The author offers these three expert witnesses to the effectiveness of his hunting techniques. Dead coyotes don't howl no lies! Photo by Mark Kayser.

As coyote densities expand across the nation, so does interest in hunting the cagey critters. Driven to a considerable extent by the appearance on the market of a rash of targeted predator hunting publications and a big expansion in the shelf space devoted to predator pursuit in sporting goods stores, that interest has positively exploded in the Midwest and in states to the east. Heck, even firearm manufacturers are designing new calibers and rifles to cater to the coyote-hunting enthusiast.

With competition for attracting the attention of the coyotes in your back yard on the rise, you'll want to set yourself apart from the crowd if you're to get on the high road to coyote success. These five strategies will help both to distinguish you from the rest of the songdog shooters and to put more kills in the pickup's bed.

VARIED DISTRESS CALLS
Coyote hunters live and die by prey-in-distress calls. The sport was built around the use of the dying-rabbit call, and more coyotes still fall to that tactic than all others combined. But coyotes soon get wise to predator calling, especially if they've escaped a poorly executed setup or caught the scent of a human near a squalling rabbit.

To outwit coyotes that have heard the tunes of most retail coyote calls, vary your distress sounds. After all, other woodland critters squeal when in pain, and coyotes will respond to the distress sounds of a variety of animals. Some of the more popular distress calls include rodent, woodpecker, fawn and canine. I've even used the raucous call of crows to attract the attention of coyotes that had displayed no interest to my previous calls. It's no secret that opportunistic crows follow coyotes in hopes of garnering some scraps.

If you can imitate the distress call of an animal in your area that a coyote might consider as a meal, do it. And when choosing a predator call, don't get hung up on brand names; focus instead on the dining preferences of your coyote targets. To a coyote, eating a fawn is like scoring on a super-sized Big Mac combo meal, yet rarely do I hear of other callers using the bawling fawn, one of my favorite prey-in-distress calls.

LEARN COYOTE TALK
Ever yearned to be bilingual? Well, try mastering the wide range of howls, barks, yips and whines that is the language of the coyote, thus furnishing your setup with another dimension of realism. Steer clear of barks, which represent a warning, and focus instead on nonaggressive, welcoming howls. If you can master a nonaggressive howl, that's all you'll ever have to know. A drawn-out howl tells other coyotes "I'm here!" and irks them into showing themselves as they look for the urine-marking territorial invader.

Don't get me wrong: Yips and whines indicate feeding activity and can lure a coyote into range, as will growls. But with the howl you don't risk the chance of scaring away young coyotes, or those recently whipped in a fight.

You can begin and end your setup with howls while mixing prey-in-distress calls in the middle. Or you can use howls by themselves to attract coyotes. If you use prey-in-distress calls, you'll send a message of a coyote invader raiding another coyote's refrigerator, and action can take place almost immediately.