BLOG - Page 20 of 49 - Deer Hunting Field

“When Is The Best Time To Hunt Coyotes?” Searching For The Perfect Shot

You’ve invested into this business of hunting coyotes. You’ve invested time, searching for all the best gear with which to make your hours in the stand a success. Then you invested money into purchasing all that great gear.

After which you invested still more time into the hunt, sitting in your stand with your calls and your wind checker, wondering why there was not a single ‘yote in sight.

You wrack your brain for what the problem could be…you have all the right gear, the farmer who owns the land told you there’s so many coyotes on his property that he can’t keep his sheep safe, so what’s the problem?

Don’t worry, we’ve all been there. Your friend who says he’s bagged at least 5 furs every day he’s ever spent in the stand? He’s lying. You’ve been there, I’ve been there; everyone has.

That’s why I’d like to suggest to you that perhaps you simply have bad timing. Now, that’s not as luck-of-the-draw as it may seem. With the right knowledge, you can perfect your timing and learn the best time to hunt coyotes.

When is the Best Time To Hunt Coyotes – Pieces of The Puzzle

When preparing for a hunt, choosing the right timing can be just as important as your gear. The question of timing, though, is surprisingly open-ended. Here are some factors to consider:

Season

Depending on where you live, there may or may not be a legal hunting season. Some states have unrestricted hunting on coyotes; if this is not the case, however, you’ll have to constrain your hunting to the legal season.

If you’re free to choose when you can hunt, most people agree that the best time is fall through spring, roughly October through April.

If you live in an area that is heavily hunted, then it may be better to go hunting early on in this season, when the pups who have grown over the summer do not yet know to be wary of your call.

Check out this video for a glimpse at some curious coyote pups.

Wind Speed

Another important factor when it comes to choosing the best time to hunt in the expected wind speed. This is not so much for your benefit, but the coyote’s.

You see, coyotes are infamous for having a sense of smell even better than that of a cadaver dog–that’s why wind-checkers are so important when hunting them.

You can’t use scent products to hide your scent from them; you’re only recourse is to make sure you’re downwind from your prey.

The coyotes, of course, have come to rely heavily upon their ultra-sensitive noses. One of the worst things for their sense of smell is wind. Imagine if you, relying on your eyesight, tried to go hunting in the middle of a white-out.

You probably wouldn’t be too keen on the idea, as you’d have quite a difficult time just getting your bearings. Coyotes react the same way to wind, and will usually bed down and wait it out.

Mind you, a bit of a breeze is alright. However, if it’s going to be blustering all day long, you will have such a hard time getting any ‘yotes to come to call that it just isn’t worth it.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at this coyote mousing almost purely by smell.

FURTHER READING➜ 5 Top Coyote Hunting Dogs That Are Proven To Be Tremendous Hunters➜ 5 Of The Absolute Best Coyote Baits➜ Get That Pelt! How To Skin A Coyote

Weather Activity

Adverse weather conditions can cause coyotes to bed down as well; try not to pick a hunting day with dismal weather. This may seem obvious, but the reason why might still surprise you.

It has less to do with poor visibility or the general “ickiness” of bad weather–the reasons humans don’t like the storms. Moreso, it’s an instinctual response.

Right before a storm, the barometric pressure drops significantly. This drop in barometric pressure seems to be more directly related to their tendency to wait it out than any other factor of the storm

Conversely, immediately after a storm is a fantastic to time to catch coyotes. This is especially true after a longer, more protracted storm or other inclement weather event.

This is because, after most of the forest’s creatures have hunkered down and stayed hidden for 6 or 8 hours, tummies start rumbling. As soon as the weather clear and the pressure rises, it’s dinner time.

They’ll venture out, typically in larger numbers than at other times, as they are driven by hunger and the need to make a kill of their own after waiting out the storm.

Sunlight

Lastly, you need to pay attention to the amount of sunlight that will be present whenever you plan on hunting. Most people assume this means hunting at night, but that is an oversimplification.

