Those nights that aren’t productive

bmicek

bmicek

Member
I’d be curious to hear others opinions on the topic. Some nights are filled with hard chargers, while others you can’t even see a coyote in the distance.

Last night was the latter for me. I can see 800-1400 yards in most directions in the area of the US I’m hunting. I’ve had some killer nights. Last night I literally couldn’t even SEE a coyote in the distance.

Do you guys chalk it up as “they’re not callable tonight, let’s just head home”. Or are you starting to pull different tricks out of a hat to make something of the night? I know the common sense solution is setting up even closer to the coyotes to trigger a response, but I couldn’t even find a coyote out and about. While some nights, they’re everywhere in the areas I hunt. Opinions?
 
Haha, the million dollar question. Not an expert by any stretch, I think it's timing more than anything. Especially in the large country you're talking about, where I'm guessing coyotes are a little more dispersed. There's been plenty of nights where I just didn't get into them, I was hunting a good area where I've killed before, but that night they just weren't around. I'm not an all night hunter, but I've read on here where guys might go until 2am without seeing one, then kill 10 after that. Heck, who knows, maybe if you circled back 5 hours later they might be around then. Can't say, never tried it.

By far the most consistent results have been hunting areas that concentrate larger numbers. By a feedlot is my favorite, river bottoms have been good also. I've killed plenty in open fields and pastures, and that is what most of my properties are, but at any given time they could just as easily be in the field 2 miles away.
 
Just my .02, if I don't call in or at least get a vocal response, I assume they are not there. I don't scout my spots. I will sometimes receive cell cam pics through texts and that kind of MRI is really nice, but even then it doesn't always pan out. I think if you absolutely had to kill a coyote you'd be best served to scout and find tracks going into a section and not coming out. This is just a fun hobby for me, and I don't have the time dedicated for that. I just go in when the wind is right and hope I'm there when the coyote is.
 
I could go to an area one night and have 3, 4, or 5 groups going.
For whatever reason(usually wind direction or snow situations) I can only set up on 1 or 2 groups .
Go the next night and not hear a single howl. So I just play the waiting game, usually for a couple hours....even up to 4+ hours.
If I do back out, I may come back hours later. We have used this tactic very often with great success.
I don't need to have vocals/responses/ or visual to know if an area has coyotes....my resources confirm that.
Ya...everyone loves a group opening up on your first sequence and then there they are working in.
But if I left every stand in 10 minutes of not hearing or seeing anything, I'd been lucky to kill 200 coyotes because most of the coyotes we kill here are 30+ minutes .
 
limbhanger10 said:
I could go to an area one night and have 3, 4, or 5 groups going.
For whatever reason(usually wind direction or snow situations) I can only set up on 1 or 2 groups .
Go the next night and not hear a single howl. So I just play the waiting game, usually for a couple hours....even up to 4+ hours.
If I do back out, I may come back hours later. We have used this tactic very often with great success.
I don't need to have vocals/responses/ or visual to know if an area has coyotes....my resources confirm that.
Ya...everyone loves a group opening up on your first sequence and then there they are working in.
But if I left every stand in 10 minutes of not hearing or seeing anything, I'd been lucky to kill 200 coyotes because most of the coyotes we kill here are 30+ minutes .
Click to expand...
My total geography is about 25,000 acres of hunting with about 1-1.5hrs worth of driving from extreme ends and 98% of it is separated out by mile by mile sections. Most can be scanned by just driving and scanning out the window with my thermal scanner. Last night while doing that, we saw one single coyote. Other nights, it feels like every direction we look, we see coyotes. So it had me wondering if they were just hunkered down and not moving at all. It wasn’t just a single or few properties that we didn’t see anything, we started scanning while driving and saw virtually nothing but the one coyote.
 
limbhanger10 said:
I could go to an area one night and have 3, 4, or 5 groups going.
For whatever reason(usually wind direction or snow situations) I can only set up on 1 or 2 groups .
Go the next night and not hear a single howl. So I just play the waiting game, usually for a couple hours....even up to 4+ hours.
If I do back out, I may come back hours later. We have used this tactic very often with great success.
I don't need to have vocals/responses/ or visual to know if an area has coyotes....my resources confirm that.
Ya...everyone loves a group opening up on your first sequence and then there they are working in.
But if I left every stand in 10 minutes of not hearing or seeing anything, I'd been lucky to kill 200 coyotes because most of the coyotes we kill here are 30+ minutes .
Click to expand...
This is what keeps it interesting. I can have every coyote you would think is around you howling then one shows up close enough I know it wasn't howling.
 
Sure, there are switches, day or night. But every day or night???? Million dollar question Russ refers to is when. If I could accurately determine that answer I wouldn't have time to hunt, because I'd be too busy counting my money.
Next question is, are we willing to grind to hopefully take part in the switch. Answer for me is I'm not a grinder. I feel fortunate in that I'm semi-retired and the lion's share of my stands are within a 1/2 hour of the house. If they're not responding I go home and hit them again later. I'm able to hunt often so I feel I'll catch them responsive pretty quick.
When my son is able to hunt we will grind a little more. His hunting time is more limited than mine. We caught the switch Sunday night.
We started about 8p.m. The coyotes were very vocal but absolutely unwilling to commit. Around midnight we were thinking of going home and on that stand the world became very quiet, still no takers. We were close to another stand I wanted to make, so did, and got the first one to commit and killed coyotes on every stand after until we wore out at 4 a.m.
 
We had a few inches of snow few days ago, but it all gone and raining. We had a rain break in weather for few hours last nigh, so I went out.
After ground was covered in snow, is clean now for 1st 24 hrs. after. I seen abundance of mice, rabbits popping on the Therm scan. 'everywhere', a few of muskrats and coons . There was food abundance for Coyotes to be out and dining for takeout .
Logically, You would think after a few days of bad weather and snow was quick melt over, with all the rodents just fresh popping out running around Coyote activity would be high. I was out walking, did a few calls for a good 4 hours with only spotting one coyote that I shot, never even heard a coyote pack lightup anywhere in distance either .
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