MN day time calling

Rock Knocker

Active member
I've been hunting coyotes at night for years now with some success. I started out calling during the day before I knew anything about coyotes, never had any luck so I figured I should just wait until full moon instead of ruining a decent hunting spot.

Over the years I've tried day calling here or there, almost always just before dark. With no success. I've now got a foxpro and have found more and more areas to hunt, not all of them good night spots so I want to start to figure out this day calling.

What kind of terrain/features/cover/vegetation are you guys having the most luck with?

In my years of all sorts of hunting in Minnesota I have never busted a coyote out of cover(that I've noticed at least), heck I've only seen three coyotes during the day (besides when I'm driving)

What are these sly dogs doing during the day and where do the like to hole up?
 
Of all the coyotes I have shot, maybe 2 or 3 were in the bush, all others (quite a few of them I might add) have been drawn out from the bush into the field...
So my area I hunt is broken up in small farmland parcels ranging from 50 - 200 acres of mix bush and crop (corn-soybean-hay mainly)...There is farmhouse every few hundred yards and a paved road every mile.
I setup about 100-125 yds away from the bush (fence/treeline) and start calling hoping to draw any coyotes out into the field. Maybe I should start hunting the bush
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Hunt what you have! I hunt farm land. Pastures, hayfields, corn/bean stubble. If there are cattle nearby, there will be coyotes. Find any willows, swamp, creek bottom near a pasture/feed lot. Play the wind and call. I've taken 7 off of one farm this fall already. I call from the same fence post every time. Since the 4th I've taken 13 coyotes. 12 in the daylight, 1 last weekend under the moonlight.
 
Good deal, sounds like I've got some work to do. I've always left my field and frozen pond spots for night because I figured I would have a much better chance but I may have to go for broke and work some of them to get this day hunting down.

Gooseisland, those are some good numbers I've sure got some catching up to do. This month's full moon was pretty poor with first a lack of snow then a snow storm with plenty of wind. I didn't even hear a coyote howl Tuesday and Wednesday, and I went to my two hottest spots.
 
I setup about 15:30 Thursday in the middle of a section with a drainage ditch and 15 acres of crp. About 15 minutes after sunset a female came down my side of the ditch,shot her from about 150. I had not called because the wind had been blowing 12-15 mph. I left her, thought I would sneak back in the next morning. I went in a hour before sunrise, breeze from the wnw. The snow had went from soft and quiet to dry and squeaking,so I stayed on the dirt clogs in the worked bean ground. Broke a couple bean stems on the way in and was worried about the noise. I got to a grass bank and settled in, waiting for it to get light enough to see. The farmer on the south side of the section drove out to the mail box before I was able to see to call, I heard the mail box hinge from just over a 1/2 mile, knew I was screwed. No way a coyote wouldn't of heard me walking in. So I really messed up thinking I could get in the middle (200 yards from crp) of the section.
 
Find places that are off the road as far as possible. Don't be afraid to get close to the cover either. I don't think I've called anything in the morning , but have had some success calling before dark.
 
Still no luck during the day. I've made maybe 8 stands in the last week with sun light.

I usually try to stay under 100 yards from cover and I've been at ponds/swampy lakes and fields all with a hard wood island I can hide in and watch the open areas after setting the call near to where I would think them to be.

I did hear my first howls since Dec. 3rd last night, which made me stick around in the dark longer than I should have. Called in the first coyote of the year and got my first miss in one go. Too dark and she stopped right in front of a small island of weeds and trees surrounded by snow and ice, if she stopped anywhere else on the lake it would have been much easier to see, I thought I had a good bead on her but shot underneath at maybe an 80 yard shot.

I'm hunting the Wright county area and I think there are just too many people around for good day hunting. The public chunks of land I go to have new car tracks in and out daily, mostly bird hunters, one group of kids that looked to have a curling party on the ice and one spot where I found two guys set there call on the snow and must have been calling coyotes. There's farms and trackers running all day, people and dogs out in their yards. One time I was on a public chunk a half mile away from a house and when I turned on my foxpro I had a pack of children from the house start howling back at me... I hope temperatures drop and chase everyone inside.

Night hunting is usually pretty hot but this December has been a real bust.
 
My story is basically the same as yours. About the only time I hunt daylight is if there's a moon cycle without snow and I don't get to hit the majority of my spots. For me daylight has been an absolute waste of my time. But there are plenty of people with more skill at this than me who kill more in daylight than I do at night.
 
Foxes have really picked up around here, around the Sand dunes state forest area there are now grey foxes quite common and the Wright county area is now crawling with red foxes. The coyote I called in the other night stuck her head out to checked out my rabbit distress then turned around, I turned on red fox distress and she came running in. I'm going to play with more fox sounds and see what happens.

Last year I bought a Foxpro halfway through the year so this is the first year I've started out with a Foxpro, seems to have it's pro's and con's, unfortunately I lost my two favorite hand howlers in the woods somewhere last year, I'm going to have to check out the call section to replace them.

Hand calls seem to be better at drawing them to an area, the E call is just great for getting the attention away from the shooter.
 
Still no daytime action. I think the human activity is just too great around here, maybe later in the year when the rest of hunting seasons close down and people are sick enough of winter to just stay inside.

I'm going to start working a new angle though. On nights when cloud cover is low 2000ft or less I can see quite well from all the city lights or even the Monticello nuke plant. The last two nights I went out under these overcast conditions I called in coyotes that were too close and fast for even my 1-4x cranked down on my AR. Last night I had a coyote charge my call so hard I thought I might get crashed into as it ran through the weeds to my call. It was quite funny to watch actually, it broke from cover about 10 yards away headed straight for the call that was maybe 30 yards away from me. I had the call set in a bit of a low spot so it couldn't be seen so easily. When the dog got close enough to the low spot in saw that stupid green glowing light on the foxpro, maybe 6 feet in front of it, this coyote jumped 5 or 6 feet in the air and 10 feet diagonally into cover. I had the coyote in my scope and was about to let out a bark to get it to stop, I did bark but my bark happened to be right about the same time it reached it's peak altitude for the flight.

It was dark, I wasn't sure I saw what I saw, the tracks confirmed it, never seen a coyote jump so high or far before.

I'm going shopping for some #4 buckshot today....
 
We don't have the option of night calling/hunting here, so it has to be daytime calling. If there is any amount of snow and the snowmobiles are out and about, I will only call in the morning before the machines are fired up. Once I hear a snowmobile, I call it a morning as the chance of calling anything in is basically nil.
 
I have no love for snowmobiles, unfortunately we have almost none of them running around, but if the snowmobilers are having a bad year then so am I, it's been nearly a decade since they were a common problem.
 
Picked up 5 more this weekend. I walking a cornfield. 3 running hounds, and 1 this morning. Called in a pair. Got the female at the 15 minute mark. -36* windchill, -14* actual temp.
 
Fellas,
I'm shooting a 22-250 amd had 2 come in Sunday morning. Shot the 1st I saw at 30 yards square in the chest. The bullets I'm shooting are Hornady v-max, 55 gr. What's the chances of that bullet going all the way through the animal and exiting? I watched it after shooting and it was noticeably hit but couldn't find any blood.
 
This post has inspired me to hunt today. There is a midday minor today and I have two traps to check, I'll try a couple sets. -11 right now.

Great 12-22 story RK
 
Shot #20 for the year last night at 9:30. Plenty of moonlight. Loud walking in with temp at -16, buy it wasn't bad hunting with only a hint of a breeze.
 
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