Jon Collins and Tory Cook discuss calling tactics for transient vs resident coyotes.
Welcome to the FoxPro podcast brought to you by Fox Pro Game Calls. Welcome back to the FoxPro podcast. On this episode, we're discussing strategies for calling transient coyotes versus mated pairs and hunting low density areas versus high density areas. Tory Cook of MFK is on the line. What's happening, Tori? Oh, another day. I'm getting ready for these vocal coats. That's going to be right around the corner. So, I'm That's my favorite time when they get vocal. So, I'm I'm ready for that. This turkey vocal turkey stuff winding down. Vocal coats is next. So, I'm Yep. What What about the turkeys? I ain't heard much out of you. I have. You had any luck in turkey woods? I have hunted. So, I'm changing in my older age. We've been a been lucky enough to get some spots of our own and got some turkeys on these spots and I used to want to kill every one of them I heard and now I find myself sitting out there on property lines protecting the turkeys that's on my spot not want them to get killed. But uh yeah, yeah, it's uh I actually coyote hunted. I hunted the first day of season and then I left and went on a made a pretty good loop co hunting. Went through Kansas, hunted with Joey Wor, then swung down through Oklahoma and hunted with uh Paul Sears and Jonathan McDaniels and that by the time pretty good cruise there. Oh man, it was a good time. I I enjoyed it. We killed several coats. Got some really good footage uh in some man some of the as far as I'm concerned some of the prettiest coat stands I've ever been on. Of course I hunt some ugly ground down here. So it may not be as impressive to some people but man we made some pretty stands on that stuff and that I was out there coyote hunting instead of instead of chasing turkeys. Well, well, I seem like I remember talking to you and you was either still out there with Joy or just getting back. Now, you got to tell you might be I might be remembering this wrong, but didn't you maybe look at the calendar wrong and didn't realize when turkey season was coming in? That's exactly what happened because I probably I probably wouldn't have planned that to hit like that. But yeah, it was it came in a Monday somewhere else. Yeah, it was a Monday before, so I thought I had a week and I'd already made plans for the trip. So, I didn't realize until the Sunday before it came in that our turkey season opened the next morning. But, uh, yeah, but I I know where Sarah turkeys are at and we can't kill but two here. So, I'll I'll knock them out for I tell you what I'm doing. I'm waiting till this storm goes through. We're supposed to get some cool weather uh or cooler weather this Thursday and Friday. And them turkeys turkeys turkeys ain't turkeys don't uh they're not as hard as uh as a coyote usually. So Well, they can't smell. That's Hey, that's it. If you can beat their eyes, you usually got them when they're sitting out there hollering, "Here I am." over and over and over again. Yeah, I listened to one yesterday morning. Well, there's actually two of them and uh they were gobbling good and I didn't even have a gun with me. I was just sitting out there watching property lines. I got some I'm in deep south Arkansas. So, you got some rogues around you. Oh, they they born they born a poacher down here seems like. So,
and and just so the pot ain't calling the kettle black. I have stepped across the line a time or two for a goblin turkey. So I I know the I know how it works. You say some of them boys in Arkansas's born with a with a 22 in one hand and a mag light in the other. Yeah. They don't they don't give them toys to play with. They give them a loaded gun. Yeah. That's what I told Joey when we were out there on that trip. He most people time they listen to this podcast, they've already seen his clip on all kinds of social media making fun of me cuz I clicked on a coat and he was making me unload my gun between every stand and I had never he's a stickler for that stuff. He he Yeah, he's through the through the letter, son. He he lived in Illinois there for a while. Of course, we was in Kansas. He wasn't 100% sure what the rule was, so he wasn't taking any chances. And I don't blame him. When that's your livelihood, you don't want to get a get a a stupid ticket for something that simple. But I don't ever unload my gun. Like I said on that video, you unload your gun, you walking around with a stick. So that's right. I was sitting out there with a stick. I think that was our seventh stand. And I had unloaded and loaded that gun over and over and over again. And on that stand, we pulled up two turkeys in a field. Some of the turkeys and they got me distracted when we got out of the truck. I was looking at them as we were walking in. Never slipped them shells in the gun. Sat down. I mean, two or three squeaks. We played squeaky squeaky starting out. Two or three squeaks. Co comes running over the hill. Beautiful call in. Runs right to our feet. I click on it. Yeah. I think I think Joey liked that better than if I'd killed it. Well, that's something different, y'all. Y'all don't let many get away. So, no. And just right after that, we turned the call right back on. That one run off. Turned the call right back on. Here come another one. And uh we killed it. So, it ended up being a a successful stand after all. But only got one instead of two. