in the rear view mirror. Few animals are more cunning than the coyote but in turn, few animals will fine-tune your hunting skills more than the devoted pursuit of this wily critter. Here are ten tips you can put to use this winter to help you drop the hammer on Iowa’s toughest predator!

Can’t Call “Em Where They Ain’t
Number one on the list is finding properties and places to call and hunt that hold good coyote numbers on a regular basis. This one seems pretty obvious but putting yourself in good spots is step one to success and simply can’t be left off the list nor ignored. Naturally this includes good scouting! If you devote the time to scouting just like you would for deer, waterfowl, or turkey season your odds of success jump up dramatically. Some of the best scouting tools in your bag are easy enough to do but it’s about putting in the time to do them. Take a nighttime drive to locations you seek to hunt or you think hold promise and get out the howler or crank up some howling on your e-caller at night from the roads. Give coyotes plenty of time to answer the bell. Sometimes they won’t howl back right away. Sit and listen for 10 or 15 minutes after howling before moving on. Other times they won’t howl back at all for whatever reason, but it doesn’t mean that they aren’t there either. Keep attempting this nighttime howling route night after night or on some kind of regular basis for a while. It’ll give you the opportunity to hear coyotes that you otherwise may have not known were there and helps you establish a pattern of location on coyotes that respond night after night. Note the times of night where they howl from and if you do this enough times you can form an educated guess as to their travel patterns and may even be able to have a good guess on where they tend to be at last light and first light each day. Hearing their vocalizations repeatedly also familiarizes yourself with coyote sounds and helps you duplicate them with a howler.

Get boots on the ground! Once you’ve found a place that holds coyotes you still need to figure out how they use the property. Scout into it and look for tracks. Some places are just natural highways. Look at two-tracks, fence lines, right-of-way crossings, pond dams, waterway fingers, and field ditch crossings the farmers use. Some places hold coyotes at night but the same coyote doesn’t necessarily live there during the day. You’re trying to establish that. Look for good rabbit habitat, secure cover in the middle of sections and water sources. These are great starting points. Lastly talk to the farmers, ranchers and landowners to hear what they have to say about the local coyote population.

It’s All About The Setup
The next most important thing in my opinion is how you setup on a property once you know it has coyote potential. You’re not going to kill one of these elusive creatures no matter how thick their infestation is unless you have some common sense about how to make a decent setup. Before hunting a place, take a look at a topography map of the land. See where the natural choke points are, where the cover is, where the hills are and your travel route in and out of the place. After you’ve selected a few likely spots get out there and look at them in person. Find a spot with some elevation for yourself as well as some concealment. Don’t hide yourself so well that you can’t see out, just something that breaks up your outline will do. Walking in, try not to silhouette yourself on top of any hills and park far enough away that you won’t spook coyotes. Find an approach that doesn’t let yourself be seen from a good portion of the cover you’ll be calling towards. Keeping the sun at your back is also a good idea. Select the location of the hunt as if you were looking for a good ambush site. Give a coyote some cover to travel to get to your location if you can. It makes them feel safe and gives them confidence to come in. Don’t select an area that is too wide open. Coyotes like to circle wide if you give them the chance. Let yourself dictate the hunt, not the coyote.

Make The Wind You’re Friend, Not Theirs
Wind goes hand in hand with a good setup and is a crucial part of the setup’s success. If you don’t use the wind properly from the spot you choose to call from the best setup location in the word is doomed to fail. Here’s a rule of thumb to live by; setup with a crosswind if you can first; a wind in your face secondly and a wind coming from behind you last. A crosswind out in front of you keeps your scent from drifting to the land you’re calling to and helps you get a coyote to approach where he won’t smell you until it’s too late. Coyotes like to use the wind and approach from the downwind side when they can. The area directly downwind of you should be an area where you can see quite a ways. A crosswind also helps the coyote think he can get around you to scent the source of the sound he is hearing making him more likely to respond to your call. If a crosswind isn’t an option, call with the wind in your face. Just make sure there isn’t an overabundance of cover directly behind you where a coyote can get to easily and get educated. Lastly, if you choose to call with the wind coming from behind you, make sure you do it from a spot where your downwind carries your scent to an open area you can shoot to with cover off to the sides of your scent cone. Oftentimes, it’s better to just choose another spot to go hunt instead of risking broadcasting your scent to your calling area on the walk in or from your calling spot.

Don’t Distress About The Sound Of Distress
Most new coyote callers ask a lot of question about what distress sounds to use but here’s a little secret…Coyote calling has little to do with what sounds you select. Most sounds of rabbit distress, bird distress, etc. on e-callers all have the capability of intriguing a coyote and getting them started your way just fine. If you’ve made a good setup and are playing the wind right, you’ve made a coyote feel comfortable to come to the call. Never forget that. The sound of distress is just the tool used to lure and many of them work just fine. The other reason I say not to worry about the sound is because it’s too easy to become distracted with the remote control of your caller in search of some magic distress sound and call too much or worse yet, spend too much time looking at it and not at the terrain around you to see the coyote when and if he does come. It usually doesn’t take a whole lot of calling to get a coyote coming as long as one is within hearing distance and he feels safe to investigate. Just choose sounds that sound good to your ear, include some rasp with higher-pitched squeals or wails and mix in a confidence sound or two such as crow.

