I like my triggers to be consistent and I will get used to the five pounds, like you I do preferer a little lighter. That old male sounds like my first old dog, he had been a right paw dominant dog till someone took that foot, then he was left paw dominant. I have noticed here that it is about four males to one female this year as well. I told a new guy one time that he had a coyote that was missing its right front leg, and he asked me how the h39l I would know that I told him well I got out of the truck and did some tracking, you might want to try it sometime it's kind of enjoyable. I figured you were a little ahead of us there the same as they are back east but didn't figure it was that much. With baits, lures and sounds I like to have some in reserve like that to use on special coyotes as you did, I never liked to show my full hand all at once a lesson hard learned you need something left for the ones that have been well trained, maybe by someone else or maybe by me messing up. I found for me and being here in pretty open country that 10x binos were what worked best for me, as long as the glass was clear and clean. I also noticed that a dry pair or a couple of males running together causing problems were the harder to get ones as they didn't tend to stay in the same place every day and really didn't seem to be as protective of their territories. That's what keeps it interesting though.
Ramblings and Such From Hunting Coyote
- Thread starter DSheetz
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The last two that I called in were males running together. One was a 5 year old and the other was a 3 year old. It was the older one who came in first with the younger one about 25 feet behind.
Thankfully, I was carrying my AR and took them both quickly.
To me, the tracking is the most interesting part of what I do. I love reading the story and learning how the animals interact with their environment.
While it seems that they wander around aimlessly in a general direction, they are actually responding to things around them, looking for food, enemies, and friends.
Only a few times have I found signs of a coyote actually backing up in their tracks to investigate something, they prefer to circle around for different perspectives.
Ed
Thankfully, I was carrying my AR and took them both quickly.
To me, the tracking is the most interesting part of what I do. I love reading the story and learning how the animals interact with their environment.
While it seems that they wander around aimlessly in a general direction, they are actually responding to things around them, looking for food, enemies, and friends.
Only a few times have I found signs of a coyote actually backing up in their tracks to investigate something, they prefer to circle around for different perspectives.
Ed
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Back to my comment about the general wandering, this time of year and for the next few months, if you find a set of tracks that are heading straight in a direction, such as along a road or trail, you can bet that they are heading either to or from the den or a known food source or water. They are on a mission.
Knowing your territory, you'll probably know where the water is and can either rule that out and backtrack to the den area. If there's not water in that direction, odds are that you'll follow them to the den.
While coyotes are omnivores, this time of year they will focus on meat and a constant food supply will mean either they are feeding on a fresh kill or scavenging an old one.
The buzzards have returned from down south so they become a great locator for kills for you.
Awareness of your surroundings will help you be more successful in everything you do, particularly when you are hunting a very smart predator.
Ed
Knowing your territory, you'll probably know where the water is and can either rule that out and backtrack to the den area. If there's not water in that direction, odds are that you'll follow them to the den.
While coyotes are omnivores, this time of year they will focus on meat and a constant food supply will mean either they are feeding on a fresh kill or scavenging an old one.
The buzzards have returned from down south so they become a great locator for kills for you.
Awareness of your surroundings will help you be more successful in everything you do, particularly when you are hunting a very smart predator.
Ed
DMP25-06
Well-Known Member
The "Dice" man , Andrew Dice Clay .
I had a tee-shirt made with his words from "Ford Fairlane - The Movie"
On front of shirt - "So many A . . holes .......
Back of shirt - So Few Bullets" - Ford Fairlane
I should have ordered a case -full of those shirts , because I could have easily sold 100 of them , when I wore that shirt to the 2013 Texas State Rifle Assn. 1000 yard competition .
Who would have thought so ???
DMP25-06
Well-Known Member
Dave ,
Precision promotes OCD , and OCD demands Precision .
I am also OCD about most things .
DMP25-06
I like to start my den hunting at the watering holes here as we don't have an overabundance of watering holes. I go to the hole and walk around them looking for tracks then most times I find them of the pair coming to water at one side closest to the direction of the den. I then start by tracking in the draws on that side of the watering hole. When you are farther from the den, they will be sparce tracks but as you get closer, they will be heaver traffic coming and going of both male and female. That tells me where I want to set up to call the adults, before taking the pups. I have taken the female from a den and in two days' time the male had another female helping him with the pups. I have seen others that took the adults and left the pups saying they will die just for another coyote or coyotes come and take over raising the pups.
I had a big advantage in that I worked the same areas for years. With the red fox and coyotes, they would den in the same general area year after year. I have a few times found pups in the same holes a few years apart if they were in good rock holes. I had one rancher that found out where one of these rock holes were and filled it with cactus, that caused me more work because then I couldn't just check there first, I now had to do more tracking and find exactly where they had a new hole, so it cost me a day or two of tracking or locating. But he was doing what he thought would be in his best interest by not being educated thinking that if he didn't let them den in that hole, they wouldn't den in that area. I was nice and tried to explain it to him that it was really to his and my advantage not to do that as it would help me get them faster if they would reuse the same hole and I could find another den in the time it saved me, if they did.