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we won't we won't bore these guys with more turkey talk. I was going to tell you about some turkey hunts I had lately, but this is a coyote podcast. Well, I knew I'm still but but me saying it, I'm still pumped up about turkey season. Here it is. This is April 28th and uh I tagged out Kentucky this week and I'm contemplating going down to Tennessee. Hey, Tennessee. I love hunting turkey hunting in Tennessee and I saw I think everybody's probably you had the I guess you had the Foxro crew out there and y'all worked on them pretty good. Look like Yeah. Yeah, we p piled them up then last two days I went and got on the shotgun. Couldn't get nobody hunting with me when when I'm going to be on a shotgun. So I go by myself so I run the camera and the shotgun. Everybody wants to hunt. I'm going to let them shoot. But when it's the other way around, nobody wants to go. It's it's weird how that happens. But last two days, awesome hunt. So, we won't get We won't get into it too much. Y'all just have to watch the videos when they come out next year, next spring. But, but what I was want to talk to you about, we mentioned it earlier talking about transient coyotes versus mated pairs. And we'll get into some low density and high density calling later on. But, you know, here on one of your latest hunts, you kind of alluded to earlier, you know, where in the Midwest, you you saw a distinct difference in what type of sounds that the younger coyotes were responding to versus the older age class coyotes. You want to talk about that a little bit? For any of our longtime listeners, one thing that I hope they pay attention to when we're doing this FoxPro podcast is that when we learn new stuff, even if it might be I wouldn't say contradict stuff that we've said before, but things that we learn while we're hunting. I know you and I talk about this behind the scenes some before we do these podcasts, but always looking at these research papers and the stuff I learn from raising coats and then how that ties in with what we see while we're hunting. All this new stuff that we learn, we try to tie that in to stuff that we've talked about before and give all the listeners new information. And that's something that talking about these transient coats and sounds and resident coats and all that kind of stuff. That's something that I feel like I've really started tying together as of late in this hunt. This recent hunt I think kind of put the nail in the coffin for me on some things. And Yep. Well, tell tell us what you were you were seeing with the like the call you because you talked to me about this and uh tell me what you was seeing with the transit coyotes, the younger the younger coyotes. I know you was telling me it seemed like you all were trying something a little bit different than what you were used to that you usually use like down in Arkansas. Um you was hunting there in Oklahoma. You said you was you all were running a lot of prey distress, right? And that that's what I was kind of getting at when uh when I said some of this stuff may sound slightly contradictory to some of the stuff we've said before. You know, on some of the previous podcast, we've talked about how important it is to run vocals and little pup stuff and and your fights, mostly cow sounds. And on recent hunt, then back up just a little bit. You'll also hear people talking about in places where they run all prey distress year round just play the rabbit. Yep. And you'll see conflict because of people saying one thing versus another. And I've been paying a lot of attention to research papers and the sounds that we're using and something I learned from raising coats was aging coats and getting coats pretty close on how old they are. And so I've been paying attention to all that stuff for quite a while. Well, on this recent hunt, going out there with the Kansas and Oklahoma, I was paying attention to every coach that we called in and killed, looking at the age class of it and the sounds that we were using. And when I got out there, Joey and Paul and Jonathan both told me said, "Hey, pre sounds are working pretty good right now." That's that's a little bit different than what I would be doing at the house. Yep. But what what else we were doing different is we were pretty much making blind stands. We were going to areas that they knew produce goats, making blind stands where at home I'm usually targeting located coats. And so the way all this ties together, every coat that we called in on prey distress, every single one of them was a yearling co year old coat. I mean having having its birthday when we killed it pretty much, you know, within a week. La last year's Yeah. Last year's litter. Last year's litter. One year old cow. Yeah. Is what were coming in to the prey distress sounds. Well, tying that back to the research papers. This just had my mind, you know, I was thinking on all this stuff as it was happening. Those year old coyotes are transients. And if you start learning about transient coats and how they use the landscape, I thought this was pretty important because it gives us a little insight into how we're making stands and what sounds we're using, what kind of coats we may be calling to and what sounds are going to target certain coats better than others. And if you learn about the way