I trapped coyotes professionally from 1988 to 2002 when we left eastern Washington and moved to Alaska. I did year round coyote work, so much of the year I wasn't concerned with fur, just dead coyotes. It did give me the opportunity to try all the above mentioned methods. I always came back to a CB short or CB long to the head or heart. Blood spilled is minimal, death is quick and fur damage is non existent. Fur buyers do not care about one 22 caliber hole in the head or in the chest.
I tried 22 LR HV hollow points early in my career and found they produced a lot more blood than the CBs. Subsonics were not common back then and even the standard velocity 22 LR tended to produce more blood than the lowly CBs.
I used the heart stomp for a couple years but after having one really tough, old, battle scarred coyote that just wouldn't give it up, I quit using that method. After trying them, I found choke poles just took too much time for me to mess with so I only used them to release non target catches, like bobcats out of season.
I never found a little blood in the set area to be a deterrent to future catches. My best set ever, I got eleven coyotes in the same set and same trap over the course of the fur season. The trap had almost no dye or wax left on it by coyote number four but kept catching. It was on a wheat ranch I nor anyone else had never trapped, and was between a huge apple orchard and a cattle ranch. Coyotes were thick that year and especially thick in that area. I would scoop up any small puddles of blood and get them away from the immediate set area but a few drops never caused me any issues.
The CB to the heart is pretty impressive when done properly. I always waited for them to get into a position where they had the trapped foot extended, opening up the chest area and allowing an easy heart shot. It would put them down right now and death was almost as fast as a CB to the forehead. Sometimes it would take a few minutes of them dancing around to get that shot. When I was long lining, doing 175-250 miles a day on several large ranches, I didn't have time to wait for the heart shot so almost always resorted to the CB to the forehead.
Finally, nothing but common sense. I guess we North Country boys think alike. Looking through this thread all I could think was there's sure a lot of kid stuff here. At least a few suggestions from people who have never BTDT.
