Gregory Bell
New member
Well, I/we finally hit that century mark last night. I got back into thermal hunting last year because hogs were becoming a problem on our farm. So after hunting pigs hard and killing 35 in September and October, i was running out of targets. On October 28, I was riding around on my golf cart at night, looking for pigs, and saw 3 yearling coyotes walking across a field. So, I took out the gun and killed all 3. Thus began my new obsession with predator hunting. Although I am proud of what me and my hunting partner have done by hitting 100 in 3 months, I also want to point out the biggest factors that allowed us to reach this small personal goal.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/p4yoai13evykgo6/20200124_212642.jpg?dl=0
1. This is the first year Arkansas has allowed night hunting of any kind for coyotes or predators. Obviously, there were no nighttime educated yotes when we got started. I would say this is the biggest advantage we had.
2. Neither me nor my hunting partner have real jobs, so we can hunt 4 to 5 nights a week. Both of us farm, so this is our slow time of year, and we can really take advantage of the flexible hours.
3. Both of us farm here locally, so we have access to huge amounts of land to hunt because of our relationships with other farmers and landowners.
4. Our wives somehow tolerate our obsessions?????
Some stats we came up off the top of our head.
1. We average walking a half mile in and a half mile out on each stand.
2. Our most successful stands were always 1 hour after sunset.
3. We normally made 2 to 3 stands, 3 to 4 nights a week.
4. We averaged around a 40 to 45% success rate overall. We think that for 100 coyotes, we made around 250 stands total. ( i was too lazy to keep a journal, so that is my estimate.)
5. We have probably missed or let get away just as many as what we have killed.
6. We ran some kind of prey distress on every stand, and less than 15% of ours were killed using prey distress. Prey distress may have got them interested, but that is just how many were killed during prey distress call.
7. We averaged 30 minutes on stand. Early on, when the killing was easy, we were at 15-20 minutes. Here in January, when things have been tougher, we are sitting 45 minutes if we believe it is a productive area.
8. Approximately 60% of our dogs have been males. The other 40% females. Not sure why, just is
Things that have increased our success:
1. Having a night capable range finder, with as flat as our ground is, has made a huge positive impact for us
2. Suppressors. We both run 100% suppressed, I have seen this work to our favor on numerous times.
3. Handloaded ammo. I load for me and my buddy, so we can run premium bullets, close to max fps, and maximum accuracy. Just like when shooting prs, the more accurate the ammo, the more margin of error you have at distance. Example, both of our rifles will group around .3 to .4 at 100. That extra accuracy sure helps your confidence at 200 and 250. Because shooting with a digital thermal display wasn't exactly designed for extreme accuracy.
4. Running 2 differnt e-calls. I run the LD revolt, my buddy the foxpro fusion. This allows us to mix and match and also to not repeat sounds they may have already heard.
What we have learned: Man, where to begin....
1. Coyotes can and will show up from any direction. In fact, they seem to delight in coming from the exact direction you are sure they will not come from. A handheld thermal scanner is a HUGE help in watching your downwind at night.
2. Estimating distance with a thermal is very, very difficult. For me, it is less difficult and more impossible it seems.
3. You have to study coyote behavior and learn as much as possible. There are sometimes you need to take the 200 yard broadside shot on a yote. But there are sometimes you need to wait and pull them in closer, because his buddy will show up if you give him just a few more minutes. There is no one size fits all.
4. If you have a single show up, and you can put 2 shots on it to make SURE he will go down, put two on it......
5. A good thermal is nice to have, but doesnt make as much difference as stand selection and approach. We both started with pulsar trails and moved to n-vision halo and halo-lr, but this didnt increase our harvest ratio one bit
6. Learn how to hand call coyotes. I say this to myself as much as anybody!
7. We have killed 40 to 50% of our yotes on fight sounds, which we play at the end of our stand.
8. IF you have time, scouting makes a huge difference on stand selection. You cant call what isnt there, but finding tracks and scat has allowed me to setup inline with where they wanted to go, and pluck them off without any calling.
9. For us, we went thru a couple of pretty bad dry spells, and had to figure out why. What we found out is that even [beeep] we were giving it at least a mile between stands, when we moved out to 2 miles, we were having better luck. Im not saying we or anyone else cant call the same stand or within a mile of a previous stand, I'm just saying for a rookie, the more distance between equaled more success.
10. Sometimes, you just need to give it one more minute. I dont know how many stands I was fixing to cut the call off becuase it had been 30 plus minutes, and I scan one more time and theres multiples a long way off coming in.