that transients use the landscape, they're typically avoiding areas that are holding resident coats because resident coats are territorial. Transient coats are not. They're looking for a territory. Right. What I thought was interesting is we're going out there making blind stands in fairly high populated areas of coyotes. The coyotes are getting to the call really fast. They're running in on prey, distress sounds, and we're killing them. go look at their teeth. It's your old coat. Yep. Yep. The exception to that was a couple stands we made where we had vocal coats. One stand in particular that I made with uh Paul and Johnny. We sat down. We're running prey distress. Coyote starts howling, carrying on all worked up. Wouldn't come into the prey distress sounds. We go to vocals. We howl. End up turning on table scraps. Here comes the biggest coat that we killed on the whole trip. Comes running in. We kill it. Go look at his teeth. Three, four year old coat. Yeah, probably. Most likely that his behavior I was familiar with the way he was barking and carried on. More than likely that was a mated pair and there was a den in that general area and we were able to call that code in using vocals which ties in to some of the things people have heard us say talking about because we're usually talking about calling den coats and resident coats and we're tying that to the vocal stuff. Well, that played right along with it. The two the two older cows that we killed on that trip both came to vocals, which ties right into the resident cows. And this is stuff that probably a lot of people don't think about when they go sit down and make a stand and why when we were talking behind the scenes, we thought this would probably be a good podcast to do because I think we're bringing some some newer information to people, some different insight based on what you're calling to. Are you calling the transient coach? Are you calling to resident coach or are you potentially calling to both because you're making a blind stand and you don't know what's out there. And so and you got and you guys were mainly making blind stands, right? Blind calling. Yeah, we were blind calling and u and and give and give everybody a definition of that some because I'm sure we got newcomers always come. What what do we mean when we're talking about making blind stands or blind calling? blind calling. I I look at it as going in and making a stand where you think or hope coach to be, but you don't know for sure. You hadn't seen coach, right? You don't know for sure that they're there at that time. You just know making a educated guess on making a stand just out of the blue, right? Type and then the coach would be knowing that there's a coat there where there you've either heard them, seen them, the farmer told you, whatever. you know that you're calling the codes and that's that's the difference. And with the I guess the transient versus resident deal, you get into the territorial stuff with those resident codes, you don't have that with the transients because the bulk of your transients are going to be yearling codes. So I think that ties right into why phrase sounds if you're calling happen to be calling a a transient, that may up your odds. Not that they won't come to vocals, but I think that ups your odds on calling those transient co to pray distress sounds where with your den pairs, your resident cos, especially during den season or puffering season, your odds are higher. It's not that they won't come to prey distress sounds, but your odds are higher. and why we've stressed it so much in earlier podcast. Those vocals are higher because you're dealing with territorial coaches. When now on these trips here, did you all call any older coyotes to the prey distress sounds? None. None that I remember, they were all they were all yearling coyotes. We had one more code that I thought was possibly a 2-year-old and yeah, which is probably still a transient most likely. Probably still a transient, but it also came to um vocals. So, the two older coyotes, if I remember right, I'm trying to remember. We called one on four. We called a few coyotes, the vocals, but all of the and I can't remember just what the breakdown was on that now, but the bulk all of the prey distress coyotes were coyotes. Well, well, that was going to be my next question. Did you call did you all call any yearling coyotes to any like puppy stuff or fights or anything like that? Yes, we had one come. Did you
remember if it came in on full route, which is extremely aggressive, or it was taper straps, also aggressive. Those both of those sounds are aggressive vocals, and we killed a year old coat on it, a little bitty year old coat on it, you know, just a small framed little male coat come burning into the sound. And so it's it's not that you won't call transients and younger coats with or transients in particular. It's not that you won't call them on vocals. I just think pray distress sounds are higher. And that ties right to why you see so much stuff about just play the rabbit because the majority of people are making blind stands. And when you go in and make blind stands, especially in higher goat populations, the odds favor that you're calling an area that would hold transients instead of residents. And you're usually calling one or the other depending on where you set up. And that's because of the way