Ramblings and Such From Hunting Coyote

DSheetz said:
Ed ; have you been using any of the female coyote in estrus sounds this year? chirps, whines, whimpers and quick sharp barks with short howls. I usually started using them in late December or the first part of January and stopped using them around mid-March. At which time I would start using other more challenging coyote vocalizations under the right circumstances or lesser challenging vocalizations in most cases just to tell the homebodies that I was in their territories to see if they wanted to come visit or tell me to leave. I had to figure out what my password was just now and sign back in that hasn't happened in a year or so.
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Dave, no, I haven't. I've been having more success with really simple howls and a short burst of rabbit distress ( cottontail or jackrabbit) than anything else.
It's as if they are confused and/or confident that that combo isn't danger. Since most folks call, call, and then call some more, I think they genuinely believe it's the real deal.
I learned long ago that calling too much can put them off as much as calling "off-season" such as pup whines or fawn bleats in February.
Even at that, using the minimalist approach is working. When the success rate starts to drop, then I switch.
It's close to the end of estrus here, so I don't have much time left to use it effectively.
Living and learning…

Ed
 
Ed: like you I have noticed that along with too much volume so many with E-Callers call way too much and with the sounds that aren't usual for the time of the year. I noticed that even a lot of guys that have been doing control work or hunting and calling coyotes a long time don't really know how the real animals behave when they are scared or injured just due to the fact that they may not have been exposed to it yet. Years ago, when I was starting out, I was really anal about learning and found a book called the Art of War by Sun Tzu in it, it was stated that you should know your enemy so then I figured that it was reasonable that I should also know my opponent's food sources and how they behaved if I was going to try and imitate them so I could make their sounds to fool them. I asked a guy once that had been doing control work for 20 or 25 years if he had ever heard coyotes mating. He said no he hadn't had I. I told him yes just a couple of days before. And that they are pretty vocal when they are. He then asked me how it was that I could watch them without shooting them. Because they had something to teach me first and they are now in the back of my truck and yes, I did say thank you to them as I did shoot them. Sometimes it is better to ask first then shoot not the other way around. I still take pride in my craftsman's ship.
 
Thank You guys! Those are kind words and make me feel good. I am in hopes that everyone makes fast recoveries. I have been down a couple of times myself and it was sure hard for me to not be doing things that I wasn't supposed to be doing. A friend of mine told me today that her dad always told either you be good or be good at not, so you don't get caught and get yourself into trouble. I learned to be good getting chewed on by the wife and Dr's wasn't much to my liking. Guess that says something about how well I did at being good at not being good.
 
Here where I live there wasn't a lot of game animals around in the 50's and early 60's . We had gone through the great depression then into WW2, people needed to feed their families with few paying jobs to be had. Then came WW2 and rationing along with the dust bowl having just ended the wildlife took a beating. I was taught how to catch rabbits without shooting them by wiring them out with barbed wire you learned fast what a scared rabbit sounded like and how long they would scream. In the 60's the white-tailed deer started showing up. As I was mowing with a little Farmall tractor and mower I would see the fawns laying in the hay so I would grab them and get them moved out of the way so as not to kill them. It only took a couple of them to figure out that sound and the sound their moms made when looking for the babies. Then came the day I was driving an old 53 Willies jeep and didn't see an antelope fawn in the tall grass of the two-track road, as I got over the top of it, it started to do it's bawling I nearly jumped out of the jeep being startled by it. Another new sound was learned but I also sat and just listened to the antelope and deer in the field talking among themselves. and started figuring out how to imitate them.
 
Dave, When predator hunting, just like us in a conversation with each other, you can't listen if you're talking.
I, too have learned a great deal about this world from just being still and keeping my head out of that dark stinky place. 😁

Nature talks about itself constantly. If you start using your senses to their fullest, you can learn a great deal that is useful.

I am constantly trying new things and re-trying old things that our ancestors used.
Something as simple as merely making a kissing sound for fifteen to twenty seconds after settling in on a stand without any other calling can bring surprising results.

I once called in a coyote by digging a false den/hole set when setting traps. I had forgotten my shovel back at the truck, so I was on my knees, digging with my hands into the side of a dune, breaking the mesquite roots and slinging the dirt behind me when it showed up.
I'm not sure which one of us was more surprised when it popped out from behind the dune I was digging in. 😁

Try getting FoxPro or Lucky Duck to add digging sounds to their libraries. 🤪😁

Ed
 
I had a favorite bob cat set it was in a rock pile in the middle of a pasture on the south facing side of it there was a trail that went up the side of it between large boulders that had fallen off of the bigger piece of sandstone. When you got up near the top there were a couple of over hangs with recessed areas in them that were out of the usual west winds and were sunny most of the day. One of them near the west end of the rock pile had a side that had rocks laid up to farther protect it from the winds out in the front you could still see the fire pit and burned ground where over the years the native Americans had used it for protection. Up on the top of it there were indentions that held snow and rainwater. Every bobcat in the area visited it. I was on my way up there one morning to call some coyotes, when I heard a noise above and to the front of me, I froze and bounding around tumbling and wrestling a pair of maybe half-grown bobcat kittens were running and jumping on each other. They noticed me one crouched down the other leapt to the top of a rock both they and I just stood there staring at each other. Cats being cats their tails began to move the one on the rock crouched low and slowly inched my way. I'm sure they had never seen a human before. I was asking myself where is mom, did she leave the kittens her by themselves is she setting up there too? We had a star down for several minutes before I moved a step toward them. In a split second they jumped turned and ran away from me then down the side off the rock pile along the way mom joined them. A good morning for me even if I didn't go ahead and call from that location.
 

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