Ramblings and Such From Hunting Coyote

[DSheetz]

We didn't get any form of moisture here today, but the wind was blowing at 25mph when I got up this morning with gusts over 40mph. Trucks under 50,000 gw were asked to stay off the roads again but still some ended up on their sides, just not as many as yesterday, thankfully.

 

[DSheetz]

It's raining in the low country and snowing in the high country today. They predict up to two feet of snow above 8500 feet elevation, that's hard on the young, old and sick animals. more pups will die from this weather than we could kill, it's faster than starving to death. The tracking will be good later this weekend as it dries out and we can once again get out and about. If you absolutely have to be out trying to kill the killers that are being problems, they should be close to home now laying up out of the weather. Mom should be with the kids and dad should be in some brush out of the wind and wet. They will kill when they have to feed the kids now some well-placed and set snares will be to your advantage at this time. Thinking about how hard the wind, rain and snow is and setting to help prevent them from being blown closed or the crawl unders filling in with weeds or water takes a little bit of thought but is well worth the effort, but then for most of us it is just part of the way we think now and is pretty much automatic the times that we really think about it is when we are trying to help someone else learn about it. If you are going calling have your gun weather proofed, I like some good paste wax on mine, as I wear brown duck clothing here some scotch guard on it with enough length to make a setting place, tracking to be close to where they will be and finding the right areas to be working that has tall enough and thick enough junipers or other thick brush to help with the wet weather in an effort to keep dry and out of the wind. Howling is my first choice this time of the year. A few series of locator howls if I haven't killed any in the area yet, if I have then it's the where are you series of calling. Just in case locator howls for my area are two full length howls, two barks and one more standard howl. The where are you is two short howls and two sharp barks, give it a few minutes between the locator howls and a few seconds between the where are you howls. With the where are you sounds, they tend to get more intense as they go on like they are really getting anxious for a reply. I have never figured out how to keep the clay and gumbo from building up on my boots, but I do a lot of foot work when I have to be out in this weather and less driving, a four-wheeler is nice and a side by side with a cab helps tremendously. When I have to, I will get out but for the most part it's better to stay home and just get things set up for when the weather improves, a person that has equipment set they do have rules and regulations that need to be followed, I went for more than 25 years that I had equipment set and had to check it or unset it before a predicted storm then reset it after the weather cleared and the roads got good for traveling. In some places I would have to unset things for calving or lambing time than go back and put it back in service after a while. One year I went around and put my snares out of service and had them placed in the fences for when the lambs got all moved from the lambing pastures. When I went back, they were all pulled and another guys were in all of my sets. He took all of my equipment and replaced it with snares that had his tags. The guy I was working for called his neighbor and asked him why his guy had done that and asked for at least my equipment back. The new guy said he was taking over and that I should just leave that area. He eventually ended up getting in trouble for several things such as failing to check his equipment and snaring deer and antelope, trapping bobcats out of season, and a few other things. It doesn't matter where or what you are doing it there are going to be a few people out there like him.

 

[APDDSN0864]

Dave,
Interesting… the "Locator" and "Where Are You" howls are essentially the same down here!
I used the "Where Are You" sequence one morning after taking the male the previous night with Thermal. The female answered and came in pretty quickly. She had whelped her litter a week or more before and had left them to find her mate.
It didn't work out for her the way she thought…
I back-tracked her and found a freshly abandoned den. I guess she had a surrogate in the area and she grabbed the pups and took off.
I couldn't find that other den as she had followed a coarse gravel filled arroyo and I lost her track.
I have taken other female coyotes out of the area since then but no pups so I may have taken the surrogate out of sheer dumb luck.

Ed

 

[DSheetz]

I have always found it interesting how fast a surrogate will take the pups out of the area after something happens to the adults and how far they will take them some of the time. I tracked a female taking the pups up a good sandy road one year for over a mile to another location. I shot the male one morning and got the female the next morning but didn't find the den that day, the next morning I came in from the north and as I was getting close to where I figured the den to be I saw the tracks in the sand of the road. These pups were probably near a month old and were traveling with her on their own. I also took a female one time with a snare and the male brought in another female within a couple of days to help him with the pups but they both moved nearly two miles from where I took the female. The pups talked and gave them away about a week later. They were in a deep draw under a large overhanging sandstone ledge. Do they have a southern drawl down there ? lol

 

[APDDSN0864]

Not that I can tell…

They sound suspiciously similar to the ones in East Texas, Deep South Texas, Kansas, New Mexico, and Alaska.

