I have never hunted coyotes before. But I plan to try this year. After a spring with reduced turkey observations and increased coyote track observations, I figure it can't hurt, and gives me a reason to get out more.

I've never seen a coyote where I turkey hunt, but they are there. I see tons of tracks, and find their fur and bone-chip infused turds on the trails.




And I see more and more coyotes around where I live, some rather large. None with really attractive coats. But tall, long legged animals. The coyote population is growing here in southeast Virginia.

I've been reading a bit about it and plan to get an electronic call and decoy in the next few weeks.

My Dad's "let as little go to waste as possible" mantra he taught me makes if difficult for me to just let it lie, but the furs I've seen on coyotes around here looks kind oif ratty to me. I am just curious what you coyote hunters do with the carcasses?

Coyote hides are worth almost nothing where I live. I snap a pic and leave them for the worms.

Buzzards

Kinda like crows? Leave them lay? Never found a use for a dead crow except to feed the opossums.

I also don't have a dedicated varmit gun. I have deer rifles and .22LRs and that's it. This county is a .22 and shotgun only county, EXCEPT for groundhogs and coyotes, both which can be taken with rifles larger than .22. So it will give me chance to do more center fire rifle hunting. There are a few clear cut areas with rolling hills where a longer shot might be conceivable. So I think I'll give it a whirl with my Browning X-Bolt .270. I can't imagine that will do a hide any favors.

Your 270 with regular hunting bullets will be easier on hides than many “varmint” rifles and bullets. I’ve shot some epic holes in coyotes with a 22-250 and soft bullets.

Good to know.

We have a lot more yotes here as well over the past 10 years or so. It's affecting the deer herd where I hunt I think. I've found a few dead Bambies. Mostly, I think that the does are staying away from the places where they're heaviest, like where I hunt. I don't specifically hunt them, but if I can ever get a shot on their azzes while deer hunting, I'm taking the shot. I'll kill every one I can hit, but they're hard to hit because they seem to always be running through the woods. It must be a hunting tactic or something. I rarely see them casually walking. My son had one a few years ago attack his turkey decoy. The decoy was saved and the perpetrator was eliminated.

As far as what to do with it, I throw it in the back of the truck and get it away from where I'm deer hunting. I take it down the road and ditch it.

The hides have no value here either. We hunt them to protect livestock and for fun on a range. We just toss them out of view in a bush or down a crack.

according to the last fur auction that took place this past June, furs from anywhere in the country aren't going to be worth didley squat come this winter. The worms, same as the buzzards, gotta eat....

Get them away from my hunting area and leave them for the buzzards.

GreggH

Got one in my friends pasture a couple years ago with a 270 and 130 Berger at about 40 yards. Coyotes can cartwheel. And with that bullet the buzzards job was pretty easy!

I have a pretty good stack of boxes of Remington Core Lokt 130 grains. Or I may give my Ruger 77 6.5x55 Swedish a go. Haven't killed anything with that yet.

There’s a bounty on em here in UT, but the fish cops have made it such a pita to collect that I’m not interested in dealing with them. I leave em lay.

I usually hunt food plots for deer so that's where I'm usually shooting coyotes. Any that come out get dropped. I don't like to leave them in the plots so I'll haul them a few hundred yards away and dump them for the buzzards. If it's other than on a plot they get left where they fall.

If the hide is exceptional, I might have it tanned. But I have lots on the wall now. Otherwise, were they lay is where they will be. Just a note. I have a good friend that was a federal trapper. His girl friend realized he had the plague. She knew doctors out of state, she was a nurse, and got him the meds he needed. He has never touched another coyote. Unusual sure, but something to think about especially in warmer climates. To me the old saw, if you shoot it use it, came about in the years when ammo was expensive and money scarce. Pa didn't want his kid shooting for no reason so, that is the rule.. Folks have shot stuff for years with out using it. Have at it and have fun.

Well, I ordered an electronic call and decoy. It's certainly not the most costly I could have ordered but seems to get good ratings wherever I've looked.

https://icotec.com/product/gen2-gc350-programmable-call/

https://icotec.com/product/ad400-attachable-electronic-predator-decoy/

It comes pre-programmed with a selection of calls or you can download more from Icotec's library.

https://icotec.com/sound-previews-downloads-gc350-gc500/

Next thurdsay I am going to go put up my game camera looking at a trail intersection where I see these tracks. I'll leave it overnight and see what I get (hopefully not a stolen camera).

where they fall is where they stay.

