Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Predators and Varmints How to tell if you have yotes...

I am hunting a few small parcels of land in SC. none over 100 acres. one backs up on a 400 acre parcel owned by a timber company that was, until this last year, leased by a hunting club. i am interested in starting coyote hunting mainly to protect the turkey and quail. i have shot a number of foxs from the property and have found deer remains that were stripped clean. one was a buck w/ antlers dropped so i am thinking it happened during the summer and another was apparently hit by a car and sucame to injuries and dies in the bottoms.
there are also 5-7 dogs that live in a trailer park a mile or so away that i have seen running the edges of the woods.
What can i do other than set up and try to call in yote that will let me know if they are on the property.
Oh, I have found scat w/ large amounts of grey deer hair in it.
it was to large to be fox but seemed to small to have come from any of the dogs i mentioned.
thanks

Cohiba I also hunt in SC. Their are coyotes around here thats for sure. The easiest thing to do is listen around sun down and sun up. They usually always make noise then, if around.

There are some predator calls that are supposed to work well if wanted, I personally haven't used any though.

I hunt in the Chester County area.

I did some pig hunting w/ kenny cobb (Souther Sportsman TV show) in chester.
i havent heard any typical yote songs/ howling that i know of. but then again the first time i knew what to listen for turkey hunting i said "so thats what that clucking was". i had heard turkeys for years and didnt hunt them so i didnt know what sounds they made. All i know is what i think a yote sounds like and i dont think ive heard one.
a buddy told me to look for ACME Rocket crates. HEHEHE!
Any link to a sound board w/ actual yote calls/ songs?

what area of sc do you normally hunt? I am in York County and hunt Chester and Union, NC mainly.

http://www.allpredatorcalls.com/sound_links.htm
you must have real audio though

I remember one of the first times I went hunting and it had gotten dark and I was waiting on the guy I went with to come get me, all the sudden I hear a pack of them howling. At the time not knowing a ton about yotes I was like OK glad I'm in a tree stand and not on the ground yet.

I would think if there are that many fox, there arn't many yotes.
Just my experience up here.

I shot fourteen yotes and seven fox north of your grid-square Cohiba!
Actually it was my son,daughter,wife,two nephews and I.
We hunted north of little africa,over south of Lamb's grill and over by #11 on Paris Bridge road!
I cannot believe the amount of yotes that have taken up in that country!!
UNREAL!
We will be back down around 14Feb to sign papers on property we're selling along Blalock.
Highest density I've seen since 1979 up here in Minnesota!
Yall be in for some dramatic reductions in your ground nesting birds and fawn crops! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />
Mike

i hunt the dove fields around there.
really that many yotes.
keep me informed when you come back and if you can spare the time we'll set up and see what we can kill.

You can hunt Yotes at night, but you can also hunt them during the day.

The first thing to do is do a little scouting. Walk the areas you want to hunt. Look for what looks to be little piles of dog poop and also dog tracks.

In more cases then any, Fox are more common, but depends on where you are. In Texas, I know you can find lots of Yotes, but in Pa, you will call in just as many, if not more, Fox.

Like said above, you can listen for howling, but your best bet is to howl yourself. If you do it before sun down or at night, you may get a reply. If it has a couple barks, then howl, it's an aggressive howl. This will most likely be a little lower pitched. if it's high pitched and a solitarie howl, it may be a young one looking for companionship.

Lots to learn on the subject. A mix of howling with a call, distress calls and a few other tricks, you can call them in and sometimes they will come a long way to find you when you howl.

I have seen lots of piles but i dont know if they came from dogs or not.
i went to the library but couldnt find anything about coyote hunting.
ill try amazon. thanks for your help.

One other option is to do this...

Get to spot and wait 10 minutes. Howl two or three times, then wait 5-10 minutes. Howl again, this time a little more aggressive. Do a pup in distress call, wait 5 minutes, then do a distress call. Wait another 5-10 minutes. Do the distress call again for a minute or two, then wait 5-10 minutes. If you get nothing, then move on. If hunting a cat, you may need to wait a little longer. Cats will wait longer to show themselves and you will never see them if you aren't patient. Be sure to sit about 40 minutes in each spot and do the distress sounds for a bit after the howls. The howls call them in great distances, the distress calls get them in close.

After 45 minutes, get up and go to another spot. Just keep doing this until you call one in.

Ditto.......has been my experience as well . If you got alotta yotes , they will tend to kill off or run the fox out of the country fast .

As far as tellin if many yotes are in the area , just step outside on a moonlit nite and listen for awhile..........you'll soon hear em yippin and yowllin

cohiba,

a fox, on 400 acres will probably never leave his little patch, except maybe to breed...
coyotes run a little bigger territory, in my experience... their home territory can look more like a large township or a small county...
coyotes might (probably do) frequent your property but are unlikely to take up permanent residence on any small parcel of land... their boundaries just run a little bigger...

sometimes, they can be patterned by watching terrain features that form travelways and boundaries... rivers and streams, roads, right of ways...
seems like most coyote hunters are mobile minded... where i hunt is almost all private ground.. i map out my area... get permission well ahead of time... select my calling sites in advance, and mark them on the map...
i actually have a couple of different routes marked out according to wind direction...

a coyote hunt, for me, burns more gas than shoeleather....
drive to near the site... 1-200 yds... park in a low spot out of site...

gear is all sorted out ready to grab and go... we are in our calling location, set up, and letting things quiet down within usually 5-6 minutes...

we usually call for 15 minutes... lately we've been calling longer as it can sometimes be productive.... but still, most coyotes are dead on the ground in under 15 minutes if we're gonna get them...

success usually rates a few extra minutes fooling around.. if we don't score on a setup though, we are in the truck and rolling without delay... next stop, and the next... quick as we can go.....
partner and i hunted this morning... left his place at 7:30... on our fifth setup by around 10:30...
just because it's private property, and we can't just call anywhere, our setups are anywhere from a mile to six miles apart... a setup evert mile or so would be better in my mind..... john w

I live in SC, too. I hunt in Spartanburg and Union Co. We have 400 acres in southern Spartanburg that is loaded with coyotes. we still rarely see them. If you want to know for sure, listen when an ambulance or fire truck is nearby. I was working on a deer stand two years ago when a fire truck went down the road. About 10 or so Yotes started yelping and didn't stop until the sirens were long gone.
We never hear them when hunting them but we have had success over the last few years with electronic calls. Keep your eyes and ears open when deer hunting, too. Good luck to you... Go Tigers!!

I remember years ago, about 40, George L. Herter said to get an old hand crank siren and use it to locate coyotes.