Learn to Howl
While a variety of distress sounds may work equally as well, learning different coyote vocalizations are sounds that can be a difference maker. Whether appealing to territorial instinct, breeding desire or maternal instinct, vocalizations have their place amongst the most important tools in the bag for a coyote caller. After distress sounds have failed, vocalizations can be that trigger to bring a coyote in. I suggest investing in a good voice howler with plenty of practice to duplicate coyotes. E-callers can get the job done as well, but a howler lets you make the exact sound you want to make. Depending on the time of year, different sounds can really work. Pup distress appeals to maternal instinct, coyote lone howls, female invitations and whines and whimpers appeal to lone coyotes, and interrogation howls, domain howls and challenge barks and howls appeals to the territorial instincts of a coyote. All of the previously mentioned can also peak a coyote’s interest out of curiosity alone as well. I think most people would be surprised what a simple howl or two and some patience can accomplish.

Know Thy Rifle
Everything can go perfect. You can choose the perfect spot, call in multiple coyotes and they can present themselves on a platter before you but if you aren’t familiar with your rifle the perfect hunt is then ruined by a miss. It’s hard enough to call up a coyote, don’t let a lack of familiarity of your firearm be the failing factor. Shoot paper at different ranges and see where your point of impact lands. Shoot in wind and witness what it does to your load. Experience with these things lead to a confident shot when the moment of truth arrives with a real coyote. Caliber, bullet weights, powder charges, bullet types and barrel twist, just to name a few are variables that make a bullet’s impact point change. The worst feeling in hunting is missing the shot, because you missed.

“Patience Young Grasshopper”
We know that patience is a virtue when hunting and that couldn’t be more true than with calling coyotes. Patience comes into play in many aspects of a coyote hunt. First off, have the patience to let your calls work. It takes time for a coyote to get to you. If you get too antsy, you’ll be in the act of calling when the coyote arrives and get busted or you’ll throw out another sound that puts a coyote on alarm as he arrives. It can get boring out there when waiting for a coyote to show up. The boredom leads to extra movement and fidgeting and it takes discipline to remain patient, but coyotes are always locked onto their game. You have to be also. When a coyote is spotted it sends the heart pounding having a predator seeking you out! Don’t rush the shot if you can. Remain patient and let the coyote make the mistake. That means only moving for a shot when the coyote is moving and not taking a running shot if possible. Lastly have the patience to sit there for a half-hour minimum. You’ll hear plenty of advise on television and in magazines that tell you if you haven’t called anything in 15 minutes to get up and go but in Iowa, give coyotes a little more time than that.

Body Language Betrays Them
If coyotes have one weakness it’s probably that they are sometimes predictable by the way they act when approaching a call or running away from it. It’s fairly easy to tell when a coyote is tentative coming in. He might slowly take his time and might stop and look frequently. He’ll spook quickly if he senses anything amiss. Once a coyote is on alarm he’ll hang up and maybe even turn away slightly. Once they don’t like something, it’s time to kill them. Shoot them then or if you aren’t on them, let them trot away and move the gun when they are leaving. If a coyote hasn’t been shot at, he’ll likely take another look back at some point before he’s out of sight. Wait for that moment or bark them to a stop. Recognize their body language and trust it.

Be the Hunted
Hide the caller in some sort of cover. It doesn’t have to be much. A coyote’s ability to pinpoint sound is exceptional and when they know the sound is coming from the wide-open field you sat the caller in, they’ll hang up because they see nothing there where the sound is originating. If it’s in cover, they’ll come until they can see the source of the sound. The further they travel and more they have to search, the more they make themselves vulnerable. Let them make the mistake that kills them. Don’t make it easy for them. Make them hunt you!

Change Your Recipe
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Those words have been credited to Albert Einstein. Whether he was the first to use that quote or not is irrelevant but with coyote hunting it holds truth. A coyote hunter needs to be versatile and come at a property differently, mix up the sounds used and change up what you do on the same property or location if you call it very often at all, especially if you aren’t killing a coyote every time visiting the place. Coyotes learn our habits very quickly. Don’t believe me? Spend some time visiting the spots you’ve called a day after you’ve called them. Go to the exact spot where you sat or placed the caller. Once in a while you’ll find that coyotes have left you a calling card right where you were. They come to investigate at times even if it’s long after we’ve left, say at night. Coyotes pick up on routines we get into. Using the same sounds from the same place regularly is a sure fire way to not see a coyote. Give coyotes credit and be one step ahead of them by varying your routine.