Got your camo, got your stool, sticks, but you’ve forgotten a critical thing to your predator hunting success. That is predators.
Predators can be found in many, many different places.
But you have to get them to come to you. Now, spend some time researching your local hunting laws. Read them for yourself. Don’t go around and harass hunters at your local big chain, retail store. Not everyone that shops there is a mighty or successful predator hunter, and I’d wager that most of them are NOT law enforcement, a lawyer or a judge. If you get jammed up you are going to need to be able to defend your actions. Now I know that laws aren’t a lot of fun to read. But you need to do it. You need to know where you can/cannot hunt and what you can/cannot legally do.
Once you understand your local hunting regulations, now you need to scout out some hunting areas. Don’t waste time and fuel running all over the place trying to find predators. I personally don’t do much scouting in person. I use technology to my advantage. I use a lot of Google Earth. What am I looking for? The basics that all animals need: food, shelter, water. For this you need to have decided which predator you want to hunt. I hunt foxes, bobcats, badgers and coyotes for the most part. While there are some areas in my state where all 3 can be found, there are going to be areas where some of them are more common.
Coyotes can be found just about anywhere. But I like to focus on areas where food and water can be found in abundance, such as around farm fields. I don’t want to hunt the fields themselves, I want to work the edges of the fields. The coyotes will go out into the fields at night and in the pre-dawn hours and they will roam around looking for food. When the sun starts to come up most of them will head back out into the brush to find areas to lay up and sleep or lounge for the rest of the daylight hours.
Now don’t get me wrong, you can always get lucky and catch one roaming in the daylight, I have just found more success in the early dawn hours.
I have found bobcats in many of the same areas as coyotes but they tend to be more common in thick brush. Unless I am set up to go in there, I am going to have to lay up on the edge and try to draw them out.
Foxes seem to be more common in rocky and brushy areas. We say that where there are rocks there are foxes and where there are foxes there are bobcats. Don’t get me wrong, I have called in all 3 on the same stands. But there are going to be areas where they are going to be more commonly found.
This is a classic overhead view of an area that has everything I look for in a good calling area. Cover, food, water.
map 1 by Jason Mosler, on Flickr
So now that you have your areas laid out, now you need to get them to come to you. For that you’re going to need a caller. You’re either going to need a hand call, an electronic caller (e-caller) or you’ll have to find a caller that doesn’t mind going everywhere with you and doesn’t mind calling predators for you.
Hand calls are an art form. You can buy plastic, but many hand calls sound better if they are made out of wood and have a custom sound board. The call makers are artists when they make custom calls. There are plenty out there. Go check out the Custom Call forum and you will find many of the call makers that support our community.
IMG_0661-700x933 by Jason Mosler, on Flickr
Custom Hand Call from Carver Custom Calls
There is no magic to making a hand call work. I have seen kids call in predator wailing on a hand call like a kazoo. But a true handcaller using a hand call is a sight to see. The downside to a hand call is that the predator will tend to zero in on you. I had that happen many, many times when I was starting out. After watching many videos I thought I understood what I was doing, so I would rail on that hand call until I was almost light headed. About the time I needed to catch my breath, I’d look up and see a coyote with a perplexed look on it’s face staring at me. Id drop my call and try to swing my gun up only to see a cloud of dust where that Wile E. Coyote had been. Then there were those pesky blank stands and blank days. Those tend to wreak havoc on a predator caller’s mind. What could I possible have done different? Next thing I knew, I’d be at the store buying yet another hand call. I don’t even want to get into how much money I spent in those early days on new calls.
It was only later after getting a chance to talk to folks like Byron South, Kerry Carver and the like that I learned what I was doing wrong. Hand calling is about timing. You call, then you stop. Then you call again, and stop. You keep this up. Turns out, that a coyote will hear you calling and start coming to the call. Now I was nervous that if I stopped, the coyote would lose interest. In reality, they go into a search pattern. They are trying to figure out where that rabbit or bird is that they heard. When this happens, they will tend to start zig zagging to try and locate their dinner. This gives you a lot of chances to get a shot on them without them knowing that you are there.
But for most new predator hunters, an electronic or ecaller is much easier to learn to use and to have early success with. I started with a Johnny Stewart PM-1 that I bought for less than $100. It had a chip with 4 calls on it and a speaker that was wired to the controller. So with my early failures with hand calls, I started running the ecaller. Same result. The PM-1 had a speaker wired to the controller, with 25 feet of speaker wire. I would be running the caller, scanning around and I would look over and see a coyote standing there. Insert dust cloud. No fur. So began my quest for the “perfect” ecaller. I bought callers from company like Phantom, Western Rivers and others. I even went to the Johnny Stewart OM-4 wireless caller. ALL of them left things to be desired. So I was back to the PM-1. But not all failures are failures. Not if you learn from them.
