By: Heath Wood
A few years ago, I found myself spending my summer evenings walking and running, trying to get into better shape. During that time, I would regularly visit my local town’s baseball field equipped with a paved walking trail around the perimeter to get some miles in. In the small town that I lived in, the baseball field sat at the edge of town and was bordered by a large cow pasture. To try to escape the heat, I would typically wait to start exercising until after dark. On several occasions, while on the paved trail, I could hear what sounded like a large pack of coyotes howling before venturing out for the night. Being an avid predator hunter, I could only take hearing the howls for a certain amount of time before I asked the property owner if I could hunt on their land when fall arrived.
After gaining permission that summer, I made mental notes of where I heard the coyotes each evening. When fall came around, I constructed a game plan to approach the area with high hopes of calling the coyotes within shooting range. That year I found myself having much more success than I expected. My triumph came from having a plan of attack from hearing the coyotes every evening. This same concept can create a better success rate when calling during the fall and winter months.
If one spends the summer nights traveling to different hunting areas, stop to listen for coyotes using the aid of hearing enhancement headphones such as the Walker’s Razor Pro Digital Low-Profile Muffs. Using the Razor Pro muffs, hunters will know precisely where coyotes live, equaling in more successful calling stands.
Locating Coyotes
When locating coyotes during the summer nights, I use my electronic game call or a handheld reed-style call to mimic the howls of multiple coyotes; this makes coyotes in the area respond by answering back.
When I arrive at an area that I want to try locating coyotes, I try to find a higher elevation point to hear further and because the sound of my call will travel a longer distance. When trying to find a place to locate from, I tend not to go deep into the area. Instead, I stay on the property’s border or stay on a roadway or trail. By staying on the edge of the property, I do not disturb any wildlife or pressure animals out of the areas where I will hunt in the future.
When I get to an area where I can hear for a long distance and am not disturbing any game, I use my electronic call or handheld call and create a series of yips and howls to try and spark up nearby coyotes howling themselves. Immediately after howling on my call, I turn on my Walker’s Razor Pro Digital muffs. The Razor Pro muffs are designed to protect hearing from a louder burst of sound such as a gunshot. However, the Razor Pro muffs enhance sound up to five times louder than listening with normal hearing. By having the increased range of hearing and the crispness of sound, I can locate coyotes from distances that I generally wouldn’t be able to. I rarely get more than a few feet away from my vehicle when locating coyotes during the summer nights. When I arrive at a location, I step out of the vehicle and place my electronic call on top of the vehicle or the bed of the truck, then move ten to twelve feet away with the remote and my Razor Pro muffs to listen carefully. I spend no more than ten minutes at each location, making notes along the way to be used when it is time to hunt.
If I locate in several different areas on the same property, I switch from the electronic call to my handheld call to change the sound so that coyotes do not become familiar with the same sound each time.
Making A Game Plan To Hunt
When locating coyotes during the summer, I visit each property several times throughout the season. A good plan is to visit each location once every two weeks from June through September. While scouting, I am ultimately gaining data to be used when hunting. Over the past couple of seasons, I have taken advantage of modern technology. I have used GPS hunting apps such as On X Maps to find additional areas and make waypoints on the exact location I heard each coyote. To ensure that I remember each location where I heard a response from coyotes, I keep a journal going tracking where I went, how many coyotes I heard, and if I heard them in the exact location more than one time. After the summer is over, I can go back to my map on my app and see where the most waypoint locations occurred or refer to my handwritten notes. After all the information is gathered, I can easily find the best locations to hunt, then create a game plan for where, when, and how often I hunt each specific location based on how many coyotes I located and how often. This data creates a better success rate when calling and hunting throughout the fall and winter seasons.
I often refer to one of my favorite coyote hunting tips that I have received during my twenty-five-plus years of predator hunting. The tip is only to hunt coyotes where you know there are coyotes, and you will be more successful. To be more successful and make better quality stands, one must put in the time to find coyotes before ever going into an area to call and hunt. Many times, hunters will go to an area that “looks good.” They then proceed to make countless calling stands that do not produce any results. When no harvest is produced, the classic tip of only hunting an area where you positively know there are coyotes comes to fruition.
If one will observe some of the nation’s top predator callers or question them on how they develop their success, they all have the same answer – That answer is scouting. Summer scouting is a must to cut down on searching for coyotes in the fall and raise the harvest count, especially when the scouting is made easy with technology such as GPS hunting apps and products like Walker’s Razor Pro Digital muffs.