I'm not sure what your woods are like, but where I hunt, you can barely see 50 or 75 yards until the leaves fall. My problem has always been that the damn coyotes are running through the woods and they're on top of you before you know it. Whenever I'm using a scoped rifle, I have a hard time getting on the target. I'd be using a 12ga with #2 or #4 shot in a 3" magnum. It would be like shooting a big rabbit as they haul azz by you.

yea the $50/head ain't worth the BS

lower jaw......left ear......GPS co-ord's

Throw 'em over a fence line

Come back next day & shoot crows & magpies

I'll be hunting on state forest land. The bottom lands are standing hardwood forests. The upland woods are new growth pine, some very thick. And some is clear cut with very young pines and scrub. Visibility ranges from a few yards in the pines to several hundred yards in the clear cuts. There is some rolling terrain.

I may use a shotgun. Rifle (larger than .22) hunting in easterm Virginia is limited, but coyotoes in this county are a notable exception. This will give me a chance to hunt more with a centerfire rifle. May tuirn out that a shotgun will be better and if so I'll do that. But I'm going to use a rifle first, if only because I can.

Bait for other coyotes.

Beginning coyote hunters worry about the wrong things. Beginners worry about the call and the gun. Those two things aren't problems, a good hand call and about any firearm can do just fine. The calling, the actual sound isn't that important when coyote hunting. Coyotes respond to sounds for any number of reasons, hunger, curiosity, maternal or territorial. If there are coyotes in the area getting a coyote to respond to a call isn't hard. If there are coyotes around getting a coyote to respond to the call in such a place and in a manner in which you can kill it is the hard part. That's called the set-up or the stand. And it's no different than calling gobblers. Gobblers that can smell you from long distances. You can sometimes find a hot two year old turkey gobbler or a group of jakes and call them easy peasy. Same for young of the year coyotes. Coyotes in October and early November come pretty easy. It is the four year old gobbler that will give you a fit and it is the same way for mature coyotes. Now you better plan on using wind direction, cover and terrain to your advantage, make decent sounds, don't fidget and move around and be able to shoot when the time comes. Kill old mature coyotes consistently and then you're a coyote hunter.

and to that point^^^^ I've always said that calling coyotes is easy. Killing them is slightly harder.

Calling Coyotes ain't hard if you are where they are or they are where you are, always hunt the wind and set up where you can see, once your set sit still, any gun will work and a couple of hand calls will get you started, pelts are no good here, i have a big hole on the South ranch i throw them in, I hate going to see what Buzzards are flying over, here about 1 out of 10 times you see buzzards there's a dead Illegal, and that ruins my day. Rio7

I've never hunted coyotes and have never seen one on this particular tract of state forest land, only their turds and foot prints, so I know they are there. But back in the late 80s and 90s, I regularly hunted some paper company land about 40 miles south. I called in several coyotes with turkey and squirrel calls. No one believed me when I told them. They all said "there are no coyotes in Virginia" and said it must have been a dog or a fox. I knew what a coyote looked like. Sure enough, our game agency started to acknowledge there was a growing population of coyotes in that area. Now I see them in the city, on historic park land, running across the roads near our airport, and my neighbor swears we have one in the neighborhood. They're everywhere now.

Similarly, I shot one in Caroline County around 1994 or so while groundhog hunting. I should have taken it to a taxidermist, but my ex was doing a good job of keeping me broke, so . . .

I won a gun club raffle for taxidermy work.

That's a cool mount.

" I also don't have a dedicated varmit gun. I have deer rifles and .22LRs and that's it."

Definition of a perfect coyote gun : The one you have in your hands when you get a chance to shoot a coyote.

But some guns are more fun than others, like my .243 Win shooting 55 grain Hammer Hunters at 4100 fps!

If they are laying within view of the general public then I will toss them behind some brush or somewhere else out of sight. As hunters we already have enough people against us and there is no point in leaving them out where others see them and possibly generate negative feelings about shooting them.

drover

Leave 'em where they lay.