Patriot_1__20653 by Jason Mosler, on Flickr
One thing I noticed was that when I would see coyotes, they tended to be standing in places that I would have used to walk into the area. Coyotes use trails. Just like people. High speed low drag. Again, there are going to be those hunters who yell out that coyotes will come through the brush. That is true, some will pop out of bushes. I’ve even seen some jump over the top of bushes. But those are the exceptions and not the rule. There are NO real hard and fast rules in predator hunting. Just when you think that you’ve got it ALL figured out, a coyote is going to re-write the rules. I tend to go with the percentages. When I see coyotes following a pattern more often than not, it is not advisable to ignore the pattern. With this is mind, I started connecting lead to fur. I started to visualize where the coyotes might show up and I would see them come sliding in. Armed with this knowledge, I began to put my speaker in spots where the coyotes would look away from me and give me a chance to get a shot off.
GEN2_GC350__79423 by Jason Mosler, on Flickr
But I still dreamed about getting my caller farther away from me. My search for that elusive caller kept leading me back to FoxPro. Now there had to be something to this. But I kept resisting and trying to find a different caller. Mainly, it was because I didn’t want to spend money that I really didn’t have on a FoxPro. Then one day I started adding up what I had been spending and realized that it would have been cheaper if I’d have just bought a FoxPro from day 1. I saved my lunch monies, and went out and bought a FoxPro Scorpion. The Scorpion ticked off a lot of boxes. It was small, it wasn’t too loud which seemed good for those hunts when I would need to get into the brush with foxes and bobcats, but gave me the option of running an external speaker if I was calling open areas for coyotes or I ran into winds. I ran the Scorpion for 13 years. In fact when the Scorpion died, I almost cried. And once again the search for a caller begins. This time, I knew more about what I wanted/didn’t want in an ecaller. By this time, I was already running ecallers specifically for foxes/bobcats and others for coyotes. I bought a FoxPro CS-24 for coyotes, and it proved to be devastating.
x2s_1__77080 by Jason Mosler, on Flickr
It seemed like coyotes were not as volume sensitive as foxes and bobcats. Foxes and bobcats seemed to be more tuned in to call quality which the Scorpion had. So, I replaced the Scorpion with a Crossfire for foxes/bobcats and it proved effective. Sadly, my Crossfire met an untimely death in an unfortunate friendly fire incident. It was replaced with a Fusion. My CS-24 also went to the happy hunting grounds after many years of faithful service. Now I run an X24. Now, full disclosure, Fusion’s and X24’s are NOT cheap.
FoxPro offers a variety of ecallers that run the gamut of budgetary levels. On the low end they offer the Patriot for around $150 all the way up to the X2 which closes in on $600. FoxPro isn’t the only player in the game. ICOtec, Lucky Duck, Western Rivers, Johnny Stewart and Convergent Hunting Solutions all offer a wide variety of callers that can range from about $70 and go up into several hundreds of dollars. Now here’s where the waters get a bit muddy. The higher end callers all offer a variety of features that you may or may not find that you actually need.
Don’t buy them just for features that you haven’t needed or actually used. Now if you have been out on a stand and found yourself needing one of those features, then you MIGHT consider a caller the next time that has that feature. But don’t get lured in by those features alone. I look for size, call quality, battery life and remote range as all well above neat features that may or may not result in more fur. DO you need a decoy on your call, you might think so, but I’ve capped a lot of predators with NO decoy, I still do. Do I have decoys? Yep. Do I use them, Yep. Usually where a coyote might get a line of sight on my caller before they get within reasonable gun range, then it’s time for a decoy to keep them coming in. But I do NOT use them on ALL stands.
I look for callers that will use rechargeable batteries like NI-Cads or lithium-ion batteries since using disposable batteries gets monotonous and expensive. Buy once cry once. Spend up and buy good rechargeable batteries, but always have a set of disposable batteries on hand just in case. It’d be a good idea to have back up batteries for your remote as well.
So now the cold hard truth…NO amount of money is going to magically make you a great predator hunter. You can go buy a $600 caller, a $5k rifle, magically invisible camo, uber scent control, and go to an area that is overrun with coyotes and you might strike out. There is nothing that replaces go old fashioned experience and technique. You’re not born with either of those, so you need to get a set of basic tools and get out and try something.
Luckily, you are a part of a GREAT predator hunting community here at Predator Masters. There are some of the BEST predator hunters in the world here and they tend to be very forthcoming with their advice.
Hopefully this information will help you to get started so that you can improve your techniques and upgrade your gear because we have some fantastic sponsors who help keep Predator Masters running who have some fantastic gear that keeps getting better all the time.