As Ultimate Coyote Hunting explains, the issue is not so much the time of day per se, but rather how much light is present. Too much light is going to scare away wary ‘yotes.

For this reason, many people with more patience than I possess see lots of success hunting at night. I can do it, and it can be fun on occasion, but it is by no means the only way.

For most of the year, you can hunt around dawn and dusk with a fair amount of success, as the light is typically pretty minimal during these quiet times of day.

Depending upon the season, you can also find good results from hunting all day long on particularly overcast days. The cloud cover makes the coyotes feel safer, and more likely to venture out.

The Big Picture

As you can see, there really isn’t a simple answer to deciding on the best time to hunt coyotes. Of course, the ideal would be a cool, cloudy day in mid-fall, but that’s a narrow window.

More realistically, maximizing your chances of bagging on every hunting trip is about understanding what conditions make coyotes more likely to come to call, and seeking out those opportunities.

What do you think, did this post help answer your question? Leave a comment and let me know!

How To Hunt Coyotes At Night – Night Hunt Coyotes The Right Way

I grew up in the woods. The smell of ozone after a storm, the sound of pine needles softly breaking under the pressure of my boots, the stillness in the air as I quietly hoped for a successful hunt. This was my bread and butter. Growing up on a homestead, one of my most common kills was coyotes.

If you live in a rural area, keeping the coyote population culled is just a matter of protecting your livelihood. Keeping you cattle and your family safe. If not, it can still be pretty exhilarating to put your wits up against such a clever creature. If that sounds like you, then you’ll want to keep reading. There is a lot of advice floating around online, but I’m here to teach you how to hunt coyotes at night, the way it ought to be done.

What You’ll Need

Food and Water

It may seem like over-planning, but some water and granola can make the waiting much easier in the stand.

Ghillie Suit

This will help to break up your outline and provide some much needed camouflage, making it harder for wandering eyes to spot you.

Shooting Sticks

These offer the benefits of a more stable shot, with more portability than a mounted bipod. You can even use them while standing!

Hand Call

While there are decided benefits to e-callers, both types of caller have their place in a successful hunt. Consider a squeaker or similar.

Electronic Call

Electronic callers (e-callers) provide high-quality digital sound libraries. These give you easy use, and the speaker can be placed strategically.

Decoy

Placing a decoy near an e-caller can give shy coyotes the confidence to dart out from the underbrush and attack, giving you a cleaner shot.

Weapon

Self-explanatory. Everyone has their preferences, but my favorite is to tote both a shotgun and an AR-15. Stopping power followed up by quick reflexes.

Gloves

A good pair of gloves will not only keep your hands protected, but prevent coyotes from noticing you as moonlight hits your skin.

Via: Amazon.com

Seat or Chair Pad

Sitting in damp ground just isn’t an option, and standing for hours can leave you limping. Try to find a small tripod stool or even a chair pad.

Related: Best Shooting Tripods Review

Face Mask

Coyotes are incredibly wary creatures, and the bold outlines of a human face can spook them before you even see them. Try to cover everything but your eyes.

Trail Cameras

Placed at any new spot before your hunt, trail cameras will give you a more accurate picture of the wildlife activity in the area.

Wind-Checker

Coyotes have a powerful sense of smell that can put tracking and cadaver dogs to shame. You need to be upwind if you want to bag a kill, or three.

Light

Unfortunately, we can’t see as well as our prey. Choosing a red or green light can help illuminate eyeshine without spooking shy coyotes.

Patience

This is a process. Unlike the edited clips on TV, you will be here a while. Embrace that, and remain calm. An itchy trigger finger will get you nowhere.

How To Hunt Coyotes At Night- One Step At A Time

1. Scout Ahead

What you never want to do when hunting at night is to scout your location in the dark. You need to decide ahead of time where you plan to go, and then search the area for signs of activity to determine where you will set up your stand. Tracks, fresh scat, and proximity to a water or food source are all good signs.

This step is where trail cameras can be especially useful, helping to pinpoint which areas have the most nighttime coyote activity. You may also want to (subtly) clear a path to where you plan to stand, in order to minimize any noise during your approach.

