Kevin Steffey, Author at Deer Hunting Field

Learn About When Coyotes Are Most Active And More!

In hunting circles, Coyote hunting is a very popular sport which leads to the question, “When coyotes are most active” You will find these wily canines in densely-wooded areas, and they can be a nuisance to inhabitants who live on the borders of woods and forests. Although they rarely attack humans, coyotes are well-known for wreaking havoc amongst livestock, especially poultry and cattle. They are also known to prey upon domestic pets like cats and small dogs.

Thus comes the need for coyote hunting. The controversial questions here are when the best time to find these devious beasts is? And where can they found in abundance? Here, we answer all your questions by offering the basic facts which will make coyote hunting a more fulfilling experience for you.

When coyotes are most active – Active Season for Coyotes

Seasonally, you are likely to find these critters throughout the year. They are hardy animals, so they are active during the winter months as well. However, during the cold months when most of the woods are snowbound, or during snowstorms or thunderstorms, they are likely to be holed up somewhere, until the bad weather lets up.

Best time: day or night?

Although it is said that any time is a good time, coyotes are found in abundance in the morning time. The species that they hunt during daylight hours are usually those who are most active in the morning. There are a few factors that cause these animals to track in the morning time, rising thermals and enhanced scent being a couple of governing factors.

Another major factor that motivates coyotes to hunt in the morning hours is the fact that it is the most peaceful time during daylight hours, especially inthe early morning just after sunrise. They also get the advantage of good light, but then this gives us an excellent opportunity as well.

As they say, “The early bird gets the worm.” So, I say, get up early and pick them off!

The Seasonal Advantage

Talking on a seasonal level, the best time during spring or autumn is in the early evening. This time of day is particularly applicable to sparsely populated areas. You can deduce this firsthand, from the barking and yipping that you may hear in the distance just after sunset.

As humans head to hearth and home, the coyotes begin to get a bit bolder, and they start foraging for food. However, this is less likely to be the case in urban areas, where the decrease in human activity tends to occur at a much later time of the day.

Whatever the time of day or night, a good way to make these guys appear is by making a coyote call. You can use your mouth or create it through an electronic coyote caller.

Disturbance From Other Hunters

The presence of others is something that you need to factor in a while on a coyote hunt. The downside of autumn shooting around sunset is that this is precisely the time of day that you could experience some interference from other hunters, especially bird hunters. The reason for this is quite simple – birds are found in abundance around sunset, as this is the time that they fly back to their roosts for the night.

So, you need to be aware of other hunters in the vicinity and work around them, so that you don’t inadvertently step on each other’s toes.

Hunting For Coyotes In winter

This time of the year deserves a special mention, as there are a few special considerations to be made here. I have observed that winter hunting for coyotes is especially productive during daylight hours if you are in rural areas or the backwoods.

Hunting during winter presents a few challenges, and it can be physically tiring and you need to wear extra clothing but if you get good results, it is surely worth all the pain. Mid-day is a suitable time, or more specifically between about 11.00 am to 2.00 pm.

The reason for coyotes being active during these hours is they tend to preserve energy and calories at this time of the year. This need causes them to be active during these hours when it is least cold, thereby conserving their energy.

Can We Eat Coyote Meat?

This question is a frequently-asked one to which there is no definite answer. It all depends on personal preference. However, the main answer to this question is yes; you can, if you prefer to and it it’s properly cooked.

You aren’t going to turn different colors of the rainbow and grow a pair of horns or start baying at the moon! In fact, there is a school of thought among hunters that believes that you should eat what you hunt, just as nature ordained it to be. There are quite a few recipes for coyote meat going around. Here’s one that caught my eye:

Coyote Stew

Ingredients

Coyote Hindquarter
Cooking oil
2 cups red wine
Three onions, chopped
One garlic clove

Salt and pepper (to taste)
Spices (according to your taste)
Two cabbage heads and any other fresh veggies of your choice, chopped
Eight potatoes, chopped

Method

Fry the meat chunks until brown
Add wine, onions, garlic, salt and pepper and any other spices of your choice
Top up the pot with water (about double the amount in volume of the main ingredients)
Toss in potato chunks and other veggies like cabbage, carrots or beans
Cook for 30 minutes until the meat is tender
Serve with hot biscuits or corn bread

Summing it up

Let’s take a quick look at what we have here. You asked, “when are coyotes most active?” The answer to this question is not entirely conclusive but just requires a bit of common sense to answer. You want to find coyotes; you need to understand their motives for coming out and be aware of the particular time of day or season of the year when they do.

