Iowa Coyotes

hunter22

New member
Hey everyone, been reading the site for a week now and just joined. I just began to coyote hunt but have been reading as much as I can for the last few weeks. We have snow on the ground here in iowa and i have been hunting days and nights. I have a few questions If anyone has time to help me out. When spotting during the day I drove probly 65 miles all on dirt roads very slowly and checked down every fence line and scanned every field. If i saw a spot I would stop and check it with the binoculars. Never saw a darn thing all day. Also checked all fields for tracks in the snow and never saw anything but deer. Do you recomend slowly driving like that or do you instead check only maybe 15 miles but stop every section and completly look at every inch of it?? Also at night we went to these same sections and walked maybe 300yrds from the truck to different wooded areas to sit and then called for 25-35 minutes watching in the open fields and such and never saw a thing or heard a howl. When you get to your spot how regularly do you call? I would initially wait 5 minutes and then do some distress calls for a minute and then wait a few minutes and do the same or throw in some howling. This produced nothing so I'm just wondering if that would be over or undercalling? Just a beginner here so any advice to help me would be appreciated. I have an electronic caller and only a shotgun- but that doesnt matter how far I can shoot if I havent seen a thing.

thanks for the help-
 
I would think that Rich Cronk could tell you more about Iowa coyotes than anyone. I have seen where a bad saga of mange has really thinned the coyotes out in Iowa.
 
I would suggest that you apply the nitetime calling techniques during the day. You are going to see very very few coyotes by driving roads.

Check your fence rows for tracks, unless you have setaside fields that you are checking...

If using an electronic caller... i turn it on and leave it on... but that is my approach...

make sure you have plenty of back cover and are as quiet as possible going to your stand location...

good luck
 
I agree with Norm. But, I think your biggest issue is finding where the coyotes are living and the tracks will tell you. Use your road time to look for tracks primarily then call the places you find sign. Also, in Oregon, shooting onto private land is trespassing. (Learned that from a State Trooper a few years back. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif) So, you might check into the laws in your state or be really sure of property ownership before you shoot. It's a definite courtesy to the land owners anyway.
 
there is nothing different between driving down the highway and looking into a field at feeding deer or driving down gravel roads looking for coyotes. the land that i have set up on i asked the farmers for permission the night before and they were both more than happy to let me hunt. Sorry for the confusion but nothing is done illegally
 
Sorry about my rant. This story was just a real good example of what bad things can happen if someone is shooting. Good hunting.
 
Quote:
Hey everyone, been reading the site for a week now and just joined. I just began to coyote hunt but have been reading as much as I can for the last few weeks. We have snow on the ground here in iowa and i have been hunting days and nights. I have a few questions If anyone has time to help me out. When spotting during the day I drove probly 65 miles all on dirt roads very slowly and checked down every fence line and scanned every field. If i saw a spot I would stop and check it with the binoculars. Never saw a darn thing all day. Also checked all fields for tracks in the snow and never saw anything but deer. Do you recomend slowly driving like that or do you instead check only maybe 15 miles but stop every section and completly look at every inch of it?? Also at night we went to these same sections and walked maybe 300yrds from the truck to different wooded areas to sit and then called for 25-35 minutes watching in the open fields and such and never saw a thing or heard a howl. When you get to your spot how regularly do you call? I would initially wait 5 minutes and then do some distress calls for a minute and then wait a few minutes and do the same or throw in some howling. This produced nothing so I'm just wondering if that would be over or undercalling? Just a beginner here so any advice to help me would be appreciated. I have an electronic caller and only a shotgun- but that doesnt matter how far I can shoot if I havent seen a thing.

thanks for the help-



Hunter - Welcome to the forum. Calling coyotes is tough here in Iowa. If it was easy there would be thousands of coyote callers here in the hawkeye state. Don't give up! A couple of tips for calling here Iowa.

The more land you have permission to hunt here in Iowa the more coyotes your going to kill. Make it a point to get permission on a new property per outing. You may need to knock on 20 doors to get permission. If you do that for 20 trips you will have 20 new spots.