Predators can be found in many, many different places.
But you have to get them to come to you. Now, spend some time researching your local hunting laws. Read them for yourself. Don’t go around and harass hunters at your local big chain, retail store. Not everyone that shops there is a mighty or successful predator hunter, and I’d wager that most of them are NOT law enforcement, a lawyer or a judge. If you get jammed up you are going to need to be able to defend your actions. Now I know that laws aren’t a lot of fun to read. But you need to do it. You need to know where you can/cannot hunt and what you can/cannot legally do.
Once you understand your local hunting regulations, now you need to scout out some hunting areas. Don’t waste time and fuel running all over the place trying to find predators. I personally don’t do much scouting in person. I use technology to my advantage. I use a lot of Google Earth. What am I looking for? The basics that all animals need: food, shelter, water. For this you need to have decided which predator you want to hunt. I hunt foxes, bobcats, badgers and coyotes for the most part. While there are some areas in my state where all 3 can be found, there are going to be areas where some of them are more common.
Coyotes can be found just about anywhere. But I like to focus on areas where food and water can be found in abundance, such as around farm fields. I don’t want to hunt the fields themselves, I want to work the edges of the fields. The coyotes will go out into the fields at night and in the pre-dawn hours and they will roam around looking for food. When the sun starts to come up most of them will head back out into the brush to find areas to lay up and sleep or lounge for the rest of the daylight hours.
Now don’t get me wrong, you can always get lucky and catch one roaming in the daylight, I have just found more success in the early dawn hours.
I have found bobcats in many of the same areas as coyotes but they tend to be more common in thick brush. Unless I am set up to go in there, I am going to have to lay up on the edge and try to draw them out.
Foxes seem to be more common in rocky and brushy areas. We say that where there are rocks there are foxes and where there are foxes there are bobcats. Don’t get me wrong, I have called in all 3 on the same stands. But there are going to be areas where they are going to be more commonly found.
This is a classic overhead view of an area that has everything I look for in a good calling area. Cover, food, water.
map 1 by Jason Mosler, on FlickrSo now that you have your areas laid out, now you need to get them to come to you. For that you’re going to need a caller. You’re either going to need a hand call, an electronic caller (e-caller) or you’ll have to find a caller that doesn’t mind going everywhere with you and doesn’t mind calling predators for you.
Hand calls are an art form. You can buy plastic, but many hand calls sound better if they are made out of wood and have a custom sound board. The call makers are artists when they make custom calls. There are plenty out there. Go check out the Custom Call forum and you will find many of the call makers that support our community.
IMG_0661-700x933 by Jason Mosler, on FlickrCustom Hand Call from Carver Custom Calls
There is no magic to making a hand call work. I have seen kids call in predator wailing on a hand call like a kazoo. But a true handcaller using a hand call is a sight to see. The downside to a hand call is that the predator will tend to zero in on you. I had that happen many, many times when I was starting out. After watching many videos I thought I understood what I was doing, so I would rail on that hand call until I was almost light headed. About the time I needed to catch my breath, I’d look up and see a coyote with a perplexed look on it’s face staring at me. Id drop my call and try to swing my gun up only to see a cloud of dust where that Wile E. Coyote had been. Then there were those pesky blank stands and blank days. Those tend to wreak havoc on a predator caller’s mind. What could I possible have done different? Next thing I knew, I’d be at the store buying yet another hand call. I don’t even want to get into how much money I spent in those early days on new calls.
It was only later after getting a chance to talk to folks like Byron South, Kerry Carver and the like that I learned what I was doing wrong. Hand calling is about timing. You call, then you stop. Then you call again, and stop. You keep this up. Turns out, that a coyote will hear you calling and start coming to the call. Now I was nervous that if I stopped, the coyote would lose interest. In reality, they go into a search pattern. They are trying to figure out where that rabbit or bird is that they heard. When this happens, they will tend to start zig zagging to try and locate their dinner. This gives you a lot of chances to get a shot on them without them knowing that you are there.
But for most new predator hunters, an electronic or ecaller is much easier to learn to use and to have early success with. I started with a Johnny Stewart PM-1 that I bought for less than $100. It had a chip with 4 calls on it and a speaker that was wired to the controller. So with my early failures with hand calls, I started running the ecaller. Same result. The PM-1 had a speaker wired to the controller, with 25 feet of speaker wire. I would be running the caller, scanning around and I would look over and see a coyote standing there. Insert dust cloud. No fur. So began my quest for the “perfect” ecaller. I bought callers from company like Phantom, Western Rivers and others. I even went to the Johnny Stewart OM-4 wireless caller. ALL of them left things to be desired. So I was back to the PM-1. But not all failures are failures. Not if you learn from them.