those coaches use the landscape. But I think that's why you'll see to just play the rabbit. guys are going in making blind stands, especially if they're calling higher population areas. They're calling in transient coats. And then where you see people that are pushing for vocals and locating and stuff like that. When they're locating coats and going moving in on those coats, they're calling resident coats. They're territorial. So, the vocal stuff is higher odds of calling those coats in. Right. I just did a just got finished doing it. We actually released it to today. You know, we're like I said, we're recording this on the 28th, I think. What the day is did a podcast with Thal Morris and uh Al was talking about and the title of the podcast is is uh hitting a hitting a reset button on coyotes, you know, resetting her crazy, right? And talking about the the birth of coyotes because that's what's going on through the month of April. And Al was talking about, you know, Colin through the spring when you still got pups in the ground or when they're first coming out and they're taking care of them. He says he hunts mainly western states and usually states it's got a pretty good population, you know, pretty good densities, right? And he he he uses some amount of prey distress on every stand. Y and his his reasoning is is kind of along with what you're going with. He says, you know, you're going to get all these transient young coyotes are going to come to that type of stuff. And he says that sometimes when you play a lot of the more aggressive stuff or even if it's just puppy stuff or pup distresses, they know if they come to that, they're entering into mated pairs or denning family groups territory. And that means he probably get his butt whooped. Yeah. And I think that's one. He says, "Go ahead." Yeah. Go ahead. Now you you was going go on with what you're thinking. Yeah. When we first started talking a while ago, we had that little bit of glitch in audio throwed me off for a second or two, but one when you mentioned that, one thing I think we probably need to cover for people right off the bat is I mentioned it while ago, but I didn't go into detail on it is how transients use the landscape versus how residents use the landscape. And there are a lot of GPS studies out there on this that that show this and it also will make sense to people when they think about calling and just like what you said about what Al talked about on on y'all's recent podcast. So you have these resident mated pairs of cos that that have a territory. They have a home range and they are territorial and defend that area. all of the and so however many resident coyotes you've got they are they have a home range here then the next set has a home range over a little bit the next set you know so it's kind of like a checkerboard of yep areas the most favorable habitat is where your resident coyotes are going to take up and have a territory and the higher your co population is obviously the more mated pairs you're going to have the more resident coat you're going to have, the more territories you're going to have on the landscape. The more of those territories that you that you get and the more that checkerboard fills in, it creates patterns for or not necessarily patterns, but it it creates vacancies across the landscape that those transients use. And the GPS colors have shown this over and over and over again with multiple studies. And it also makes sense because the transients are looking for a place to fill in and become a territory, but they're not territorial so to speak at that time. Yeah. So, right, they are typically as they travel and something else the GPS studies shows these transients will take off and they may never cross back through the same tracks again. They may come across a piece of property and never cross that property again as they travel. Yeah. But typically what they're doing is pretty much zigzagging between territories of resident codes. What we see a lot of times when we're blind calling and why prey distress works so well and just playing the rabbit works so well, especially in higher populations that have a higher percentage of transients is you can go out there and set down and make a blind stand. You don't know where the resident goes are. You don't know where those territories are at. But when you're calling the transient coats, if you do set out in an area that is not used by resident coats, the odds of you calling those resident codes are slim to none. But you have pretty good odds of calling in a transients, especially in those higher population areas because they are zigzagging through those areas and they don't they don't mind covering ground to come to the call because they're traveling anyway. They may not even right, like I said before, they might not even go back to that area that you called them out of. That may be the first time they come through there. That's also a reason you'll hear people talking about a lot of times. Again, it's more common in higher population areas. Everybody has those spots where you go set up and it produces coyotes every time. And that's a lot of what we were doing in Oklahoma is we were going to places that Paul and Johnny knew were good spots where they always call coyotes and y produce coyotes multiple times a year. Right. And if you look at the studies and the way that transients use the landscape m It's not just one transient coyote coming through there. It's multiple transients kind of following that same path, so to speak, where they're they're working their way between all of these resin between other territories, right? And so you can you can set down and you turn on prey distress and those transients are passing through there. They don't even know the area. A lot of times you're calling in calling them into a spot that they may have never stepped foot in before. So they're kind of coming in, you're blind calling and they're coming in blind, too, and taking advantage of, you know, opportunities to eat or whatever as they travel looking for a spot to field. And then on the flip side of that, those areas that are holding resident coats, if you happen to sit down in one of those blind calling, you just happen to sit down close to resident coats, den coats, and you run through prey distress sounds, you may not call those coyotes in. There's a there's a good chance, especially when they've got pups in the ground, that they're not going to come to the prey distress sounds. That's where your vocals are going to come in. And right so I think one thing probably need to when we touched on a little bit while ago in a lot of the other podcast where we've been talking about den season and pearing season and stuff like that we're we're targeting those family groups and those resident ghost coats that have territories and so we've been real heavy with with vocal stuff and around you know when I'm calling around here are other people that are locating coats Typically, when you go in and you locate coats and you move in and you know it's a family group, vocals are going to be your your highest odds of calling those coats in. And I don't know, tying tying all that stuff together, seeing the age of the coaches that were coming to prey distress sounds, knowing that that ties to those cos being transients versus causing an older age class coach with vocals. knowing that ties to mated pairs. I thought it kind of made all of that stuff full circle and give a little insight into Yeah. Well, it's one thing, you know, Al was talking about, you know, he is kind of he's making blind stands, you know, he's just, you know, he'll travel somewhere and just, you know, he'll get there and just just go to work, you know, go to go to Colin, right? And that's kind of what he was talking about. and he goes sets up on these spots, you know, just through experience or or whatever, you know, he sees the lay of the lay of the land, the terrain, and he just picks out spots like, "Hey, that should be holding a coyote or a coyote might be in there or coyote might be moving through here." And he sets up, starts calling and he kind of looks at it like casting the broadest net. Y, you know, he's he says, you know, I'm going to play my house. He said, then I'm also going to play a little bit of prey distress. He says, "I'm not playing near as much prey distress like right now versus what I would in the fall months from September through December." But he says, "I am going to play some prey." And that's pretty much way he put it out there. He says, "I don't know if I'm calling the transits or if I'm calling to a Denning family, right?" He says, "But I do know if a transit is there and it hears that juicy rabbit squalling or that little prairie dog crying or whatever it is, he knows he can call that transit in with it." And he says there's also that chance that you're going to call one of those denning um you know denning members to you because you know they've got to eat themselves. They've also once those pups go to get off milk, they've got to have meat to survive as well. So he's that was his his whole deal with it is you could still call a Denning family coyote to the prey and you'll almost certainly call the transit coyote to prey. So he says he always has some some amount of prey distress in his stand like through April and May, right? For those reasons. Yeah. And that's that is good reasoning and something that something else I've I've picked up on, something else to consider. And like I said, you know, as much as as much as I feel like I've learned about coaches over the years, I'm still picking up stuff and I'm still adjusting. Yeah. You know, I'm adjusting to different areas that I call in. It's not that the codes change or that the way I'm calling is still a code, but there are some things that change from one area to the next that may adjust the sequence that I use. And I felt like we needed to clarify some of that. For example, when you take talking about the densities and talking about these studies and I will say that a lot of these studies don't have a large enough sample size to gather a whole lot and I think that's why there's a lot of actually it's not going to cut you off here because there's the next thing I was going to go into before we get to that. There was one thing I was wanting to ask you real quick since we're talking about like transients versus mated pairs. So, where where do you see or where do you think like your helper coyotes fall? Because they're not they're not actually a transit and they're not a mated pair, but they might be latched on to a mated pair. It's got pups in the ground. How do you think they fall into that whole mix when you're when you're calling them? We know they'll come to the puppy