Am I seeing some kind of trend?

jetman

New member
I'm not a pro, and I'm not as good as some, But I do manage to kill a "Few" coyotes a year. We have made 66 sets without a coyote. Be for that we had a string of about a month with nothing, I did shoot one that broke that string but it must have been a Flook.
We see very little sign and a few tracks sometimes. The lack of rabbets seem way out of place too.
We seldom see any road dogs, seen from the truck.
LOTS of hawks and owls, And way above numbers of crows.
I don't know if any of this is related to the lack of coyotes.
We have been hunting 100% public land, but most of it is very remote with little to no farming/ranching we can see.
During deer hunting, we would hear some, sometimes but not anything like normal. The roadkill and gut piles have birds all over them but seldom a coyote track. They're not "Hanging up. there just not coming in. I don't know what to think. It's their rut right now and we still are coming up blank.
I just don't know what's going on.

I suspect they're just aren't many coyotes around.

Lack of food? The rabbits had a BIG die-off from some disease, except around my house I still have tons.

I have not seen or heard of anything affecting coyote, like distemper but maybe.

HMMM
I'm baffled.
 
have you seen signs of mange?

what you wrote could of been written by me. no rabbits to speak of for about 10 years now.

i will add that we have had a bad drought going on for many years and mange is huge in the coyotes around here. everything is working against good coyote numbers.
 
I’m not sure where you’re hunting but I went out yesterday. Did 8 sets and never called in a single coyote or heard any. Saw one on a set that was 1050 years away. However driving between sets I saw 14.
 
If you're getting 66 stands in a row with nothing, that should tell you something. Move! Hunt somewhere else. Sometimes hundreds of miles away. It's been that way forever. Some years an area will be crawling with life and a couple years later, nothing. Normal. Rabbits are cyclic. Some areas we'd hunt and we'd jump two or three walking out to every stand, other years not see a rabbit all weekend. Couple years later and see a bunch.

I probably wore out two or three trucks driving all over trying to find new spots when the hunting sucked. Good thing about that is when you do discover new ground you can put it in the mental rolodex. Then if things are slow in one area you have a backup. The more you explore the more areas you find to hunt.
 
Jetman- Just a bad year for coyote calling. They had it easy for food and weather was more like late summer temps. My fur buyer says his business is only 1/3 of usual. I called at night and day. Only got a few during the day. This was on private land, the coyotes just had it too easy.
The cold spell and breeding season should help, but the fur quality is on the way down. Buyer said he went to a contest in Helena and turned down 70 % of fur because they had started to rub before the big cold snap. I did call in a set this morning and shot a big male, using coyote vocals only.

Rudy
 
Last edited:
Sounds like its time to put the rifle away and get the shotgun out and call crows. Just about as much fun as coyotes and likely not as much pressure. Calling crows is a blast.
Originally Posted By: jetmanI'm not a pro, and I'm not as good as some, But I do manage to kill a "Few" coyotes a year. We have made 66 sets without a coyote. Be for that we had a string of about a month with nothing, I did shoot one that broke that string but it must have been a Flook.
We see very little sign and a few tracks sometimes. The lack of rabbets seem way out of place too.
We seldom see any road dogs, seen from the truck.
LOTS of hawks and owls, And way above numbers of crows.
I don't know if any of this is related to the lack of coyotes.
We have been hunting 100% public land, but most of it is very remote with little to no farming/ranching we can see.
During deer hunting, we would hear some, sometimes but not anything like normal. The roadkill and gut piles have birds all over them but seldom a coyote track. They're not "Hanging up. there just not coming in. I don't know what to think. It's their rut right now and we still are coming up blank.
I just don't know what's going on.

I suspect they're just aren't many coyotes around.

Lack of food? The rabbits had a BIG die-off from some disease, except around my house I still have tons.

I have not seen or heard of anything affecting coyote, like distemper but maybe.

HMMM
I'm baffled.
 
Its been a rough year here also but not as bad as your situation. Talked to wildlife biologist who said rabbit population is way down this year and as a result so is the coyote population.
 
I'd say they must be following the food. The guys who won the Eastern Elite this past weekend killed 40. Just depends on where you are.
 
Originally Posted By: moneySounds like it's time to put the rifle away and get the shotgun out and call crows. Just about as much fun as coyotes and likely not as much pressure. Calling crows is a blast.
.[/size] [/quote]

Sounds like fun but I would end up in jail.
No season here there protected...
 