Here's my new call.



I set it up last night on my property and tested the remote from 100 yards. Works perfectly. Damn, you can crank the volume up really high. If my neighbor hadn't been out and seen what I was doing, I might have teased him with it. He's the one who says there is a coyote in our neighborhood. And there may be. Several people have told me they've seen one. I've only seen foxes.

When I unboxed it, I discovered the remote takes a 12v A23 battery. Never even heard of an A23 battery. Had to run down to Ace Hardare where luckily they had some.

Around here the furs looks nice but still no buyers so they are buzzard food if the other dogs don't get them first.

November till March I skin them. We have multiple buyers who come to town over the winter months. Prices go up and down like everything else. It’s never cost me anything to go after them. Some years it puts a few more guns in the safe.

I had a nice mature male with a prime January coat tanned for cabin decor.

I have a neighbor that teaches a trapping class for young folks through Alaska Trappers Association. I try to get a few critters for the kids to practice skinning.

I teach em to bleed all over the desert.

Organic carpeting.

There are plenty around here, but dealing with a dead one has yet to be a problem. If they smell anything like a red fox, mostly I’d stay upwind as I walk away……

I'm going out tomorrow to set up my game camera overnight. Baiting for coyotes is legal (but not deer, bear or turkey). Any suggestions on baits that someone might have around the house? Can of tuna? Last night's leftovers?

Roadkill

dead horse....

Dog food?

I wish I had a dead longhorn steer. I was in the Wichita Mountains in Oklahoma in 2015 and there was a dead longhorn in a ravine. I drove out there at night and the place was thick with coyotes. I think that steer brought them in from miles and miles away. Never heard so much howling.

I leave coyotes and pigs as bait.

Run a blade down their bellies and leave em to the buzzards and mama.

why dirty a blade?.....

maybe because he thinks buzzards can't figure it out for themselves?

I think the coyotes we leave are eaten by the pigs.

Agreed.

Because it speeds up the cleanup detail, if i hit one with 22-250 and no exit, have seen them lay there up for a week with buzzard crew perched above thinking they're still alive i guess, clean gut slice and a tail yank to spill innards has them cleaning up very quickly, running a blade down into the soil a couple times cleans it up fine, i dont carry my Bagwell Damascus skinners up to check on a coyote kill, i grab the same knife i threw at that kid for a free ear clipping holding a gun up in the handgun forum under the 40 yard shoot off drill Bluedreaux started.

I went out this morning to plant my trail cam. On the way in, I found half of a turkey wing feather on the trail. It rained earlier in the morning. I didn't see any turkey or coyote tracks this morning at all. The rain may have washed them away.
There were some very fresh deer tracks.


I have no idea what kind of tracks these are. They were about and inch long. Funny thing is, it wasn't a trail of tracks, it was just these three in the middle of a big, wet muddy area.


I have my camera at the bend in a trail where I saw most of the coyote tracks last time I was there. I threw out six pieces of left over fried chicken for bait. So who knows.





I flushed some quail on the way out. This place does seem to have a somewhat decent population of quails.

The three tracks look like rabbit tracks

I skin the nice ones and either sell them when the prices are good or have them tanned when they aren't, my wife wants a throw for the den.

Toss a couple nice ones across the furniture, it spruces up the house.



The left one was killed just below the Canadian border and the right just a couple miles from the Mexican border.

I have a portable fleshing beam on my truck and keep a few stretchers in the gear box.

Pretty cool. I have several tanned hanging around my house, but my house is different from most.

Let them lay! Buzzards gotta eat, same as worms……..

But, But, But..... You have to slice their guts out and stab your knife in the dirt a few times, or buzzards won't touch 'em...... Or so I've heard.

Road kill skunk. I'm serious. Keep a garbage bag and a bucket in your vehicle... preferably a pickup. Kind of like stinkbait for catfish... you don't want to get any of it on you but they like it.

So that was pretty anti-climactic. I went to retrieve my camera. Two of the pieces of fried chicken had been eaten, with the skin pulled off and not eaten. The other four pieces were untouched. What kind of infernal creature would eat fried chicken and not the skin? Whatever it was must have been low enough not to trigger the camera. I had it set a little high so I could see down the trail. I had the flash turned up and the sensitivity on long range. Nothing. The only pictures I got were when I set it up and when I took it down. And no tracks of any kind on the trail that I had it watching.

