Well, that time of year again for me when deer hunting and the holidays are over. Time to start getting back into predator hunting. I have been out a few time the last few weeks so I figured I would share my progress even though I still have NO CLUE what I should be doing, so any critiquing is appreciated.
So About 3 weeks back me and a buddy threw out a road kill deer for a bait spot and put two cameras on it. Out of his 1400 pics and my 1200 pictures we only caught 1 coyote on camera over the road kill. Lots of eagles and lots of crows but only 1 coyote. No activity at night even. So last Friday on my way home from work there was a road kill right across the driveway, so that turned into a hunt. My buddy and I brought the new road kill up and threw it out Friday afternoon and set up a call with a mojo decoy. This baited spot has a blind so we were sitting in the blind calling for about an hour. Starting off with female howl, then on to cottontail distress. played the call on and off most of the night waiting and watching. Then about an hour into the hunt we both picked up movement at the same time. It happened so fast, I believe my buddy had hit the female coyote howl once more and that is when two wolves came charging in. One from behind the road kill and one right on top of the mojo decoy. We hurried up and shut off the call but the one wolf that was on the mojo quickly realized what was going on and had jumped backwards back into the brush. The second wolf had been standing behind the road kill watching. The wolves quickly ran off after realizing it was a set up, so as soon as the ran off we played the coyote pup distress to see if we could lure them back. Well as soon as we hit that call they started barking. They barked for a few minutes and things went quite. We played the female coyote howl once more and then they wolves let loose a deep low howl. For being still pretty new at this it was an awesome experience and got us both jacked to keep getting out there.
So We went back out this past Sunday to try and hit a few spots up. We walked into the first set that overlooked a field with a thick cedar swamp attached to it. There were fresh coyote tracks in the snow from the last snow fall which was Saturday morning. We called there for about a half hour, from howl, to cotton tail distress, to pup distress, to mouse distress. Not a thing. Next stand we set up was in a pretty thick area with not many openings. We set up kind of half A** since the snow was deep and we were wiped from walking into the spot, but I wanted to call just to test the area out since this spot was surrounded by swamp and a creek. No luck at this spot either. So our last spot of the night we went back to the fresh road kill, but not a thing had touch it. We did some calling there and had no luck. We are thinking we had too much activity there from Friday night. We are letting things quite down in those areas and will try to get out soon again.
We are still thinking of different areas to try which there are many spots we have access to but just unsure of what kind of terrain we should be hunting. We are from Michigan so we don't have to many wide open fields that you can see coyotes coming.
I ended up buying a bipod for my AR .223 and a Nikon P223 scope for it also. We are both pretty hooked now and both want to get out more. My goal is not to rely on sitting over the baited spot and wait for hours on something to come in. I would like to get knowledgeable enough to be able to set up anywhere and call in a coyote if there are any in the area. That's the fun in coyote hunting I think is you don't have to sit in one spot all day long.
So About 3 weeks back me and a buddy threw out a road kill deer for a bait spot and put two cameras on it. Out of his 1400 pics and my 1200 pictures we only caught 1 coyote on camera over the road kill. Lots of eagles and lots of crows but only 1 coyote. No activity at night even. So last Friday on my way home from work there was a road kill right across the driveway, so that turned into a hunt. My buddy and I brought the new road kill up and threw it out Friday afternoon and set up a call with a mojo decoy. This baited spot has a blind so we were sitting in the blind calling for about an hour. Starting off with female howl, then on to cottontail distress. played the call on and off most of the night waiting and watching. Then about an hour into the hunt we both picked up movement at the same time. It happened so fast, I believe my buddy had hit the female coyote howl once more and that is when two wolves came charging in. One from behind the road kill and one right on top of the mojo decoy. We hurried up and shut off the call but the one wolf that was on the mojo quickly realized what was going on and had jumped backwards back into the brush. The second wolf had been standing behind the road kill watching. The wolves quickly ran off after realizing it was a set up, so as soon as the ran off we played the coyote pup distress to see if we could lure them back. Well as soon as we hit that call they started barking. They barked for a few minutes and things went quite. We played the female coyote howl once more and then they wolves let loose a deep low howl. For being still pretty new at this it was an awesome experience and got us both jacked to keep getting out there.
So We went back out this past Sunday to try and hit a few spots up. We walked into the first set that overlooked a field with a thick cedar swamp attached to it. There were fresh coyote tracks in the snow from the last snow fall which was Saturday morning. We called there for about a half hour, from howl, to cotton tail distress, to pup distress, to mouse distress. Not a thing. Next stand we set up was in a pretty thick area with not many openings. We set up kind of half A** since the snow was deep and we were wiped from walking into the spot, but I wanted to call just to test the area out since this spot was surrounded by swamp and a creek. No luck at this spot either. So our last spot of the night we went back to the fresh road kill, but not a thing had touch it. We did some calling there and had no luck. We are thinking we had too much activity there from Friday night. We are letting things quite down in those areas and will try to get out soon again.
We are still thinking of different areas to try which there are many spots we have access to but just unsure of what kind of terrain we should be hunting. We are from Michigan so we don't have to many wide open fields that you can see coyotes coming.
I ended up buying a bipod for my AR .223 and a Nikon P223 scope for it also. We are both pretty hooked now and both want to get out more. My goal is not to rely on sitting over the baited spot and wait for hours on something to come in. I would like to get knowledgeable enough to be able to set up anywhere and call in a coyote if there are any in the area. That's the fun in coyote hunting I think is you don't have to sit in one spot all day long.