As stated previously, you can help the process by making some authentic coyote calls, either manually or through an artificial coyote caller which you can buy through the internet.

Good hunting is all about understanding your prey. Once you can establish a pattern and create a routine based on the habits of these predators, you will be able to answer this question, “When coyotes are most active” which is the key to successful coyote hunting.

Enjoyed reading this article? Feel free to drop us a line with your feedback and comments, and we will get back to you and respond to any questions that you might have.

How to Attract Coyote: Predator Hunt Like a Pro

Coyote are wily animals, despite their smaller size they can be much harder to find and kill than more popular game animals. If you’re looking for a one-stop guide on how to attract coyote, then you’re in the right place and we’re going to show you exactly how to make sure you can call them in and add a couple of pelts to your collection next year.

How to Attract Coyote

Step 1: Minimize Noise and Scent

Coyote are extremely intelligent animals with sharp senses. Unlike when you’re hunting less intelligent animals it will pay off if you’re quiet from the time you exit your vehicle until the first shot.

Make sure everyone in your group speaks only in whispers, don’t slam car doors, and avoid any kind of scents which might set them off. You’ll still give off some human scent no matter how you go about things.

Move slowly and quietly to the area you’re planning on hunting. Silence is pretty much imperative and make sure that you know how to stay upwind from the area you’re planning on attracting your prey to.

This will greatly increase your chances of not setting the animals into a defensive mode where they’ll be more wary than usual.

Step 2: Utilize Calls

As with any animal that can be manipulated with calls, coyote are particularly vulnerable to this tactic. You’ll essentially have to learn to “speak their language” if you’re using a mouth call. This means learning the difference between distress calls, challenges, and many of the other vocalizations they make. This is many hunters’ favored method of calling them in.

Once you’ve mastered it and found the right mouth calls which work for you, your ability to virtually communicate with these animals can be pretty impressive. Remember to keep human noise to a minimum, however, and stay upwind in order to avoid their powerful sense of smell.

Not everyone relies on making coyote calls in order to attract coyote, however. One of the more successful variants that is used is to make the distress call of a smaller animal, particularly rabbits. Nothing will draw in a coyote faster than a wounded rabbit, cottontails and the like are one of their favored prey.

Related:How Fast Can A Coyote Run?

You can also take advantage of modern technology by using one of the different electronic calls available on the market. Many of these devices can allow you to set up an ideal shooting lane no matter how the wind is blowing since you can activate them remotely in order to draw the coyote in.

These often come with a wide variety of vocalizations, and the remote placement offers quite a few advantages. They are a bit more expensive, however, and many hunters prefer to stick with more traditional methods.

Step 3: Using Lures

In areas with a lot of hunting pressure on coyote, particularly around agricultural land where ranchers will often shoot them or even place a bounty on them, calls might not be as effective as they are in less disturbed regions.

Coyote are adaptable animals, and while an expert caller can generally lure in even the most wary of coyote other methods can be much more effective. The first thing to try if you can’t get what you’re going for with calls are scent lures.

Scent lures are used to provoke interest in the animal. As always, be wary of the wind to avoid the animal smelling you as well.

You’ll have to experiment with this one. Coyote’s intelligence means that each will respond differently to different lures. Some will make the animal come in search of food, others might attract coyote looking to mate. Do a little bit of research, pick a few brands, and try them out on different occasions.

By experimenting and keeping track of which works best, you can figure out what works in your favored hunting grounds. They’re primarily used for trapping coyote, but they can make a great aid for those who are hunting them as well.

Step 4: Using Bait

This is where things get a bit trickier. The thing about baiting coyote is that the bait doesn’t matter as much as you’d think. Some people have had success with fish parts, dog food, or even just throwing food scraps into a large freezer bag and chucking it out into a field to thaw.

While they’re very cunning, coyote will eat almost anything. They’re also wary while in the open, which is undoubtedly where you’ll be luring them, and that means that your technique is much more important than the bait you use.

There’s a few different ways to do this.

Using what’s known as “confidence strips” is one of the best ways to get a coyote to come out into the open. When you’re scattering your bait scatter small pieces of it in a radius of fifty to a hundred meters around the main bait pile. Place these pieces of bait in cover and ever closer to the bait in the open.

Eventually the coyote will gain the nerve to go for the mother lode, opening them up to a shot from the hunter.

