Hunting Coyotes over Bait

Coyotes could probably be the easiest game to hunt in the wild, thanks to their love for easy food. Hunting coyotes over bait helps to bring them to the open where you can easily take them down with your shot. While food is a major attraction, coyotes also respond to calls. However, calls are limited to the open country where travel sounds faster without obstacles. In the woods, where vegetation is thick, you would prefer using food bait to calling the coyotes.

Setting the Bait Location

Hunting coyotes over bait demands that you understand the perfect location where you need to lay the bait. The bait location that you pick must be a place that:

• Is attractive to the coyotes without giving them any clue of it being a trap to lure them, and
• It is ideal for you as a hunter to take a clean and easy shot without a lot of strain.

Picking the shooting location comes first. From there, you will locate and set the bait in an ideal position where you can shoot best. The shooting location has to be hidden, whether on elevated ground or down in a trench.

Consider also the weather. Is it windy? And if it is, what is the direction of the wind? Predator animals tend to have a great sense of scent and will perceive your scent easily if you hide in the wrong direction of the wind. Let the bait location and your shooting location be adjacent to the direction of the wind. That way, the wind carries your scent away from the bait towards your back, leaving little or no trace of you. 

Once you have your shooting location, ensure you secure the bait in an open area for better visibility when taking the shot. If there is no open area around, you can create one by clearing the bushes and shrubs.

What Can You Use as a Coyote Bait?

After settling for the best locations for setting the bait and hiding during the shot, the next thing you want to know is what you will use to bait. The best way of coming up with ideal coyote baits is knowing what their favorite meals are. What is it that they can’t resist? If you get what they love, you will have them out within minutes.

So, what are some of the baits you could use? Let’s find out below.

Beavers

While Beavers are a meal sent from heaven for Coyotes, it might be illegal to use them as bait. But you cannot throw a chance of using them through the window if one knocks in the form of a dead beaver. If you come across a dead one, you can set it up as bait, and you will be attracting a group of coyotes to your bait. They rarely feed on beavers, and they are highly likely to welcome the chance to have such a rare meal.

Since they will be willing to take more risks than they would for other bait types, you can set this one in a more strategic position. Somewhere you can have the most accurate shot immediately they appear and before they get away with the bait.

Deer Remains

This could be the best coyote bait to use for your coyote hunting. First, coyotes love them so much, and secondly, because you can mostly legally get deer meat to use as bait. The smell of the dead deer will easily attract the coyotes from their hideouts.

The carcass of a deer is generally larger than most of the other animal carcasses you may use. With the huge carcass, the coyotes are likely to spend more time eating, which is advantageous for you. You get ample time to aim and take an accurate shot as the coyote takes down the meat.

However, bait and hunting laws vary with towns, cities, and countries. You have to check with the local hunting laws to ascertain that using a deer carcass as bait is legal. Using a deer as bait is also tiresome and demands that you incorporate others’ help to haul the carcass to the bait location.

Cow Afterbirths

Getting the afterbirths of a cow is not a dignified thing to opt for and could be disgusting. But at times, desperate times call for desperate measures, especially where you have the promise of positive results. You can pick the cows after birth with your gloves and stuff them inside a container from your farmyard. These are a great attraction to coyotes.

 Immediately you unleash them to the coyotes; you can rest assured that they will come sprawling over the spoils. They can never resist the stench of the afterbirths. As they clear the meal, you can always take your shots for a kill.

Mistakes to Avoid when Hunting Coyotes

There are several mistakes hunters make when hunting coyotes. Some of them include the following.

Hunting Coyotes in the Wrong Places

Scouting is a crucial step in coyote hunting, but many coyote hunters rarely consider this step. On numerous occasions, they will set up their bait in places where there are little to no coyotes at all. At the end of it all, you end up wasting time and energy you could have saved if you had done scouting before.

Using the Wrong Call

Calling in coyotes needs mastery and articulation of sounds. Most hunters fail a significant time because they use the sounds commonly used by many other coyote hunters. When the coyotes hear a sound they have heard before, the chances are they will mostly not respond. Using newer sounds such as that of a bird in distress could lead to more success. You could opt for an electronic caller if you are yet to learn the sounds the coyotes respond to.

Spoiling the Shooting Setup

Another terrible mistake hunters make ruining the shooting location set up way before the shooting begins. When you choose a place that doesn’t meet all the desired requirements, you will likely ruin your chances of successfully bringing down a coyote.

Conclusion

Using baits remains one of the most effective ways of hunting coyotes. With well-laid strategies, you can never miss one of these cunning canines in your hunting success list. You could also settle for other options of coyote baits that are most available to you. But if you could settle for the ones above, the better for you.