Running coyotes with hounds is big here in Iowa especially in the areas that I hunt (southern 2 tiers of counties) The houndsmen are very effecient in killing coyotes. For that reason I avoid the square 2 mile sections. I target sections that share boundaries with main highways (2,34,63,65) and I target sections that are huge (creek and river bottoms). The guys that run hounds don't want to find thier hounds dead on the highway and they don't want to have to walk in and catch the dogs in the huge sections. For that same reason I also target the sections right near the border with Missouri. Mentally I 'feel' more confident hunting these areas.

Don't feel under gunned by just using just a shotgun. 75% of the coyotes I kill are with a shotgun and I carry both a shotgun and a rifle on each stand. When coyotes come to the call they are going to travel the path of least resistance. Deer trails, vehicle tracks, dikes, and frozen creeks enable the coyote to travel fast and with little effort. Setting up on these 'highways' will help you get the coyote in range and help you anticipate where the coyote will appear.

My favorite coyote stand of all time is a cow pasture that shares a fence line with some really thick cover, cedar trees and multiflora rose bushes. There is no way I could hunt that thick cover, couldn't see and would sound like a heard elephants just getting setup. What makes it a great spot is there is only one spot to get through that fence. There are 2 trees in the cattle pasture 30 yards from this hole in the fence. Doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out where to setup and what direction to point the 10 gauge.

To summarize, get permission on private ground and then learn that ground. Find the natural bottlenecks and coyote 'highways' and use those locations to funnel the coyotes into shotgun range. Knock on doors and get a minimum of one new spot each day you spend calling. What is the worst thing the landowners going to tell you? NO? Not like they are going to take your birthday away.....
 
hunter22,

I live in central Iowa. Been spot/stalking Red's & coyote's for many moons. I call alittle, but only around cover. I'll post some pics of central Iowa coyotes[most of them are bedded] fur ya /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif.

BTW, if you plan on continuing spotting/stalking predators. I suggest you invest in a good spotter scope w/window mount. Money well spent. A spotter scope will save you much wasted time, in stalking in on rocks, feed-sack's, clumps of vegetation, stumps, ect.

I drive the gravel roadways, very slowly. Panning 360 degrees. Especially focusing on draws, hillsides & fencelines. Pay attention to the wind.
 
Last edited:
This is a "classic visual" pic of what I generally see. A small oval speck way out there. Coyote is balled-up between the corn row's on the last hillside. Oval specks are worth identifying. As some pics, depict. Generally a canine that is balled-up, has a slight high area on one end. That high end will either be it's rump, or in a head up position. That is another visual key indicator, as identfying a canine. I won't bore you with any more pics, LOL.

I have only ever seen one canine, laying facing the wind. An oddity for sure. Otherwise they'll lay with their backside against the wind or quartering against the wind.
http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc78/moreammo/February207coyotes006.jpg?t=1199120240
 
Well you asked a very good question and I think the answer will change a bit depending on what part of Iowa you are in. The southern part of the state is nothing like the north. Spot & Stalk is a tough game in the south because of the rolling hills and heavy timber. In the northern or mid part of the state, things seem to flatten out and spot and stalk is a very good option.

I'm sure you know the legal requirements of the state and in reality, coyotes have very little protection here. About the only thing I can think of that protects them is you can not use a light in the state and of course trespass laws. Other than that, you can chase them with hounds, shoot them with the .22LR to the 50BMG, call them with electronic callers or hand calls, hunt them 24/7, hell you can even chase them through sections with groups of trucks and run them over to make the kill.

Of course all this pressure makes them terribly nervous critters. If spotting, I tend to look into the middle of the sections as coyotes I believe try and hunker down in little dips and draws that are not visible from the road (your challenge is to find a way to see back into these areas), fox on the other hand I've seen laying up sunning as close as 15 yards from the road (they ain't that smart).

