Baiting

I have a question about baiting. Now that I'm done using my camera for deer I can repurpose it to coyotes and can start baiting tomorrow afternoon. However come Saturday im leaving for a week for thanksgiving, would it be a bad idea to start a bait up then let it go cold and try to start it up again? I figure it wouldn't matter at all but figured I would double check with the experts first.
 

Up North, no problem with letting the bait site sit idle for a bit. I do the same sometimes due to bad weather or not being able to get down to the farm. Naturally it's best to keep it going all the time, but a guy can't sometimes. The coyotes will find it. Depending on the numbers of coyotes in your area, it actually may take a few days or weeks for coyotes to find it. Once they find it they will be back. Just don't count on them returning every night. Sometimes they may be gone for a while and then suddenly just show up again. Good luck with your site and be sure to keep us posted how it goes.

Last night I stayed at the cabin again, but no coyotes showed. Early this morning however, a nice little buck walked right up through the bait site. It tripped the alarm around 5:20 AM this morning. I took video of him through the home-made night vision unit and hopefully the video will give you an idea of just how well the unit works. The distance was 60 yards and the daytime scope was set at 5x.

If that buck would have been about an hour later (after daylight) things might have been different. I had a Marlin .444 with me in the cabin too since it was the second day of firearms deer season. He just showed up before legal shooting hours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siQ-NorJXIc&feature=youtu.be






 

It works pretty darn good, Bill and the good thing is that it's cheap to put together. For around $200 or maybe $225, a guy can build one that flat out works. A good illuminator can be had for about $50, so definitely less than $300 for everything. I have dropped 5 coyotes with it already.

The previous page (page 163) shows a coyote I took during daylight hours. The unit works both day and night.
 
Well I just got back from the woods and placed my camera and 1.23lbs of beef stir fry. I put half of it in a plastic bag with plenty of holes and scattered the other half around on the ground and on branches close enough to the ground.

Will be out to check the camera Wednesday and Friday, I will post any pics that I have. Hopefully I can find the camera though, its kind of in a weird spot =/
 

Finally, after weeks of chasing this young red dog, I nailed him last evening at 4:45pm. I had appropriately named him Bob the Barker because he was the most vociferous fox I have ever encountered. He barked all over the farm. Approximately 60 yrds. DRT.

 
I haven't read much on this forum, I just made an account, but so far I haven't seen anything along the lines of what I do to bait them in. It all started when my buddy and I threw out a deer carcass in my back yard cause it was cold and we were being lazy. I have five acres and a creek on the back part of the property and obviously live out in the country (for Illinois anyways). So we were looking out at it at some point and saw a coyote chewing on it. I never thought that they would get that close to a house and feel comfortable (its126yds from the back door) and we decided to sneak down to about 60yd behind the barn and shine it with a red spotlight. I (holding the spotlight) watched a beautiful coyote run away in my beam as my friend made one shot, pulled the gun away from his shoulder, and looked over at me with a very proud look on his face as if he had just shot two coyote with one bullet. I called him an idiot and he asked why; I told him he missed. We went to check for tracks in the snow and sure enough it had run away with no blood whatsoever. The next morning we went down to check the carcass just to look at tracks and stuff and make sure there was no blood we had missed and we found a dead raccoon with a bullet hole between its eyes. Since then my friend has forced me to call him "The Sniper."
As we have had very little luck in our area with calling any sort of predator in we decided to start baiting them in. We originally only did it on nights with clear skies and a bright moon. We would check every thirty minutes maybe and happened to see a couple every now and then. Soon we got smart and bought a wireless motion sensor with an alarm. We did what we wanted in the house, fell asleep, and waited for it to go off. When it did we got out the night scope (which for the longest time we neglected to sight in) and looked through it, then proceeded to sneak down to the barn and shoot with a normal scope and a spotlight at 60yds rather than 126. Now we have ammo for the 6.8 SPC which holds the night scope on it and can drill a tack at 200yds no problem. We go to Eickmans (the local butcher shop) and ask for beef scraps. We are such regular customers now they give them to us for free. This way we always have food at the bait pile and will never run out of a supply. Now we wait for the sensor to go off, open a window, and drop anything that happens to step on the property.
I can get about two coyote a week with this method, laying off about every two weeks just so we don't scare them all off and they have time to calm down and start feeling safe again. Then we start back up again. Best way to kill coyote in a place where calling doesn't seem to work. And the best part is, if you love calling, you can still go out and do it anyways. It's not like you're only allowed to hunt using one method.
 