Patriot_1__20653 by Jason Mosler, on FlickrOne thing I noticed was that when I would see coyotes, they tended to be standing in places that I would have used to walk into the area. Coyotes use trails. Just like people. High speed low drag. Again, there are going to be those hunters who yell out that coyotes will come through the brush. That is true, some will pop out of bushes. I’ve even seen some jump over the top of bushes. But those are the exceptions and not the rule. There are NO real hard and fast rules in predator hunting. Just when you think that you’ve got it ALL figured out, a coyote is going to re-write the rules. I tend to go with the percentages. When I see coyotes following a pattern more often than not, it is not advisable to ignore the pattern. With this is mind, I started connecting lead to fur. I started to visualize where the coyotes might show up and I would see them come sliding in. Armed with this knowledge, I began to put my speaker in spots where the coyotes would look away from me and give me a chance to get a shot off.
GEN2_GC350__79423 by Jason Mosler, on FlickrBut I still dreamed about getting my caller farther away from me. My search for that elusive caller kept leading me back to FoxPro. Now there had to be something to this. But I kept resisting and trying to find a different caller. Mainly, it was because I didn’t want to spend money that I really didn’t have on a FoxPro. Then one day I started adding up what I had been spending and realized that it would have been cheaper if I’d have just bought a FoxPro from day 1. I saved my lunch monies, and went out and bought a FoxPro Scorpion. The Scorpion ticked off a lot of boxes. It was small, it wasn’t too loud which seemed good for those hunts when I would need to get into the brush with foxes and bobcats, but gave me the option of running an external speaker if I was calling open areas for coyotes or I ran into winds. I ran the Scorpion for 13 years. In fact when the Scorpion died, I almost cried. And once again the search for a caller begins. This time, I knew more about what I wanted/didn’t want in an ecaller. By this time, I was already running ecallers specifically for foxes/bobcats and others for coyotes. I bought a FoxPro CS-24 for coyotes, and it proved to be devastating.
x2s_1__77080 by Jason Mosler, on FlickrIt seemed like coyotes were not as volume sensitive as foxes and bobcats. Foxes and bobcats seemed to be more tuned in to call quality which the Scorpion had. So, I replaced the Scorpion with a Crossfire for foxes/bobcats and it proved effective. Sadly, my Crossfire met an untimely death in an unfortunate friendly fire incident. It was replaced with a Fusion. My CS-24 also went to the happy hunting grounds after many years of faithful service. Now I run an X24. Now, full disclosure, Fusion’s and X24’s are NOT cheap.
FoxPro offers a variety of ecallers that run the gamut of budgetary levels. On the low end they offer the Patriot for around $150 all the way up to the X2 which closes in on $600. FoxPro isn’t the only player in the game. ICOtec, Lucky Duck, Western Rivers, Johnny Stewart and Convergent Hunting Solutions all offer a wide variety of callers that can range from about $70 and go up into several hundreds of dollars. Now here’s where the waters get a bit muddy. The higher end callers all offer a variety of features that you may or may not find that you actually need.
Don’t buy them just for features that you haven’t needed or actually used. Now if you have been out on a stand and found yourself needing one of those features, then you MIGHT consider a caller the next time that has that feature. But don’t get lured in by those features alone. I look for size, call quality, battery life and remote range as all well above neat features that may or may not result in more fur. DO you need a decoy on your call, you might think so, but I’ve capped a lot of predators with NO decoy, I still do. Do I have decoys? Yep. Do I use them, Yep. Usually where a coyote might get a line of sight on my caller before they get within reasonable gun range, then it’s time for a decoy to keep them coming in. But I do NOT use them on ALL stands.
I look for callers that will use rechargeable batteries like NI-Cads or lithium-ion batteries since using disposable batteries gets monotonous and expensive. Buy once cry once. Spend up and buy good rechargeable batteries, but always have a set of disposable batteries on hand just in case. It’d be a good idea to have back up batteries for your remote as well.
So now the cold hard truth…NO amount of money is going to magically make you a great predator hunter. You can go buy a $600 caller, a $5k rifle, magically invisible camo, uber scent control, and go to an area that is overrun with coyotes and you might strike out. There is nothing that replaces go old fashioned experience and technique. You’re not born with either of those, so you need to get a set of basic tools and get out and try something.
Luckily, you are a part of a GREAT predator hunting community here at Predator Masters. There are some of the BEST predator hunters in the world here and they tend to be very forthcoming with their advice.
Hopefully this information will help you to get started so that you can improve your techniques and upgrade your gear because we have some fantastic sponsors who help keep Predator Masters running who have some fantastic gear that keeps getting better all the time.