If the bet was what coyote hunter will see more coyotes in Iowa after crops are out, I'd put my money every time on the guy spotting over the guy calling. I know of guys who spot them and consistently kill up to 10, 4 or 5 days a week with snow on the ground (I'm definitely not one of them LOL). So I guess what I'm saying is when people tell you that you will see very very few coyotes spotting from the road, check and make sure they hunt in Iowa. LOL

Looking for tracks, obviously your best bet is going to be after a fresh snow, but you should still be seeing plenty of tracks on fence rows, field drives, and on the edges of gravel roads (especially level B & C less traveled roads). If you see tracks heading into a section get out of the vehicle and check. I often see deer and coyote tracks next to each other, as well as pheasant and rabbit mixed in with coyote tracks.

For scanning I drive 25-45 or so and just keep looking in the fields and try to ID any spot that looks out of place, or the right size. Also keep an eye out for fresh tracks going in and out of sections. So pretty much one eye out in the fields, one eye looking for tracks, and drive by feel. I don't stop and scan every section, I scan sections that look likely to hold coyotes, have been proven to hold coyotes in the past, have fresh or several tracks going in them, or have a likely looking spot (as seen in Kirby's pictures)in them. I usually cover (average) 100 miles an outing. And the name of the game with this type of hunting is OPTICS IMO. You spend a lot of time looking through glass and poor optics will cost you coyotes, cost you time and money, and after a short amount of time drive you nuts!

Your approach on calling sounds ok to me, as long as you are getting away from the vehicle enough that the coyotes cant see it. Also be sure that you approach your evening calling stands as carefully as a daytime one. I know in my part of the state the snow is very crunchy which a coyote can key in on from a ridiculous distance. I have not hunted coyotes out of state so I won't speak from experience but from what others who hunt Iowa and out of state tell me, ...now let me phrase this right..... Your call in percentage will be less in Iowa than many other states for a variety of reasons. So don't get discouraged to quick. How many times have you been out, how many stands, how long of a time span?

Good luck and make sure and report how you do.

Mahamari
 
For you hunters in Iowa do you see more fox respond to calling than coyotes? Because I have been talking to some locals where I want to hunt and most say they see hardly any coyotes but see quite a few fox. Would a fox be easier to call with an eletric caller than a coyote in Iowa?
 
I've seen more red fox this year than in the past several years. I'm hunting more fringe areas though (near city limits & Des Moines river bottoms).
 
Hunter22, you've received some very good advice about calling in Iowa (or most midwest states). The only thing that I'd add is that I have one general rule that I stick to, this time of year. Sometimes I waiver from it and it always proves itself right. Rule is...no tracks...no calling. Coyotes will cover quite a few sections as their home territory. Snow doesn't lie when telling the tale of where they are hanging out. If I don't see tracks....I keep on driving.

What part of the state are you from? Different terrain will dictate different tactics.

PS. Welcome to Predator Masters!

Tony
 
I'm a student at the University of Iowa. Do a ton of duck hunting down here and deer hunt nearby but this time of season I seem bored during the days and evenings if there is no hunting trip to pack for so I just started coyote hunting. I spent the last 2 weeks trying to find a used rifle to buy in my price range but just decided ill stick with the shotgun this season.
 
It seems atleast one out of three days you can't find one out there, especially on southerly wind days. They cover maybe 5x8 miles for a territory.T.20
 
I am just starting to call but here in Jasper Co. there are alot of coyotes and we rarely see a fox, some winters none at all. We have seen up to 5 in one section, or we see one and go in on it and more pop up. The snow track is a great hint, we have seen a set of tracks going in and drive around the section and see if we can see them coming out, atleast when you can tell if they are fresh or not, new or blowing snow. If you scare up deer watch them, we have had several of them run out with the deer, right in the middle of them. If we see them out it is usually first thing in the morning. Great optics is a huge help. Find farms with hog confinements on them and check them out, with the dead hogs laying around usually several there. well good luck with the calling
 
Back
Top