Key in on these Coyote Habits for Success this Year

Key in on these Coyote Habits for Success this Year

By Troy Hoepker

Coyotes are mysterious creatures certainly! The subject of folklore and myth, they represent the very epitome of stealth and sly. As secretive as they are however, they have routines and habits just like all animals that make them vulnerable to the hunter and trapper alike. Consistently taking coyotes by trap or gun requires intimate knowledge of the animal and their behaviors. Let’s delve deep into coyote behavior to find out how they tick.

Understanding typical daily coyote routine starts with understanding what influences it. Food, water, weather, social interaction and self preservation are at the core of everything that makes a coyote tick. A coyote’s nose is the most important tool it has for all of those things. Its nose influences every decision a coyote makes and therefore that makes their nose the biggest obstacle a trapper or hunter has to overcome to become successful. Add to that exceptional hearing and keen eyesight and you have a very adaptable predator that can defy us at every turn.

The most popular way to attack a coyote is and always has been by attacking the vulnerability of his desire to eat. Callers use distress sounds and trappers use baits and visual imitations of food sources to lure coyotes. In both cases, we’re able to fool their nose or keep their nose from being a factor in their demise. Trapper’s who keep their own scent to a minimum have success using good lures to fool a coyote in and good bait attractants to close the deal. The lure and bait scents stand on their own, but it’s our own scent containment that makes the difference. Add a good visual set up in a good location to good scent containment and you have the makings of successful set. When calling coyotes, it’s a bit different. If a coyote gets directly downwind we’ll never fool their nose so the objective is to get a coyote before he gets downwind of the caller. Luring a coyote in and making him think he can get downwind of the source of the sound while making him expose himself for a shot before he can get downwind is the name of the game.

Making a trapping set and setting up for a calling location are similar in that we should always consider the prevailing winds and how a coyote likes to hunt. Coyotes will use waterways, slews, low areas, field edges and brushy cover to conceal themselves and they will naturally travel the downwind side of cover. Any natural depression in the ground is an area a coyote loves to travel to remain unseen as it hunts. We use those natural travel corridors for trapping locations and ambush sites while calling to make a coyote feel comfortable. Distress sounds appeal not only to a coyote’s desire to feed but also their curiosity. Giving them a natural travel path that they are comfortable with will help insure that they fall victim to your set up as long as you’ve kept the wind direction in mind. Think like a coyote when choosing a calling location or making a set. If you’re trying to hard to force a coyote into an area he’s uncomfortable with, chances are you’ll come away empty handed.

Almost anything is on a coyote’s menu. They’ll eat everything from berries to mice, to rabbits, fawns and even grasshoppers. Most modern day trapping baits and lures will lure a coyote. As for distress sounds, vole squeaks, rabbit distress, fawn distress, turkey distress, and bird distress will all pull a hungry coyote from his hide. The trick is making it sound real and making a coyote believe what he is hearing is a true life and death struggle. Their ears are able to pick up sound from far away and it’s amazing how well they can pinpoint that sound down to just a few feet of its exact location so using an electronic caller can fool them and help you get a shot without being seen.

On occasion a coyote will travel a regular route daily. Along that route it has certain jobs. Primarily they are hunting, but as they travel they’ll check scent markings of other coyotes and mark their own territory as well while patrolling their boundaries. It’s not uncommon to see the same coyote around the same time of day near the same spot for several days in a row as they make their rounds. During hunting seasons they tend to alter their routes more as they are hunted or have bad experiences in certain places, so seeing a coyote on a regular basis is a great time to ambush them.

Just a little sliver of information is all it takes sometimes to get the drop on a coyote. That piece of information can come in all forms. Seeing a coyote trotting down a gravel road hunting the road ditches may mean it is part of his daily routine. Hearing a coyote howl from the same location a couple nights in a row just after dark may mean you’ve located a den site or regular daytime bedding area. See a coyote feeding on a pile of corn gluten near a feedlot and you can safely assume that coyote doesn’t get far from that food source. These are just a few examples but the point is to see the bigger picture and apply what you are seeing into common sense reality of the situation for determining coyote habits.

Several years back I would routinely spot a pair of coyotes in a 2-mile long oversized section of farmland in the middle of January while out hunting and glassing. It became a challenge to see if I could spot them every time I went hunting. Usually they were located in a relatively safe place out in the open and would be hard to hunt. Instead of pushing them with less than ideal conditions each time I’d give them a pass figuring one day they’d make a mistake and give me a chance to kill them. But they never seemed to and again and again I’d be able to locate them. Finally, I began studying the oversized section a little harder. As it turned out, that entire 2-mile section really only contained small patches of cover in the form of a couple ponds and a few brushy fencerows that they hunted but the east end of the section had a 120-acre CRP field.