NIH, welcome to the forum. Good guys here with helpful hints and tips. It will take a lot of reading to get through it all. We like pictures so we'll be looking forward to your future posts and pics.
 
Last edited:
Congrats 6mm06 and DoubleUp on your good shooting, been getting caught up posts since the spring. My season ends in the spring and I give it a rest through the summer. We did not call as much as the previous year but my bait pile provided me ample opportunity. As this season starts the activity is starting to ramp up fast. My deer hunting area has coyotes calling/howling at the end of shooting hours........every night. I have never encountered this before and it is getting me wound up for the winter...even if it is wrecking deer hunting. I have my first bait out this week in my regular spot and I can tell you the crow population is doing well. Also had a fox and a young eagle sparring over who was going to keep the spoils.....eagle won... fox gave up to easy after the eagle stood high and flapped his wings ...great to watch. Fox moved in with backup at night and cleaned up the leftovers. I would love to bait where I deer hunt but I don't want to wreck any chance I may have deer hunting by drawing them in to much.... will wait till deer season is over. I will say this much the folks that deer hunt near my bait site last year are all happy.... no coyotes on cameras all summer and have taken a 10pt,5pt, 4pt this year. Cameras recently showed what looks like 2 young females. I don't know what this year will bring but if the snow does not get to deep we should have some fun. Last year even with snowshoes we had a hard time as we broke trail everywhere we went and in some places would break through and sink 4 feet... made for some tough hiking.
 
Read about the red wolf in north carolina and quebec. Do to size breed with coyotes. Look at red wolf image gallery on google and you can see the possibilities.
 
So called red wolves' dna shows they are in fact about 75% coyote and 25% gray wolf with no discernable dna that distinguishes it as a red wolf. The reason they were removed from Texas was from interbreeding with coyotes back in the early 1970's. The offspring of these animals were introduced in Northeastern NC in the late 1980's as a non-essential experimental trial to see if they could survive in the wild. Sadly the whole experiment has turned out to be full of lies, broken laws, and failed promises by USFWS. To make it worse, coyotes have now swarmed into the area and are interbreeding constantly with the already 75% coyote and 25% gray wolf (red wolf) maybe with some dog thrown in as well. The NC Wildlife Commission has asked the Feds to end the failed program and remove the wolves after over $30 million of taxpayer money has been wasted.
 
Nice going GG, what did use on him. been quiet here as well. finally got my camera back out so I can see whats really going on. Have not used it since last season and not sure it is working as it should
 
Well my quick baiting stint the week before thanksgiving was a complete bust, no pics at all, not even raccoons. Camera is back out now in a better spot with much better bait imo: a few pheasant breast, squirrel guts, some freezer burnt pork ribs, and the upper organs and neck meat from 2 thanksgiving turkeys. They're all currently frozen (freezer frozen not a meatsicle) and the air is below freezing so hopefully they give off enough scent. Will also be picking up some scrap meat from a local deer processor later this week.
 

GG, nice red fox. What did you shoot the two fox with, and how were the exit wounds?

UpNorth, good luck. Keep us posted.

My site has been slow (coyote) for quite a while, but I do have a gray fox visiting almost nightly.
 
Oh, thanks folks. I use my .223 for predator hunting. The Hornady Superformance shoots the best for my rifle. Granted the exit wounds are usually not pretty, and my local butcher gives me all the carcasses I can use and takes my fox no matter how bad I shoot up the fur. I raise eastern wild turkeys with one sustaining objective: to keep them as safe as I can.
The coyote population is still nothing to speak of here YET. Slowly more and more scant sightings are reported with only a handful of actual dead yotes by car or deer hunters. Usually if one is shot, it makes the grapevine news among local hunters.
3 days of rain has kept me off the bait piles and out of the deer woods. Thinking ARK at this point!
gg
 
Back
Top