Even though my hearing isn't what it used to be, I still can hear the difference in an older male coyote vs. a female or juvenile.
The older coyotes have a fuller voice where the females and juveniles have a slightly higher, thinner tone.
Weather, humidity, terrain and wind can sometimes mask it and freshly fallen snow is another beast when it comes to distinguishing them.
I was calling along a long, deep drawn early one morning when a heavy fog rolled in and filled the draw. Even though I could see the birds along the rim, their calls were quickly muted and changed by the fog.
I wound up moving to another area because the coyotes always traveled in the bottom of the draw and I couldn't tell if they were responding to the calls or not.
Better to vacate the area and leave them guessing than to educate them.

Ed

 

[Airedale56]

Dave,
I sent you a pm.

 

[DSheetz]

I haven't done extensive amounts of calling in other areas. But I did some in Montana and Southern Indiana, and tried the same locator and where are you howls in both other places and they worked the same there as they did here. I learned the locator series from Bill Austin but the where are you I learned from the coyotes here by being out there after I had killed the mate or had taken the pups from a den that were a month and a half old and hearing the other ones searching for the missing ones. I learned the difference in tones between the male and female or pups by listening to them and then killing them thus finding out who was making what type of sounds then figuring out what sounds I needed at what times as so many others have also done. Not much of what I know hasn't been found out and been done by others but at one time others kept it as closely guarded secrets not sharing it with anyone so that they felt secure in keeping their jobs as well as not having competitors or others messing up and training the coyotes that they had to kill to do their jobs. It's only been in the last thirty years or so that a lot of things have been told by others and shared with the general populace. One morning I heard a pair of coyotes howling and coming closer to me, I just listened and watched as they got closer to me. they crossed in front of me then stopped on a little knob I shot the bigger of the two and the smaller of them disappeared into the sage brush. I had to meet another guy, so I really didn't have a lot of time to mess around but that ended up being for the better. I grabbed the dead coyote drug it to my truck and headed out to my meeting. the coyote was a male and his tail looked like it had been shaved in a couple of places. That night around midnight I was in the same area, so I just stopped and sat in the dark listening. The pups started talking and so then I had a good location on them but off toward where I had killed the male a single lone higher pitched coyote started doing some short howls with some barks at the end. I listened for several minutes and figured out the sequence of what she was doing short higher pitched howls and then two excited barks. I came back at daybreak, and she came to my imitation of her. A month later I took a den of pups after I had snared a male coyote and missed the female when I shot at her , the next morning she was doing the same two short sharp howls and excited barks and moving around close to where the den was, she came to the same sequence. As time went on and having taken a few more coyotes from dens I started noticing that so many times the male's tail would have the hair missing or very short. Then one day I got to see an old male at the den laying in the sun with the pups playing in the grass with his tail pulling and chewing on it, that answered that question for me the pups were the reason for the missing tail fur. This was in the early 1980's and since then I have seen and heard plus used this information to my advantage on several occasions.

 

[DSheetz]

So very many times setting quietly and just listening to the world has paid off in my quest to find the coyotes that were killing livestock. I have learned so much from them just listening and watching them. Knowing that I had to kill them but first letting them tell me more about themselves for me to use in the future on other coyotes. Being calm and just letting them be them not knowing I was around. Tracking has been another part of the learning about them as well I have been blessed with the opportunity to live in an area that allows me to track them and figure out what they were doing, going and most of the time why.

 

[DSheetz]

I had learned in the early 1980's from listening to the coyotes on the mountain and out in the prairies, that in the mornings the coyotes that have been out hunting at night will talk to the one that is home with the kids as they are coming home. Even if it's a male and a helper they want to let the female know they are coming back in the morning. They will be moving but she will be in one location answering them. She will be close to the den most often on a slight rise or elevated location where she can hear and see better. This gave me a good idea of where the den was not the exact location but pretty close to it.

 

[DSheetz]