However,

After I took my camera down, I decided to walk the trail past the second bend. Lots of deer tracks there. As I am wrapping my strap around my camera, not really paying attention, I look up and vaguely notice something walking in the high weeds to my left going in the same direction as me. It was a big ass skunk. It was like 12 feet away. I don't think it ever saw me. I stopped and it continued on. It started to turn left into the thicket where I flushed three hens a couple of weeks ago. I started making kissy sounds and it stopped, finally saw me, but never got defensive. I pulled out my Glock 19 and took aim I could have nailed it but I decided to let it go. If I see it again after September 1 when they are in season on this state forest, I will. I understand that are very much egg eaters.

True.......

They bring good money in the winter here.

I have a guy that pays me $15 per coyote, even with the pelt in bad condition, like mange.

I don't know how he is able to sell the pelts on the mangy ones for enough money to pay me, and still make it worth his time to skin them himself.

I drop them behind his restaurant, it's a Chinese restaurant, and pick up my money at anytime. Good deal for me!

No doubt he is using the hair to make chinese fishing flies. That must be it.

Or soup!

Maybe some kimshie

Kimchi is fermented vegetables, nice side dish with grilled coyote

I saw on YouTube some people actually eat coyote meat. Given that they are really just dogs, I can't think of a more unappetizing animal to shoot and eat.

Coyote this year like last year are not worth anything much cept the ears for bounty. Most are leaving them where they drop. Those that do or will have nice looking hides wont be worth the time to even meet with buyers IF any even make rounds this year at all.

Gunner is right, sliced the belly open and the will find it same night, I have seen yotes set for 10 days before varmits start eating on it, hogs two weeks, I drag them to where I can shoot them off decks, can get several off a hog. I grew up in western OK. Yotes would hang from fence posts, old timers knew it was a deterrent to others to cross on there land, I still do it to cross fences on ranch, can’t let Karen’s see them hanging on county roads.

He isn't buying them for the pelts. Several years ago where I live a Chinese restaurant (Wing Ming) was closed by the Health dept. Upon inspection they found house cat in the freezer. I ate there pretty regularly. They always had a buffet set up. And they had fried nuggets on the buffet. I never knew what they were, But they were good. Sorry to see it close.

👍

I usually chuck them into a really thick multi flora or some other type of sticker bush.
They usually get suspended off the ground and the stickers keep the animals from scattering the bones around.
In a few months I can go back and maybe find a cleaned out skull.

SJC

👍

grubbing around in stickers for old skulls, has always been one of my most favorite things to do.....

Take a picture of them...

Save them for USD games in Vermillion, SD. The crowd loves to see dead coyotes thrown out on the basketball floor.

There's a spot on our farm where a local white-trash prostitute takes her guys to park and get it on. They almost always throw their McDonald's bags trash out the window and leave it for me to clean up. The coyotes visit the spot almost every night for whatever scraps might be left behind.
So, I jokingly told my buddy that I was going to stop by McDonald's and get a couple of dollar burgers and use them as bait in my dirt-hole sets. Caught 3 of those bastards using hamburgers. It's no longer a joke - and the burgers are less sticky than the other bait I typically use.

What city do you live by Trigg?

and do you have her number?...... thanks!

I’ve wanted a cased yote hide for a while, but have yet to see one on my WMA. Then I found out what it costs to have one tanned. The local hardware and gun emporium sells really nice ones for $120. Think I’ll go with one of those and skip all the fuss in the middle.

So count me in with the ditchers, if I ever get one, and all the stinky foxes as well…

The vietnams at the packing plant near my home pay $20.00 and they eat them. I have a video of them burning the hair off of them.

Careful you don't catch a white-trash prostitute in your trap.

I throw them around property line tree stands.

Have you kilt yOu one yet ?

Worms & vultures has ta eat!

Built a rebar stand to freeze coyotes an upright growling position and put one in a McDonald's trash enclosure in MT pleasant iowa, scared the real out of the next trash man

Pics of the prostitute?

man that's a big old dog-nice!