Baiting

Another sunny daylight coyote this morning. 9:25, drinking my coffee, beeper starts dinging. 170 yds, .22-250, 60 gr vmax at 3650. Never took a step. Conventional glass, so no video. Goofy year, I want to use my thermals lol!! This is only my 3rd this season, and all have been between 7:30 and 9:30 in the morning with the sun shining. Anyway, nice looking male.
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Nice going, Bait. We seem to be a little different lately. You want night time thermal and I have been hoping for a daytime with color view from the 4k Pro. I rarely get a daytime one, maybe only two or three for the last 12 years.
 
I have new location, another elevated blind on the south end of a plowed food plot. Moved the camera and put out a bucket of frozen freezer clean out from a neighbor. Had some deer bones, and a couple road kill rabbits for some fresh attraction.
 
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only day pic, bucket was froze solid. Hung the deer leg bones up in a tree by camera. Bucket 102 yards from the blind. Property butts up to city property that can't be shot/hunted. I hit the range today, checked zero on 17 rem AR. Have the Sightmark wraith NV on it, my only way to record a shot. 25 gr Hornady hp.
 
That 25 Hornady from the .17 Rem. is a pure coyote nightmare.
Found some reloaded ammo I worked up 8-9 years ago, 25 gr Woodchuck den and Berger 25 match targets. I may go to the range and shoot them at 100 to see if they have same poi. I seem to remember those 2 shoot the same, I was going to try them, see what all the talk was about back then.
 
I set up the heater this morning. Retrieved the bucket and put out some commercial predator bait and hung a rag soaked in coyote urine in the brush west of the frozen bait. Here is an interior shot of the blind.
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Thanks for the photo, Spot. Hopefully you will be dropping a few from that location soon.

A coyote visited my site on the 5th, got one cell cam photo and haven’t seen it since. It’s hard to to hunt when the do like this.
 

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In an average year with snow cover, repeat predictable visits are the norm. This year, not. Especially with the number of mice I see at night with the thermal. I'm going to call a bunch the first sit.
 
I can’t speak for everywhere in the South, but our coyotes are finicky eaters. I kill a pile of hogs and drag them off. They’ll rot in place a lot of times. Buzzards clean up about half to three quarters, but the rest just decay over time.
Same with deer. We found one in one of the ponds and sent the head off for testing and during the rest to the field. Nothing touched it. Found a couple old bucks that ended up rotting in place.
I’ve taken a beaver carcasses out there and again, nothing but buzzards would touch them.
I’m guessing with our mild winters and plentiful prey species they don’t hit them. Now this is just on the properties I trap. I know some folks that say they can shoot a deer and if they don’t find it within 30-45 minutes after the shot the coyotes will have already found it and partially eaten. Of course none of these folks want them trapped or night hunted.
 
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