Things are in some ways harder this year, I'm not seeing alot of coyotes/sign in some areas and others more, it has been difficult to call open country. Getting into the thick stuff and it is much better but hard to get a shot.

Some thoughts, with the covid thing and our serious lockdown in this state guys that went out calling once or twice a year are bored sitting at home and with the bonus unemployment money and cheap fuel they are calling a lot more.

Rabbit numbers are spotty, hike through some areas and you don't see any, drive ten miles and they are common.

I just keep going out and enjoying myself. I just got my van back from the shop, fried the rearend at 139,000miles now just a day or two until the roads dry out again after all the snow two days ago and rain yesterday. A lot of the roads here are just dirt and driving on them wet really wrecks them. Once they dry the ruts you leave can last years.
 
No food, no coyotes.

Any wolves in the area? They are really hard on coyotes.

Try hunting closer to farmlands. Farms=more food for rats,mice,etc. which equals more coyotes.

On the Eastern Plains of Colorado, there are dry land wheat farms of 1,000's of acres, with very low coyote populations. Lot's of rodent/bird food, yes, but the ground gets tilled 2-3 times a year, so no small animals can live there.

My former 'honey hole', a 710 acre private duck hunting club, provided me with 2-3 coyotes almost every time I hunted it, usually about 2-3 weeks apart. There was so much cover, and food for small critters, that other coyotes seem to be lined up at the door, waiting to get in.

And, yes, even in the 'honey hole', I would get skunked once in awhile.
 
Originally Posted By: jetman
Sounds like fun but I would end up in jail.
No season here there protected...

crows, protected? Are you thinking about Ravens??
 
Originally Posted By: todbartellOriginally Posted By: jetman
Sounds like fun but I would end up in jail.
No season here there protected...

crows, protected? Are you thinking about Ravens??

wondered the same.
 
If the coyotes are not there, it is really, really hard to call them in!!

If there was sign around, I'd think they were just very educated coyotes. This late in the year, the ones that are still alive can be pretty smart if there was any hunting pressure.
 
It is slower around here this year for calling coyotes. I maybe wrong but I think the percentage of pup coyotes is down this year compared to the last 3 years. We have quite a few coyotes around just not very many young stupid ones.

Two different times I have had great coyote calling years during the second year of drought conditions. When the rabbit, bird and rodent population is way down the coyotes are pretty easy to call in. On one of those years most of the coyotes were full of Juniper berries but they wanted to eat rabbits or birds real bad.

The years after both of those two great coyote calling years it was the third year of drought conditions and there was hardly any coyotes. If they had pups those two years they must have ate them because the coyote calling went from great to very bad in one more year of drought conditions.

The first time this happened I am pretty sure we killed 97 called in coyotes in one year and the next year we got 16 coyotes.

We don't have 3 or 4 good years of rain in a row around here very often at all. I think this last spring the coyotes did not have many pups because there was already a fair amount of coyotes out there. So I think this year the percentage of older wiser coyotes is much higher than young stupid ones.
 
Originally Posted By: todbartellOriginally Posted By: jetman
Sounds like fun but I would end up in jail.
No season here there protected...

crows, protected? Are you thinking about Ravens??

NOPE. In Montana there is no season, so we can NOT shoot them There is a nasty fine if your cought.
 
I have been having a lot of luck this year compared to the past 2 or 3. I attribute my newfound luck to changing up sounds this year. I used to religiously play rabbit sounds or even fox distress but it was down to about 10% success rate last year.

This year, I went almost exclusively with bird distress and man did it pay off! Probably bumped up to 50-60% success rate on stands. Id throw in the odd Male howl or pup distress if the bird distress wasn't working and often that would cause something to run in too.

Most of the land I call is pretty heavily hunted and I think 98% of hunters use rabbit distress. You gotta change it up and find something they are interested enough in checking out. I even walked into a stand a couple weeks ago, started calling with nutty nuthatch and literally heard someone else calling with the Foxpro Jack Distress sound from half a mile away. Played a couple howls and went back to the Nuthatch. 10 minutes in and a coyote came running right for me directly from the other caller.

This time of year I'll move to more coyote vocals and invitation or submissive sounds but so far it's been really good.
 
Way lower numbers here too but not that bad, grasshoppers ate everything in site this year hear and I have been going east to hunt. Nearly all the coyotes we have killed were all old males.
 
Back
Top