Im sure there are alot more things I learned, but those are at the top of my my sleep deprived mind. And a huge thank you to all of the posters on this forum. I have definitely learned so much from the info here.
[video:youtube][/video]
https://www.facebook.com/pg/prairiecountycp/
https://www.dropbox.com/s/p4yoai13evykgo6/20200124_212642.jpg?dl=0
1. This is the first year Arkansas has allowed night hunting of any kind for coyotes or predators. Obviously, there were no nighttime educated yotes when we got started. I would say this is the biggest advantage we had.
2. Neither me nor my hunting partner have real jobs, so we can hunt 4 to 5 nights a week. Both of us farm, so this is our slow time of year, and we can really take advantage of the flexible hours.
3. Both of us farm here locally, so we have access to huge amounts of land to hunt because of our relationships with other farmers and landowners.
4. Our wives somehow tolerate our obsessions?????
Some stats we came up off the top of our head.
1. We average walking a half mile in and a half mile out on each stand.
2. Our most successful stands were always 1 hour after sunset.
3. We normally made 2 to 3 stands, 3 to 4 nights a week.
4. We averaged around a 40 to 45% success rate overall. We think that for 100 coyotes, we made around 250 stands total. ( i was too lazy to keep a journal, so that is my estimate.)
5. We have probably missed or let get away just as many as what we have killed.
6. We ran some kind of prey distress on every stand, and less than 15% of ours were killed using prey distress. Prey distress may have got them interested, but that is just how many were killed during prey distress call.
7. We averaged 30 minutes on stand. Early on, when the killing was easy, we were at 15-20 minutes. Here in January, when things have been tougher, we are sitting 45 minutes if we believe it is a productive area.
8. Approximately 60% of our dogs have been males. The other 40% females. Not sure why, just is
Things that have increased our success:
1. Having a night capable range finder, with as flat as our ground is, has made a huge positive impact for us
2. Suppressors. We both run 100% suppressed, I have seen this work to our favor on numerous times.
3. Handloaded ammo. I load for me and my buddy, so we can run premium bullets, close to max fps, and maximum accuracy. Just like when shooting prs, the more accurate the ammo, the more margin of error you have at distance. Example, both of our rifles will group around .3 to .4 at 100. That extra accuracy sure helps your confidence at 200 and 250. Because shooting with a digital thermal display wasn't exactly designed for extreme accuracy.
4. Running 2 differnt e-calls. I run the LD revolt, my buddy the foxpro fusion. This allows us to mix and match and also to not repeat sounds they may have already heard.
What we have learned: Man, where to begin....
1. Coyotes can and will show up from any direction. In fact, they seem to delight in coming from the exact direction you are sure they will not come from. A handheld thermal scanner is a HUGE help in watching your downwind at night.
2. Estimating distance with a thermal is very, very difficult. For me, it is less difficult and more impossible it seems.
3. You have to study coyote behavior and learn as much as possible. There are sometimes you need to take the 200 yard broadside shot on a yote. But there are sometimes you need to wait and pull them in closer, because his buddy will show up if you give him just a few more minutes. There is no one size fits all.
4. If you have a single show up, and you can put 2 shots on it to make SURE he will go down, put two on it......
5. A good thermal is nice to have, but doesnt make as much difference as stand selection and approach. We both started with pulsar trails and moved to n-vision halo and halo-lr, but this didnt increase our harvest ratio one bit
6. Learn how to hand call coyotes. I say this to myself as much as anybody!
7. We have killed 40 to 50% of our yotes on fight sounds, which we play at the end of our stand.
8. IF you have time, scouting makes a huge difference on stand selection. You cant call what isnt there, but finding tracks and scat has allowed me to setup inline with where they wanted to go, and pluck them off without any calling.
9. For us, we went thru a couple of pretty bad dry spells, and had to figure out why. What we found out is that even [beeep] we were giving it at least a mile between stands, when we moved out to 2 miles, we were having better luck. Im not saying we or anyone else cant call the same stand or within a mile of a previous stand, I'm just saying for a rookie, the more distance between equaled more success.
10. Sometimes, you just need to give it one more minute. I dont know how many stands I was fixing to cut the call off becuase it had been 30 plus minutes, and I scan one more time and theres multiples a long way off coming in.
Im sure there are alot more things I learned, but those are at the top of my my sleep deprived mind. And a huge thank you to all of the posters on this forum. I have definitely learned so much from the info here.
[video:youtube][/video]
https://www.facebook.com/pg/prairiecountycp/
Last edited:
