Glassing / Spotting

[captpschar]

I'm giving coyote hunting a shot this year, and in the scouting and calling I've done so far in some timber lands, I think the skills that I lack the most are spotting/glassing skills.  I wouldn't be surprised if I've managed to call in more than one Coyote and failed to notice.

What approach do you guys take to spotting coyotes in timber?  What do you look for?  How do you look for it?  Do you start with eyes and then go to glass when you see movement?  Do you pick lanes or areas and glass continually?  How do you do it?

[captpschar]

Example: spotting squirrels in timber, my approach is to move slow and steady and not look at anything in particular, but to just keep a wide visual awareness and wait for my vision to cue in on movement.  Once I see some movement I glass up and I’m looking specifically for the tail or the eye or the paw, but especially for the tail, because for some reasons squirrels don’t seem to know how ridiculous their tails are and don’t hide them well, and they always stand out to me.

[Bofire]

experience, I cannot tell you how many I call every year and do not know it until I stand up and blow my stand. its just the facts. I think I kill one in 10, I see, and one in 25 I call. truthfully. the animals are way smarter than I am.
Carl
 

[captpschar]

experience, I cannot tell you how many I call every year and do not know it until I stand up and blow my stand. its just the facts. I think I kill one in 10, I see, and one in 25 I call. truthfully. the animals are way smarter than I am.
Carl

Sounds like the awful truth. 😓

[AWS]

leave the bino's at home specially in the timber or close cover.  You have to make so many movements to glass that a coyote is going to spot you long before you find him.  Learn to pick up movement of a coyote, the shape of  and ear or a color different or out of place.  Slowly scan with your eyes and head with slow even movement, learn to use your peripheral vision also.  Rely on your caller to bring the coyote into view and watch for him sneaking in.

Same with scopes, leave them on 1 or 2x and don't mess with them, odds are that a coyote will more often than not be close enough that a wide FOX is more important than X's and if he is far enough away that you need more X's to make the shot you have more than enough time to turn the scope up.  The old adage "There is always time to turn a scope up but never enough time to turn it down"

Good luck.

[lord grizzly]

I remember when I really turned the corner on success with coyotes and started killing a ton was when I stopped putting myself at a disadvantage. Sounds simple but I think a lot of guys do it. You try so hard to hide yourself on a set that you set up to low or with  blind spots or I to thick of cover that I’ll tell you there way better at hiding in than you are at seeing them.

Granted I’m not hunting timber but slot of the time I’m sitting right out in the open on a hill but I can see everything. Trust your cami, keep the wind and sit still. When those dogs commit they usually come charging and you see I’m pretty easy with a good vantage.

Other advice would be out of the timber and into some sage brush country with a high population...

[captpschar]

leave the bino's at home specially in the timber or close cover.  You have to make so many movements to glass that a coyote is going to spot you long before you find him.  Learn to pick up movement of a coyote, the shape of  and ear or a color different or out of place.  Slowly scan with your eyes and head with slow even movement, learn to use your peripheral vision also.  Rely on your caller to bring the coyote into view and watch for him sneaking in.

Same with scopes, leave them on 1 or 2x and don't mess with them, odds are that a coyote will more often than not be close enough that a wide FOX is more important than X's and if he is far enough away that you need more X's to make the shot you have more than enough time to turn the scope up.  The old adage "There is always time to turn a scope up but never enough time to turn it down"

Good luck.

This is good stuff and makes sense to me.  I'm going to give leaving the binos at home a try and see how that treats me, open wider vision, slow scanning, good tips.

I remember when I really turned the corner on success with coyotes and started killing a ton was when I stopped putting myself at a disadvantage. Sounds simple but I think a lot of guys do it. You try so hard to hide yourself on a set that you set up to low or with  blind spots or I to thick of cover that I’ll tell you there way better at hiding in than you are at seeing them.

Granted I’m not hunting timber but slot of the time I’m sitting right out in the open on a hill but I can see everything. Trust your cami, keep the wind and sit still. When those dogs commit they usually come charging and you see I’m pretty easy with a good vantage.

Other advice would be out of the timber and into some sage brush country with a high population...

I hadn't considered this, but when I think about it, I bet you've just saved me a LOT of grief.  To this point I've scouted and identified potentially productive areas, clearings, cuts, etc, and scouted around enough in each one to decide that this general area would make a good spot to set up, give or take but to put in the work to find the exact right spot that gives me the maximum advantage for an area was not something I have done yet.  I bet this makes a HUGE difference, thank you.

[lord grizzly]

Another thing I’d get real good at if hunting timber is a shot gun. I hunt some pretty wide open sage brush and I still kill a solid amount of my coyotes inside 40 yards. Those things show up out of nowhere

[AWS]

You can get away with a lot when you use a caller with a remote in close cover, it makes hunting close cover much easier.

As far as guns for close cover, I've gone the shotgun route and found it lacking as there always seems to be one where they stop just outside of shotgun range.  I tried the take two guns and always seem to have the wrong one in hand when needed.  A far better solution is a 1-4x20, 1.5-6x40mm or 2-7/10x35-40 scope you want enough FOV to get a whole+ coyote in the scope at 10 yards and 4x or more will get you to 300 yards on the top end easily.  Even the rifles I use in open country have 1.5-2x on the bottom end as coyotes seem to be able to materialize out of thin air sometimes.

1-4x24mm on my Win 70 222 Rem (100' FOV on 1x, that's 10' at 1o yards, a lot to see close in and with practice you can learn to use them with both eyes open like a red dot)

 

Another 222 Rem with a 1-4x20mm scope
 


Open country Savage in 22-204 with a 1.5-6x40mm Sightron scope (ugly coyote, last one of the season)

[AWS]

Now if you want to get into some specialty stuff for coyote hunting in the brush here's some eye candy.

 Combo guns are great you always have the right gun in hand and choice of rifle or shotguns is just the choice of trigger.  There is a big difference in combo guns, the ideal combo gun has two triggers and a safety, instant selection of rifle or shotgun, no hammer to cock between shots and you can mount the scope low as you don't have to get your thumb under it to cock the hammer or change selector on a savage 24.

12ga/5.6x50R Mag (souped up 222 Rem Mag)

 

12ga/22 Savage Highpower (30-30 necked to .228)



A little more out of the ordinary but really handy.

Drilling in 16ga/16ga/6.5x58R Sauer (comparable to the 25-35 Win) an ounce of NP BB's will ruin any coyotes day inside 40 yards.



Note all are wearing 1-4x20 scopes

[captpschar]

You can get away with a lot when you use a caller with a remote in close cover, it makes hunting close cover much easier.

No worries AWS, I already built a rifle based on your advice.  Tikka stainless lightweight 243 with a leupold 1.5-4x, wrapped in camp and everything.

Thanks again by the way.

[captpschar]

But!  After buying that rifle, I’m reluctant to shell out for a remote caller before I build up some of my coyote hunting skills around it.  Do you use a chair of any kind?  Just a pad?  How do you do it?

[AWS]

If your hunting close cover the very best investment in calls you can make are remote calls.   When you are calling with hand calls in close cover all of the coyotes attention is focused on the source of the sound and they can pinpoint that down to the square foot so it gives you little margin of error to make the shot.   I'm not an advocate of very expensive long distance remote calls.  I've called a number of coyotes with a little $20 JS Attractor, used to carry it in my upland coat for those spots that just yell "CALL HERE".  In past years my wife would dub in 3 min blank time on my cassettes so I could place the call turn it on and return to my stand before it would get to the calling section of the tape.  I hunted with a pro-guide and his goto caller was a little FP Spitefire in thick cover, sometimes he would supplement with hand calls at the beginning of the stand as an attention getter and let Spitfire finish the stand.  I still  use 20 yr old Minaska M-1 Bandits for a lot of my calling.

[captpschar]

If your hunting close cover the very best investment in calls you can make are remote calls.   When you are calling with hand calls in close cover all of the coyotes attention is focused on the source of the sound and they can pinpoint that down to the square foot so it gives you little margin of error to make the shot.   I'm not an advocate of very expensive long distance remote calls.  I've called a number of coyotes with a little $20 JS Attractor, used to carry it in my upland coat for those spots that just yell "CALL HERE".  In past years my wife would dub in 3 min blank time on my cassettes so I could place the call turn it on and return to my stand before it would get to the calling section of the tape.  I hunted with a pro-guide and his goto caller was a little FP Spitefire in thick cover, sometimes he would supplement with hand calls at the beginning of the stand as an attention getter and let Spitfire finish the stand.  I still  use 20 yr old Minaska M-1 Bandits for a lot of my calling.

At the risk of completely changing the direction of this thread, since I’ve got your attention, please critique my plan to avoid buying a remote caller (which I plan to buy eventually):

I am considering this approach: simple home brew feather and fur decoy planted fairly nearby stand position upwind, then infrequent intermittent hand calling, on the order of a single bleat or distress sound every couple of minutes, with the idea being to try to attract a coyote and give them a point of interest without overplaying my hand and making it too easy to pin my position by sound.  I hope for a coyote arriving between calls and investigating the decoy, giving me a chance to zap it.

Do you think this approach will be unnecessarily low percentage and that I should just bite the bullet now and buy and work with the tools that have the best chance of working, or do you think it’s a reasonable approach?

[smithkl42]

At the risk of completely changing the direction of this thread, since I’ve got your attention, please critique my plan to avoid buying a remote caller (which I plan to buy eventually):

I am considering this approach: simple home brew feather and fur decoy planted fairly nearby stand position upwind, then infrequent intermittent hand calling, on the order of a single bleat or distress sound every couple of minutes, with the idea being to try to attract a coyote and give them a point of interest without overplaying my hand and making it too easy to pin my position by sound.  I hope for a coyote arriving between calls and investigating the decoy, giving me a chance to zap it.

Do you think this approach will be unnecessarily low percentage and that I should just bite the bullet now and buy and work with the tools that have the best chance of working, or do you think it’s a reasonable approach?

One alternative approach to consider is spending $30 on a waterproof bluetooth speaker (one of the ones with ~100' range), spend $5 on a calling app on your phone, and give that a shot. Those small, portable speakers definitely aren't as loud as the ones you'd get in a dedicated e-caller, but they're way more flexible, and a whole lot cheaper.

Just got setup with that approach myself - only tried it once, but it was in a noisy area, which wasn't the best location. I'm going to try again tomorrow, in a quieter area, and see if I can scare anything up.

[captpschar]

Lemme know how it goes.

[konradcountry]

You can get away with a lot when you use a caller with a remote in close cover, it makes hunting close cover much easier.

As far as guns for close cover, I've gone the shotgun route and found it lacking as there always seems to be one where they stop just outside of shotgun range.

The remote is also safer if you are hunting by yourself. I have a really good hand caller but if by myself I prefer to have the attention elsewhere.

I think East vs West is a big factor for shotgun use. There are woods in Western Wa where you won't get a clear shot past 50 yards and you can get brush deflection with smaller bullets. Shotgun is also better for anything on the run. But on the East side there are a lot more open spaces. You could be headed for the woods and spot one in a field. On the West side you see far fewer just driving around. I have a relative that bikes around rainier a lot and he never sees them. Rainier is off limits to hunting but the coyotes there are still stay away from roads and people. On the East side I have seen them crossing busy highways.