sounds cuz we've all been in those situations where you call in that whole family to running puppy stuff. I treat them more like I would a resident, you know, like a mated pair because they're part of that family group. But I do think, and of course this is just theory, I do think that because they're a helper coat and their primary job is going out catching food and stuff like that, I do think that while they are very susceptible to those vocal sounds and and all of your co your little puppy stuff, all of your coyote vocals, your house bites, all that, they're very susceptible. Just as susceptible to those sounds as those adults because they are part of that family. They're living that life. Yeah, they're territorial, but I do think they may be slightly more susceptible to prey sounds because of their job within that family group to say the mama coat that's in the den with the pups. You know, she's I've tested that on on den coats, both the male and female, especially when those pups are really little. And that video that I posted recently on Facebook showing that male coat scratching and stuff. If anybody saw that, the distance they go from that den is not very far. You can't even hardly get that female to stick her head out of the hole on prey distress sounds. Believe me, I've tested that. On vocals, she shows more interest. You know, she you might can get her out, but she still doesn't want to leave those pups. She's distracted by it. But a helper co is going to be more apt to get a little bit more distance from that den. Even though it's part of that group territorial, I think that they are still going to be a little more susceptible to prey sounds than maybe your mated pair is because of their role that they play in that family group. And before long, those helper coats, they're kind of they've kind of got one leg on on both. They're straddling the fence because they're they're still part of that family group, but at some point they're going to become a transient. They will be pushed out. Usually, you know, that's by their second year or so. They will eventually become a transient and have to find a spot, find a whole field of their own. And sometimes they happen to say we go in there and it's a female pup or something. Sometimes they feel a a roll right there close by because you know a cow gets killed and they're able to fill that space. But um
what I was going to say about different areas and strategy on I guess be a good way to put it is strategy on calling sequences. Yeah. Yeah. That's that was actually the next thing right after I was going to ask you about you know I was going to ask we'll start talking about you know the strategies for low versus you know for calling low versus high density areas. You know you can kind of you can go whichever direction you want to with it and bust them up or lump them all in one or whatever. We must be getting good at this knowing the question because you you didn't tell me what you was going to ask. I did. I He don't have a clue. He just he he he called me the other day and he's like, "Hey, I just got back from Oklahoma." He said, "You wouldn't believe." He said he said, "We run rabbit distress." I was like, "You run a rabbit?" Yeah. He said, "Yeah." He said, "We run rabbit." He's like, "Yeah, we called in all these dag on yearling coyotes was coming a rabbit." And he said, "We didn't call the the first big coyote." And he said, "There's a few stands we was hitting some of this old aggressive stuff cuz nothing ever came to the rabbit. And here come a big old old coyote with no teeth in his head or old, you know, I was like, "Well, we got to talk about we need to we need to put this out there." So, that was all the talk we did. And I just put something together for him. Yeah. It's uh I mean, and after we talked about that, hey, we need to jump on a podcast and share this stuff. But uh yeah, going right back going back to the question on the density and the area and the calling strategy and all that kind of stuff. I started to touch on it while ago with all these different studies, you'll see a big variance. And I think that's partly due to sample size of the study. I think it's partly due to the density of the area that these studies are done in. And so if you take all of those things into consideration, you've kind of got to figure as far as a a calling strategy, you've got to think about what's the coyote population in the area that I'm calling and how many transients versus resident coats do I have on the landscape and should I be making blind stands or should I be trying to locate coats because of all of those factors and that a lot of that will up the odds or lower the odds of how many blank stands you make. So with the variance of all these studies, transients versus residents, you'll see anything from the co population being made up of over 50% transients. You'll look at another study and it'll show well at 10% of the coats in the study were transients. The rest of them were residents. and then everything in between. Anything from, you know, as low as 10% transients in a population to over 50% in a population. And a lot of that, I think, ties back to population density. In areas where you've got higher densities of coats, you're going to have a higher transient population as well. So, if you're calling, and I don't like to break stuff down into east versus west or