As the pups get older mom will start leaving them alone at night and go out hunting with dad and the helper if they have one. close to this time the pups will start to talk, and you can pinpoint them from them doing this. It seems like here that they need around thirty minutes to an hour to talk again once they have talked so if you are trying to get them to talk to you taking that into consideration is important. If you heard them from a distance and you have moved closer and are wanting to have them talk to you so that you can pinpoint them, they need time to get ready to talk to you, if you are too close to them, they might get scared and hole up or run to the brush for cover instead of talking. I have and have seen other people use the puppy cries and had them scatter because of it at this time also knowing when and where to use it is important as with all of the vocalizations. Keep in mind that I didn't have access to the internet and a lot of people still weren't talking to others about how they hunted coyotes when I was trying to learn about doing it and the lessons were hard learned by trial and error then having to clean up my own mistakes and the mess that I created. OJT has its place and its faults when you are doing it on your own without the aid of a mentor. There were some that had written books, some that would sell you information if you weren't close to their areas and a lot that just wouldn't even give you the time of the day, at that time. About the time that the pup's eyes are opening, and mom is starting to leave them on their own the adults here get really quiet, and you don't hear them except maybe in the mornings and evenings for just a group howl. This is the time that tracking becomes an important part of finding the predators. The time of day that you get out is important as well at this time because if you miss the sunrise serenade you have to wait and hope for an evening serenade. Later in a few weeks you can then use your siren to locate there again timing is important you don't want to try it too soon after they have just talked, and you don't want to be right on top of them either. I have had a lot of coyotes come into the siren, some that talked and some that didn't. I have also seen then not talk and run from it; in open country you get to observe this kind of thing. If you do decide to use a siren don't be in too big of a hurry to pick up and leave, I have seen it take several minutes for the coyotes to get to a location that they wanted before howling. One morning I was locating for the plane and ran the siren from the predetermined location. Not being in a hurry to get to the next site I was just puttering around and about 3 minutes after I had ran it they decided to answer it. After the plane took them and I found the den they were close to a mile from the den and where they had talked. They talked from the top of a high ridge and the den was down in some really rough draws to the west of there. They had traveled toward me before getting the high ground and talking.

 

[DSheetz]

I was out trying to track some coyotes to their den, that were killing lambs. It was getting close to noon, I was a few miles from town, it was on a Saturday and the town ran their civil defense sirens. Up in the draws half a mile from me the coyotes and pups answered them, saved me time and walking that day. I was out north of town trying to locate for the plane one morning and no coyotes were talking to the siren. I'm scratching my head asking myself what's going on when all of the sudden a truck is driving along slowly with a siren blaring as he's pitching hay off the back of it. Yea I call my cows to feed with a siren. Just another awh sh09 moment. Guess I'll have to use something else here.

 

[APDDSN0864]

I was out trying to track some coyotes to their den, that were killing lambs. It was getting close to noon, I was a few miles from town, it was on a Saturday and the town ran their civil defense sirens. Up in the draws half a mile from me the coyotes and pups answered them, saved me time and walking that day. I was out north of town trying to locate for the plane one morning and no coyotes were talking to the siren. I'm scratching my head asking myself what's going on when all of the sudden a truck is driving along slowly with a siren blaring as he's pitching hay off the back of it. Yea I call my cows to feed with a siren. Just another awh sh09 moment. Guess I'll have to use something else here.

Yeah, I learned that lesson from a slightly different perspective.
I was on a ranch early one morning just before sunrise that was new to me and decided to use the siren instead of a howl.
Within a few minutes I was covered up in cows looking for the feed truck.
Kinda unnerving to have 60-70 cows, calves, and a few bulls running at you.

Ed

 

[DSheetz]

I got called about coyotes killing lambs so was out early the next morning. The sheep were in a pasture close to the interstate and a WHP came down the interstate running its lights and siren heading to a wreck, after it had passed the coyotes that I was going to locate with my siren answered his siren. They were on the west side of the interstate and the sheep were on the east side of it. The coyotes were crossing under it through a culvert going under two fences one on each side of the road where the draw had washed out under them. Coyotes never stop amazing me with some of the things they will do to raise their family.

 

[DSheetz]

We had cold rain on and off all day with 10 - 15 mph winds here today another good day to get things done at home or in the garage. It cleared off around five this evening. Here the earliest that I have heard pups talking was the 9th of May, they were born to an older female and her older mate early. I had just started working for the ranch, and they were on the neighboring ranch, but I had written permission to hunt on it as long as it wasn't muddy. I was out early one morning checking some snares and had stopped on a ridge along the boundary fence, it was maybe 7;00 when they started talking both adults started it and then the pups chimed in. I got close to where I thought they were hiding my truck and got up on a hill in a rock pile, sat glassing for a while, then let out a long lone howl, the adults ran out of a draw just about 100 yards from me stopped and went nuts doing sharp short howls and barks, kickbacks and challenging me to come to them for a fight. I shot one that was standing the most still and did my wounded coyote the other one responded by charging my way then stopped and got shot. The den was only about 150 yards from me oops I was a little closer than I thought I was, but it worked out just by luck. I took eight pups from that den that were nearly 10 inches at the shoulder and both the older ones were probably 5 or 6 years old. They had well rounded canines but not worn out or broken off. I can't count the number of times that I have had coyotes at or close to the den run out and do the shrill angry howls and high-pitched barks at me in an attempt to get me to follow them away from the den, and yes, I did fall for it a couple of times in my earlier life, but then when you track back and find that you were at the den it all becomes clear. Decoyed and fooled like the killdeer birds do when you're by their nest, a lot of animals will do that, and coyotes will knowingly give their lives for their pups it seems like.