A few years before I retired, I knew that I was going to retire at some point so I took the time to do some GPS locating of all of my dens that I had located in the last thirty years or so contacted a satellite map maker and asked if they could put them on a satellite map. We talked about how I should get my GPS readings and decided that I would go out and get the boundary lines of the different ranches and the den sites for them and have three sets of maps made, with some on each map as some would overlap each other and others were too far separated from the rest to all fit on one map. A solid red line for the boundaries of each ranch and a C for coyote dens and an F for the fox dens. Each of these maps were three feet square in color from satellite pictures taken in the fall of the year so mostly brown, but showed the roads, cow trails and fence lines well, all of the land features were plainly visible, and it then really became clear as to why the selection of the den sites, and similar areas that I didn't work for in the surrounding area. I think that a person could figure out and look at the areas on google earth or something of the same kind of site, and it would help you know your areas better and then figure out where you wanted to call set traps or other control work faster. It was an interesting experience, and I am sure that others have already figured out that it's a very useful tool. my replacement found the maps to be very handy for him as well.
ALOT can be said for the phrase "birds eye view". From above, everything looks different. Like you said, all the terrain features become highlight and stand out. Helps tremendously. I've used this approach before for various things.
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Dave, I mark the water sources, den sites, good calling sites, good glassing sites, and good trap locations on my phone using the "OnX" app. For each ranch I create a folder and put the corresponding locations in that folder and keep it up to date.
I can share that folder with anyone who has the "OnX" app and they can see everything I put in it and it updates and refreshes every time I add, change, or delete items without any further work from me.
Each location has a unique title and date and color code so I can instantly keep track of the year and other variables such as "active den" vs. "spare den", playa tank (a seasonal water source) vs. man made water tank/trough, old kill site vs. fresh kill site, etc..
Speaking of kill sites, even after the edible portions of a kill are long gone, coyotes will continue to visit the site and nose around, even after a year has passed. They remember that there was food there and will check to see if they missed something or if there is something new or someone else (another coyote) has come into the territory.
When I'm scouting with my thermal imaging I head to water first, kill sites second, and general mousing/rabbit territory next. Unless, of course, it's calving or lambing seasons, then I head there first and mainly focus on them.
Ed
So many new things have been added to the tool kits since I started. and since I retired. there are so many new and very useful things now as compared to even 6 or eight years ago. I would have to ride along for at least a month just to start learning all the new apps and useful electronic things that make life so much easier.
Here I see them marking old food, feeding sites especially large animals. A pile of cow bones even those killed by lightning strike get visited for years more so if they are close to the boundary lines this time of year. I have seen where antelope will go to the site of a dead antelope and mark it especially if it was a buck the bucks will do that. When we look at the animals of the world elephants aren't the only ones that revisit their dead.
Ed: it amazes me how much has changed in just a few years. We didn't have the quality scopes that we do today when I was starting out, just since 911 and the war on terrorism scopes and night vision has come a long way. When range finders first came out you needed a truck to carry them around. A friend of mine picked up a pair of binoculars in 1968 in Hue that were Russian made and had ranging hash marks in the upper left-hand corner of the left lens. In the 1980's we started seeing GPS coming out for the general public's use. At that time, we had bag phones here, flip phones were coming out, and we had dead spots in so many places. When I was in the service, I was in with a computer programmer that couldn't find a job and enlisted in the Navy to keep from being drafted, a computer took up a large rooms space. Today a smart phone that you carry in your shirt pocket has more capabilities than those large immobile computers did. I haven't been very diligent in keeping up with the rapid changes in our world. I am thinking that I should go to the collage in my town that has a gunsmithing course and check out their 1911 Armor's course, I tried to do the metal bluing and finishing course but was told that I had to take the rest of the course first. I am a slow learner not a no learner, I hope. I have been doing some more studying and have learned that the sear spring has 4 jobs that it performs. As you know better than me the left spring leaf does the sear engagement the middle spring leaf does two jobs, the disconnector and trigger pull weight, the right hand spring leaf does the grip safety. I took my original sear spring and played with it; I got it set too 4 pounds but am sure that that is better left to a person with more experience and knowledge than I have at this time. I did get the pin and hole sizes for the sear, hammer ect. so I was able to check them for tolerances. As I have said many times, I hope to learn something new every day and very much appreciate all of the new things that I can learn from others that are more knowledgeable that myself. The way a person goes about presenting it to others has so much to do with others being receptive to it. Pretty much all of us will be open to learning but will bow up and say no don't try to force your ways on me present them to me as your thoughts and ways but don't tell me I am wrong in my way of thinking and you are right and only you are right. Thank you for presenting me with the opportunity and being exposed to new things and ways of doing things to all here that do so in such a manner that it is presented as being helpful not as being controlling and making others feel that they are being forced to think it is the only way but another option to be thought about.
