Hot Dogs: Summer Coyote Hunting

We had two strikes against us right out of the gate. Rodney had smoked a cigar while wearing his camo and Marc was wearing blue jeans.

On the third call set of the morning, we set up in a triangle, our backs against juniper trees. I had Rodney tuck up under some bushy limbs on the downwind side. I figured with the wind constant out of the east, our best bet was to put our primary shooter, Marc, where he could spot a coyote if it came out of a gully running east to west. The gully would funnel the wind while our scent would go across the flat. This was public-land elk country, and we were not far from an alfalfa field. There had to be coyotes here. Because temperatures were running in the 80s, we were wearing light camo. Marc (coyote hunter by day, guitar tech by night), however, was on tour with Luke Bryan, who was playing that evening in my hometown, and had arrived without hunting gear. We tucked him into the sagebrush to hide his denim.

Instead of prey distress calls, I started with submissive female coyote sounds. In less than 4 minutes, a coyote popped out of the gully and stood facing Marc at 128 yards, an easy shot for the .204 Ruger. It had come down the gully out of the east, just like I had hoped it would.

We were probably the first hunters to call coyotes in that part of the county in five months, and the submissive female vocals were just the ticket to toll that dog into the crosshairs. This was not the first coyote I had called in this spot. I already had a good idea about where it would come from based on the terrain and the temperature.

LOCATION LOGISITICS

For two out of the last three years, I’ve had muzzleloader antelope tags in the same game management unit. Over the course of many hours and days scouting for pronghorns, I had noticed elk gravitating to alfalfa pivots among the junipers. Coyotes were never far away.

In coyote country, I always try to locate the following, in order of preference: cattle operations (stockyards, feed yards, watering holes); the trails elk use; and acreage sewed to alfalfa or orchard grass.

There is always food for a coyote around cattle. Other coyotes shadow elk herds. If a calf gets caught in a fence or hit on the highway, the coyote clean-up crew is never far behind. And coyotes find their main food sources—mice, ground squirrels and rabbits—in abundance in the alfalfa. The same kind of logic can apply to sheep and goat paddocks, chicken farms, elk feeding areas, private elk herds and duck clubs. Any place where farmers and ranchers raise and wrangle animals, there will be the weak and the sick and the boneyards where the scraps end up.

In June and July, coyotes come out of their dens and tend to wander, especially in July as pups learn to fend for themselves. This is when the bigger males are likely to be traveling alone. 

Look for coyotes to bed on the sides of hills far from human activity. The travel corridors between bedding, feeding and water are the places to hunt.

Scout for tracks at water holes, but remember coyotes can get water from irrigation canals, in fields where irrigation pivots are working and from leaky irrigation pipes.

SETTING AN AMBUSH

When moving from bedding to feeding areas, coyotes tend to travel through brush or timber and will use gullies, coulees and washes for cover. Fence lines make for convenient travel lanes, and where they like to go under the wire, their hair gets caught in the barbs, so keep an eye out for that.

Because of comfortable temps in June, July and August, it’s easy to sit for longer periods of time and watch a water source or a fence line than it is in winter. If there are cows, there will be coyotes too. Coyotes will mostly come in solo, but if they do show up in multiples, take the one at the back first. If you drop it (or, heaven forbid, miss), stay in place. One gunshot does not a coyote hunt ruin. A good stand can produce multiple shot opportunities over the course of a day. Plan to sit for 2 or 3 hours. If no dogs show up, have an electronic call or mouth reed ready to deploy.

A coyote likes to travel to a feeding area with its nose in the wind. Be careful about wind direction and set up within shooting distance of the kill zone with a good view to the downwind side. Sit with your back to a tree, bush or boulder. I bring a pad to sit on to get an additional few inches off the ground, then I orient the rifle toward the spot where I expect the coyote to appear. My face is masked, hands are gloved and movement is kept to a minimum. My bino is in a chest rig, ready to use if needed. Before I sit down, I put out a decoy. It might be a turkey decoy or a rabbit silhouette or simply a feather dangling on a string—anything to hold a coyote’s attention.

More than looking for coyotes, I look for crows, magpies and especially ravens, which tend to keep track of coyotes. If I see a raven or three moving in from the downwind side, I look for a coyote to show up with them.

Magpies, too, are a good sentinel. If there are cows, the magpies could be with them most of the day, picking flies off the cattle while waiting for a better meal to come along.

CALLING STRATEGY

While desert dogs could wander in any time of day, early morning and late evening are the best times to call around working cattle or sheep operations. Coyote vocalizations in June and July are likely to elicit a defensive response from both females with pups and wandering males.

I think of the various sounds in my call library as triggers, and I use a variety of vocalizations rather than sticking to one or two. In the evening or morning, my favorite starting sound is a single lonesome howl, which I follow with five minutes of quiet. This sets the scene: Here is a wandering coyote, new to the area.

Next in the queue is the sound of fighting coyotes mixed with a rabbit-in-distress call, which lasts for 30 seconds, followed by 2 minutes of silence. Mr. Wandering Coyote has caught a rabbit and is fighting with another coyote.

The scenario is 8 minutes old at this point, and this is when I switch to squealing pup sounds. I might let that go a minute while mama coyote gets good and angry. If I have a motion decoy, it is activated. Then, silence for 2 minutes. I might turn off the decoy then start it again. Each start and stop of the call or the decoy is a trigger that could potentially get a coyote to commit.

Now 10 or 11 minutes in, I switch to submissive coyote sounds and pup squeals—30 seconds of sound and 60 seconds of silence, bringing the set to the 20-minute mark.

Toward the end of a set, I scan nearby slopes and look under low-hanging branches. More often than we know, coyotes watch our setups from afar, not quite sold on the scenario but curious. A coyote that hangs up at 400 yards is still worth a try. Often, a coyote feels secure enough by the distance, allowing a hunter to set up on a backpack for the shot.

One July evening, my friend Lee Van Tassell and I called on BLM land adjacent to a large alfalfa field. I started with a lonesome howl, then called for 20 minutes. We were about to stand up when Lee spotted the coyote sitting under a juniper and had to turn slightly to shoot. Lee was shooting a .22-250 that day, and a well-placed Nosler Ballistic Tip knocked the big male over in its tracks.

COYOTE KIT

• Essential gear for summertime ’yotes

Whether I’m headed over to the neighbor’s place for an evening stand or into the desert to call for the day, the kit is the same. First, I want to have my very thin camo gloves and a facemask and whatever camouflage helps me best blend into the environment.

My go-to electronic call is a remote-operated FoxPro X2S. Around my neck I have a lanyard with two calls. One is a Dogbreath Hot Momma coyote estrus reed; the other is a handmade Harrison rabbit-in-distress call.

For the decoy, I’ll opt for either a crow, coyote or fawn silhouette. My favorite motion decoy is a feather tied to a tree branch.

My binocular is an image-stabilized Sig Zulu6, which I carry in an ALPS Outdoorz Xtreme chest rig. I carry a rangefinder, too, in the same rig.

The rifle? That depends. My current favorite is a Montana Rifle in 6.5 Creedmoor, topped with a Hawke Frontier 30 SF 4-24x50 scope and stoked with Nosler 140-grain Ballistic Tips.

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• This article was featured in the June/July 2024 issue of Game & Fish magazine. Click to subscribe