Predator Hunting

     “I’ve been calling yet nothing comes in” should be the title for this essay and it happens to all predator hunters who hunt from Arkansas to Arizona, Florida to Oregon and all points in between. You may have started to look over your techniques and your equipment and you know that you haven’t changed anything. Still, you wonder “what am I doing wrong “. The answer might well be “nothing”.
        Let’s start with a predator’s range. Most wildlife biologists, game wardens and experienced predator hunters will agree that predators have ranges and sometimes those ranges are over ten square miles in size. I know of a local pack of coyotes that range up and down a river for a distance of nearly seven miles and that territory includes several airports, restaurants, hundreds of homes and section after section of farm lands, pastures and open desert. There’s abundant water available and life is grand for these coyotes. My point ? They range for a distance of over seven miles and they will, without warning, pick up and move leaving me empty handed.

        Coyotes out in rural Arizona are the same way. They will pick up and move for no apparent reason. One coyote was radio collared and tracked for a distance of over 10 miles as it trotted to a distant water hole, apparently sipped and then turned around and went back to its starting point. Within a 24 hour period. What made it move? Only that coyote knows but it might have been pressure from predator callers or it might have been simple boredom.

        Let’s take a look at the term “pressure”. I equate the word pressure can mean that coyotes are hearing too many dying rabbit sounds followed by the roar of a rifle. I think of the coyote that’s had a near death experience or two as having received a PhD in canine survival and hangs up at 100+ yards playing peeka boo with you in the brush. That same coyote might very well take it’s brothers and sisters to another place, some place it thinks is safer, some place without you and your bang stick.

        Another reason might be bobcats and lions. Several years ago I found a tank that had a lot of large bobcat sign around it. I worked that bobcat for two years carefully checking the ground each trip and thinking about each calling session before I started. During this time I noticed that there were almost no coyote tracks in that part of the zip code. Why? I theorized that the bobcat in question must be large enough to scare the canines. When I asked a wildlife biologist about my theory he agreed and said it wasn’t uncommon for that to happen.

       And then there is the matter of their annual need to mate. Remember that coyotes mate in February and March and drop their litters about 62 days after a successful copulation. During the mating period the last thing many mature coyotes are interested in is your silly dinner bell sounds. Wiley is busy watching that cute little 2 year old female and has very little interest in coming to your dinner bell. It’s party time in coyote land and even the thought of a kitty burrito isn’t going to change the mind of Wiley and the girls!

        Another few sentences need to be included about hunting alone. Solo-hunting. Lone hunting … You catch my drift, don’t you? Here’s the deal. If you solo hunt as I do you have to accept the fact that a large number of predators can and frequently do come in from behind, spot me and tip toe out of the zip code and I never know it. Case in point: I was solo hunting last year southwest of Tucson and I concealed in the shade of a Palo Verde tree. I had walked about 110 yards from the truck to the stand where I called for nearly 20 minutes. As I dragged up and returned to the Chevy I noticed that on top of my footprints into the stand there was a canine footprint. That damn coyote had back-doored me and trotted down my footsteps for nearly 50 feet before turning and wandering away. Folks, if you solo hunt then you get back-doored more often than you realize! I’ll keep the story about the coyote that retrieved my ham and cheese sandwich from the cab of a truck for another time!