Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Predators and Varmints Coyote problem: starting just up from ground zero

Friends:

Over the last year I have been increasingly involved in our family homestead up in Northern Vermont (the Northeast Kingdom or NEK as they call t).

A person would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to notice the changes to wildlife up there over the decades I have been mostly absent. Sightings of deer, woodchucks, rabbits and such are massively down. Turkeys are up (I figure because they sleep in roosts at night, off the ground). Ive only seen a couple coyotes BUT at night the mountains echo with their calls. Seems like hundreds of them calling from every direction at night.

Not that I'm a rocket scientist or anything but increase in coyotes seems correlated with decrease in everything else.

Yet as the Chinese would say: "in change there is opportunity!"

Therefore, I figger I need to get seriously good at eliminating coyotes and helping restore nature's balance.

I need to start somewhere, but believe I already have at least some of the most important gear in hand already: Shotguns, rifles, camo, much of which I can use from my deer, turkey, woodchuck and squill hunting. Not too worried about any of that.

I guess I need to get a caller of some kind and study up on how-to's.

What caller do you recommend? -up there its big woods with occasional hay fields. My dad left me a couple mouth and squeaker calls, but I probably need something more electronic/industrial to start out with.

Longest shot prolly 200 yards, but most likely within about 50-75.

Is there a must have book, or even youtube channel, that I should invest time and money in? Is there as "Barsness on Coyotes" or some other epic tome out there? I can go rough as needed, so long as the experience to "get 'er done" is there.

Any other equipment I need to be looking at?

The cause is worthy.

Thanks in advance!

Blu_Cs

If you want to make a dent in coyote numbers learn to trap/snare. Recreational hunting isn't going to make any difference in their populations. If you just want to have fun and have a challenging quarry to hunt, rock on. Gear is maybe 10% of the importance to a successful stand. Calling about 20%, maybe. The set up, how and where you position yourself and responding coyotes would account for the remaining 70% of the make up of successful stands. The set up is the art of coyote hunting and separates the duffers from the killers.

quote=MOGC]If you want to make a dent in coyote numbers learn to trap/snare. Recreational hunting isn't going to make any difference in their populations. If you just want to have fun and have a challenging quarry to hunt, rock on. Gear is maybe 10% of the importance to a successful stand. Calling about 20%, maybe. The set up, how and where you position yourself and responding coyotes would account for the remaining 70% of the make up of successful stands. The set up is the art of coyote hunting and separates the duffers from the killers. [/quote]

Well I'd be in the duffer category, no doubt. How do I get to killer? Is this something you can get by book-learning?

If you are going to call them, most any $20 mouth call will work. I have much better luck though with e callers. Foxpro makes good ones.
And like other above said, if you really want to put a dent in them, traps are the answer.

Trapping as has been said works better but calling will test your skills. Use every call you can imagine and several you can't. Keep it fresh with new calls like chickens, woodpeckers, possums, you name it, try it. I've called coyotes bugling for elk! They're opportunists so give them food for thought.

I didn't have much luck making any progress where
I go to through hunting and calling
They were already call savvy and in several years
only managed a few mangy outcasts.
Learn to trap/snare as already posted if you're
serious about predator control.

When I first started to seriously hunt coyotes here about 20 years ago, they were much easier to call in than they are now. I was the only one hunting them around here, and it seemed like I saw at least one practically every time I was out. That's not the case anymore. Today, most of the coyotes I kill happen to be targets of opportunity, as calling them in has become very hard to do.

The reason for that is that the local Mennonites have taken up coyote hunting, mostly at night, and year round at that, even though there is a night hunting season. It's educated the coyotes to where they rarely respond to a call anymore. The coyote is no dummy, and the survivors learn very quickly.

As others have said, trapping will reduce the population much more so than hunting. Even then, you'll have to stay at it if you're committed to keeping the coyote numbers down. There are very few animals on the planet that are as adaptable and smart as the coyote.

you misspelled 'no'.......

+1

Correct, they are smart SOBs.

Agreed.

Alright guys, I get it......y'all are right.

Yeah well we don't know how new the OP is to hunting in general, but I'll state flatly if you can consistently hunt coyotes successfully, you can hunt anything....

We asked a biologist about shooting coyotes on our deer lease and he essentially said, “knock yourself out but you probably won’t make a dent in the population even if you you shoot every one you see.” He gave us the name of a trapper and he was able to make a dent but not a very big one.

Several research projects on coyotes have concluded that in order to have a sustained long term effect on the population you must kill 70+ percent of an areas coyotes for five consecutive years and then maintain that kill rate in the ongoing years. Practically impossible under the best of circumstances and with the best resources devoted to the effort. Recreational hunting from even very accomplished hunters won't scratch the surface of the problem.

It's like trying to control the coon population. I am overrun with them, and keep traps out year round. They'll hit my sweet corn, and I'll ramp up the trapping, catch several, and the corn eating will stop. However, by the time the next planting is ready, the coons will have moved in again, and it's back to fighting them again. It's a constant battle, and you can only put a small dent in the population.

Might get a thermal scope for your best rifle and get after them at night.

Don't need to spend a fortune on one but don't know how hard they are to find these days.

I chase coyotes year 'round and have educated more coyotes than I'd like to admit, but it's what happens when you start out with no guidance.

It's not rocket science, but it is demanding, detail oriented work if you want to get good at it where others have hunted them.
The area I live and work in is the site of many coyote killing contests over the years and e-callers such as FoxPro are very popular, thus it has forced me to use mouth calls more and more.

Lucky Duck and Icotec e-callers are alternatives to FoxPro. There are additional sounds available for any of the e-callers to change stuff up.

There's a bunch of mistakes you can avoid if you go over to the Long Range Hunting forums to the Coyote Hunting Forum LINK and LINK and study the responses. There are guys on there that have been seriously hunting coyotes for longer than I've been alive and that's saying something since I'm not much younger than Ingwe.

I'll agree with Ingwe, if you can successfully hunt coyotes, you can hunt anything.

Ed

Does VT have a season like here in NNY? I think are season is 4 months but I've yet to hear of anyone fined for killing them out of season.

15 years ago I bought a large piece of property in the Eastern UP there was a fare amount of coyote track around......I cut two shooting lanes 50' wide 150 yards long for 5 years shot many coyotes out the back door of the house.....then they disappeared they started crossing at the end of the shooting lanes so I put snares there.....several more years they quit crossing there and I moved the snares to the other side of the road....now they quit crossing there.....I never see a coyote track with in 200 yards of the house now.....
Bottom line coyotes are smart hunting-trapping-snaring you will not intimate them just lower there numbers....only way to intimate them is poison....
Hunting coyotes your only going to get ones that make a mistake and you happen to be there.....