Common sense finally hit me and I guessed that by midday that pair of coyotes likely migrated towards that CRP field after hunting all night. The section was pretty open all the way around but I was able to find a concealed approach across a hayfield and slip through a brushy fencerow where I’d set up overlooking the CRP grass below and all with the sun to my back and in my opponent’s eyes.

As I was preparing to call, I actually spied the pair of coyotes on the far ridge above the opposite side of the CRP field. They were busy mousing and never noticed my entrance. All it took was slowly raising the volume of my mouth calls until they could hear it and they headed my direction. I was able to video them coming to the call for over a ¼ of a mile as they navigated the terrain between us. When they appeared out of the last bit of cover below me the lead coyote had a 100-yard lead on the second one still trailing behind coming through the cover. He was getting a little too close and a quick bark stopped him for a frontal shot. His head hit the ground before he ever heard the shot and I couldn’t manage to acquire the second coyote in the crosshairs as she made a mad scramble for safety. I never spotted the coyote I left behind in that section the rest of the season. I had adjusted her daily habits from then on.

Coyotes frequent areas that are rich in game, easy to hunt and safe from intrusion. Find a cattle pasture and you’ll usually find coyotes. During calving season they are checking herds for vulnerable calves or birthing troubles. Another great place is along river bottoms. There is always prey near water and in the winter a frozen river is a highway for coyote traffic. Any place that has a good mixture of rabbit habitat, bird habitat and mouse habitat fairly close to water and with a daytime bedding area of concealment nearby is a place to look for. Coyotes have the built in self-preservation tactic of bedding and denning as far from a road or human traffic as possible. That usually means that you’ll find them near the center or middle of a typical 1-mile by 1-mile section in Iowa during the daytime. Callers, trappers, hound hunters and spot and stalkers all take advantage of knowing this as a general rule of thumb. Once a good snow hits, coyotes can often times be spotted bedded down in the middle of a section. The best places to look are on south facing slopes on sunny days during a cold snap. Coyotes will bed down to warm themselves in the sun and when they do they’ll usually be out of the wind with some type of windbreak. Some of the most fun hunts are sneaking within shooting range of a bedded coyote. You have to plan a route and remain super quiet and stay out of their eyesight while also keeping your scent from drifting their way.

Coyotes also seek hard shelter at times. Brushpiles, culverts, abandoned barns and dens all provide good places to trap and call around. During or right after a hard snowstorm is a time to look for sign around shelters like these. Once a coyote is up and running from a group of houndsman or a truck hunting group someone in the party who doesn’t have eyes on the coyote should always be aware of hard shelter protective places where a coyote could head for and be ready to head them off before they get there. Veteran coyotes that have been chased before will head straight for just such a place. One habit a coyote has in deep snowy terrain is to follow snow packed trails made by deer, cattle and other critters. They like the path of least resistance too and just like heavy used, well-worn dry game trails, that habit of laziness to follow such trails makes them vulnerable to a perfect snare set up. Sometimes it pays to follow a well-traveled snow packed path if there is a coyote track in it. Follow it long enough and you might just find a place where the coyote left the snowpack and struck out across the snow on his own. You’d be surprised how often you may find that coyote only a short distance away once he leaves the path.

Coyotes are always leery of their backtrail and seem to even have an eerie sense about when they are being followed by dog or by man. For that reason I don’t like to try and call them back to where they’ve already been when coyote calling. Instead, if I have a good idea the coyote is ahead of me while following a fresh track, I’ll try and flank his forward position and call from there.

Another way to kill a coyote is to take advantage of their desire to interact with other coyotes socially. This is where howling or using a variety of coyote vocalizations can come in handy, especially during breeding season. You can appeal to their desire for companionship by using non-threatening vocals or to their territorial defense instinct by mimicking an intruder in their domain. Coyotes are extremely social animals. If you’re patient, it doesn’t take a lot of howling to draw in a nearby coyote if even for a look. Keep in mind that once you’ve introduced a coyote vocalization into your hunt, you’ve likely upped the odds that the coyote will circle you in an attempt to get downwind of you. They have certain tendencies in their behaviors that they will exhibit a larger percentage of time and that’s one of them. One more such tendency they have is making the mistake of looking back once they’ve seen something they don’t like while exiting the scene if they haven’t been shot at or smelled anything wrong. If you’re calling a coyote in and he sees you move or sees something he doesn’t like, he’ll begin to trot away. As long as you haven’t shot at him he’ll almost always look back or stop and look back before completely leaving the line of sight between you and him. If you’re patient, wait for him to slow or stop and look back for that last shot opportunity. If he smells you however…….he’s gone without so much as a look!

Always remember that when a coyote travels it likes to do so hunting the downwind side of cover and will usually cut the wind positioning itself so it can smell what is ahead of their travel path. It’s kind of the golden rule with coyotes and that one lone piece of information will help you kill many coyotes over time. You have to be willing to be a student of the behavior of the animal you pursue to be as successful as you can possibly be and in the case of the coyote, well…….they just keep teaching and teaching!