Pro Tip: Using Google Earth to scout can save time and help you find topographically favorable locations that may not be easily spotted other ways. If your desired hunting ground is on private land, try seeing if your area has a digital GIS record, which will provide you will contact info to request hunting permission from the owner.

2.Kit and Camo

Take some dedicated time the morning before a hunt to go through your kit. Make sure your guns have been properly cleaned, that you have enough ammo, and that all your tools are packed for easy access and minimal noise. Remember, hunting in the dark means that needing an item and having to root around for it will take twice as long.

It will also create lots of extra noise(as will metal tools/guns banging together) which will scare off any animals in the area before you even make it to the stand. Similarly, it’s a good idea to put on your ghillie suit or preferred method of camo when you get to the hunting ground, but before beginning your approach. Your stand is supposed to be your invisible outpost; it’s the last place you should be fussing with a ghillie suit.

3.Eyes Wide

Even before you set up your stand, you ought to be vigilant, looking for signs of activity. Use the trek from your car to the stand spot to scan the surrounding areas for eyeshine, and listen for howls or other noises. Getting a rough idea of where the coyotes are hiding out can help you decide where to place your e-caller speaker and your decoy, focusing your strategy for a more successful hunt.

Pro Tip: If you align the e-caller speaker with your line of sight toward the coyotes, you’ll get improved visibility of incoming animals as they’ll look toward the noise which provides a stronger eyeshine than if the speaker is placed laterally to your position.

4.Master The Call

While coyotes are most active at night, making it the best time to hunt coyote, humans have generally poor night vision and so we usually need prey to be a lot closer to us in order to kill it in the dark.

This is why it is crucial to make sure you know how to use your callers. With hand callers there is a bit of a learning curve as you work out proper techniques to get the desired sounds, and if you have a poor lung capacity these may not work well for you. There’s also some controversy around electric callers when it comes to how often you should change calls, or if you should even change them at all.

Here’s my take on this issue: it’s perfectly fine to change calls as long as you do it in a way that makes sense. Sounding a pup in distress call for a few minutes and then following that up with the call of local prey for the coyote can be helpful because you’re appealing to multiple reasons that they’d come out to investigate. However, if you use 5 different calls in a 60 second span, that’ll sound more like a fire alarm and send them running.

Pro Tip: If you’ve got a curious coyote in your sights, but don’t want to risk a moving shot, try a quick bark or squeak. This can get them to stop and perk their ears, opening up a clean shot.

5.Take The Shot

Which option sounds better: non-fatally shooting a coyote and having it tear through the underbrush, forcing you to track it half a mile into the thick; or, remembering the all-important virtue of patience and waiting for that perfect shot that results in a instant kill, dropping the coyote where it stands?

Unless you particularly enjoy getting scraped and thorn-pricked from running through the woods at night after limping, blood furballs, most of you would pick the second option. That means that you cannot simply start squeezing the trigger as soon as your objective make an appearance. You’ve waited this long for one to show up, wait just a hair longer to ensure a clean kill.

6. Don’t Celebrate

Congratulations! You successfully dropped a coyote, in the middle of the night, without scarring the forest away by making it run. Hold your applause, folks.

If you want a good chance at a double or triple kill, this is the time to put down your shotgun and pick up your AR-15. Coyotes can travel in small groups,despite their reputation as loners, which means if you keep your cool after that first kill you may get a chance at another one–or two!

Pro Tip: When trying to turn a clean kill into a double or triple, trying using a kiyi call. It may draw nearby coyotes out into the open more quickly.

Ready To Give It A Go?

Hopefully this guide has given you a better sense of what’s required for a successful nighttime hunt. For me, hunting’s in my blood and I’ll probably be doing this ‘til the day I die. If you haven’t gone out on your first hunt yet, there’s no shame in that–just get to it soon!

Did you like this guide; do you feel like you learned something? Leave me a comment at let me know! If you’re a seasoned coyote hunter and you think a missed a step–tell me that too! Everyone can always improve, after all.

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.