Coyote Hunting Techniques
Spotting and stalking coyotes is considered by many a very efficient way to hunt coyotes. A sleeping coyote is basically a dead coyote if you spot him before he detects you. A coyote’s thought is in most cases not too far from food and food sources, that’s why we recommend that you keep this in mind the next time you will be going coyote hunting. These animals want to know what is happening with their food supplies every day & every minute and they do this with their ears, nose and eyes.
You will most likely find coyotes down wind of the herd, be it deer, sheep and cows. We recommend searching for sheep and cattle ranches because most likely coyotes will be there. It is advisable to look down wind of the food sources and start about a mile or so down wind and look for anything that might hold a coyote. Start to mark structures that might look promising and make up your mind about what would be the perfect setup for each spot. The power of the wind will decide how close you will need to be at every stand.
Start down wind and move towards your first calling spot and the chances are you will spot at least one coyote. It is advisable to hunt into each of the previously installed spots because you never know what surprises the coyotes might bring. When hunting, stay low and keep your head up at all times, always watching for any movement. In order to scan every inch of the surroundings, use your binoculars. When you are out in the wilderness trying to spot coyotes, always look for things that look out of place. One method to do so is with a pair of high quality optics (high quality means expensive).
Experienced hunters recommend hunting from stand to stand without staying too much at a single stand. When you get up towards the livestock, calving barn, feed lot or haystacks set up and call this area just like you would in any other type of terrain. As you are working a pasture, it is harder to call coyotes due to the reason that horses get extremely wild and they will most likely come running to see what is happening so we recommend avoiding these locations.
Coyotes won’t always come at your call or at the sound of your tape but just because he doesn’t come running in it doesn’t mean that you are doing it all wrong. In some of these cases, they just have other priorities, they have other things to do. If you spot a coyote that is bedded down and he looks like he won’t move an inch, it is advisable to get the wind in your face, move as slowly as possible, keep the noise level down to a minimum and you will be surprised at how close to the animal you can get.
All things considered, hunting coyotes can be a very interesting and exciting sport to practice but in order to do it well, a little bit of research won’t hurt anyone and will surely improve your overall hunting efficiency.