Another, even sneakier, tactic which you can use include scattering some corn around the area where the bait is. While the coyote may not be big fans of it themselves… birds are. If you’ve ever been in the wilds for an extended period you’ll have noticed that unless you’re extremely quiet or still most animals quit making noise.

By drawing in birds to make noise and keeping yourself upwind, you’ll convince the coyote that all is well and make them feel better about the whole situation. Until you take the shot of course.

There are a lot of different ways bait can be used, and once you’ve mastered a few you’ll find your success rate soaring. Just make sure that it’s legal in your area.

FURTHER READING➜ 5 Top Coyote Hunting Dogs That Are Proven To Be Tremendous Hunters➜ 5 Of The Absolute Best Coyote Baits➜ The Best Coon Hunting Lights Out There

Conclusion

Hunting predators is a rewarding experience, and coyote are among the most cunning. The thrill of hunting them can hardly be matched, but knowing how to attract coyote is the hardest part of the whole affair. Once you have that down you can bring your skins home, confident that you’ve outsmarted one of the most intelligent animals in the Americas.

Any more questions for us? Comments? Drop us a line in the comments.

Do You Know When To Plant Food Plot For Deer?

Are you a dedicated hunter, and yet you are still having a problem hunting for a deer? Well, it is time for you to get smart by starting to plant a food plot for deer before you hunting it. By planting food plots, you will be transforming you beer management skills. You can do this even on your small tracts and make your hunting dream comes true.

However, for you to achieve this, you need to know the exact time to plant a food plot for deer. Knowing the perfect time to plant the food plot will prevent you from wasting both your time and resources.

What to have ready before the date of planting a food plot for deer arrives?

No matter how much you may wish to plant a food plot for deer, you cannot achieve it if you don’t have a land. You should have a piece of land of your own even if it is small. Once you have the farm, check the condition of the soil and satisfy that it is eligible for planting a food plot for deer.

However, different food plots plants for deer need different soil conditions to support their growth and development. Therefore, it is advisable that you do a thorough research on the plant that can do well on your farm before you decide on planting one. You should read “7 of the Best Deer Baits.” it has a much useful information

What type of soil should you have to be ready for planting food plots for deer

If your soil is not having the desired nutrients to support the growth and development of the food plot for deer, make sure that you fertilise and lime it accordingly. Also, it is important to have it in mind that the best place to plant food plots for deer is in low lying areas that have well-established drainage.

What food plot seeds should you have before the time of planting comes?

Don’t delay until the date of planting a food plot for deer to decide what exactly you want to plant. Different plants excel in different soil conditions, though some plants attract deer. Some of these food plot plants are:

For Warm Seasons

Soybeans
Lablab
Brassica
Clover

For Cold Seasons

Ryegrass
oats
Wheat
Austrian winter peas

Depending on the season you are planning to grow your plant, make earlier preparation and choose the right seed for you. You can get the food plot seeds for these plants at amazon.com. Amazon sells best food plots seeds for deer including:

The best time for planting food plot for deer

Do you want to be the best hunter by maximising the number of deer you catch? Then just know when to plant a food plot for deer. The best time for planting food plots has always been just before the winter or fall.

Why is fall the best time to plant a food plot for deer?

During this period, many people plant food plots for deer. The main reason why they do this is that the rain is consistent. To some areas, fall signifies the probability of rain. When the food plot plant gets enough water, it will have higher chances of being successful.

Another great reason why you should plant during fall is the fact that there is minimal weeds competition during this time. As a result, the plants produced are succulent, and therefore attractive enough to lure the deer into your food plot.

Why is winter the best time to plant a food plot for deer?

Winter is another best time to plant food plots for deer. At this period of the season, deer have limited food resources and are faced with utmost cold and snow. Therefore, for them to maintain their survival, they have to look for food.

Because of their desperate need for food, they will be lured very quickly by the food plot plants. Once they are on your farm, you can maximise your catch by hunting as many deer as you want.

What should you have before you start planting a food plot for deer?

Before planting, you need to make sure that all the things you need, are at your hand. The land should be well prepared, and the seeds and equipment necessary for farming should be available.

Several videos of youtube can guide you through the preparation period for planting food plots for deer.

Conclusion

If you are planning to plant a food plot for deer soon, you should follow this link and buy the best food plot seed at an affordable price.

Are you having any question or comment about plant food plots? Feel free to contact me. The following is a summary of what this article entails in points form:

Things you need to have ready for planting a food plot
What food plots to plant at different seasons
Best time to plant food plot