anything like that. It's just Well, it just it just is what it is. Yeah. Got a higher population than somebody like Texas. We all know Texas got more coyotes, but there is some parts of Texas ain't got a high density, but there's some places got them. I hate to use the term around every bush, but it sure seems like it sometimes, right? And regardless of where you're at, whether you're we east, west, north, south, whatever area you're calling, if you have if you know that you have a high density of coyotes, like parts of Texas, for example, that have high densities, they're going to have a really high transient coyote population. That's going to make going in, especially in the highest of highest co populations, you can go in, make blind stands, run prey distress, and probably call coats all day long. That that's just how that works. If you are in a lower and you may not even have to mess with with playing vocals and targeting resident goats because you have enough transients on the population. You sat down, you can call in, you know, those year old, two-year-old transients in lower population areas, especially the really low population areas. If you go in and make blind stands and you don't have you're not sitting in the territory, that's another thing with lower populations, the space between your territories and your resident codes is going to be greater. So you're going to have bigger gaps that transients could use. But with those gaps being bigger and the population being lower and the transient population being lower, the odds of you setting down blind calling and crossing paths with a transient or resonant coat is a lot lower. So something that ups the odds, and this goes back to what we've talked about on most of our other podcast is in areas like that. This is where knowing where your coats are at really ups the odds because you can go in locate these coats and this is where the well I I'll come back to that in a second. You can go in and locate these coats really up the odds because then when you sit down you know that you are in close proximity to coats to begin with because you're in a low density area. That's obviously going to up the odds knowing that you're close by. Then go to the stuff that we've talked about in the other podcast, which is going to your vocals and your little pups of stuff and, you know, your co fights and all those things we've we've mentioned before. That's going to up the odds and those are the highest odds sounds for you calling those cos that, you know, are part of a family group. It's not to say, like we've mentioned before too, that throwing, you know, some fond distress or something like in some prey distress like that in isn't a good idea, too. It is. But right, if you know that you're hunting a low or high density area, some of these calling strategies can put the odds in your favor right out of the gate versus just not having any idea. you know, just going in and and blowing your call, turning your call on, the more you know about this stuff and the way that coach use the landscape and what you might be calling to and the sounds that are more appealing to a transient versus a resident, you can really up the odds. And then in some of those areas, you may even be able to do both, which goes back to exactly what you and Al were talking about. you're in those areas where you may be setting close enough to call or have enough transients on the landscape and also be near resident coast because in those high population areas your resident coats territories are sometimes overlapping or touching. So the gap that those transients are using and the core areas that the residents are using that's all coming together. It's almost like a funnel. And if you happen to be set up in one of those spots, you can cast that broad net, pick off residents that are trying to cut the corners on those overlapping territories, and also call resident coaches, too. So, those are just some some calling strategies that go right along with what we're learning about. Transit coats, resident coats. I mean, it's Man, the coat deal is so complex that there Well, one thing is, you know, had me thinking because we've talked about this before about, you know, there's everybody hunts a different different area. You know, we got all these states has got coyote hunters in them that guys coyote hunt. I guess what I'm getting at is you went up to you've hunted all over the country, but you mainly hunting Arkansas and you went out there and hunted Kansas and Oklahoma right there in that uh March, April time frame and you went out there and you learned something. Yeah. You hunt them with some new guys and uh seen what they like to do and how they how they have success and you learn from it. And I guess I kind of I look at like, you know, challenge our listeners to try hunting in different states. You know, hunt total different terrain than what you're used to. You know, that stuff will make you a better hunter and a better caller and understand what you see some guys talk about on say some of these Facebook groups where you'll have a guy that's struggling and he asks his question and he could be in a low density area and you'll see guys in a high density area getting him advice and not that it's bad advice, but it just doesn't correspond with what he's what he's going through. You know, like when you see the guys, well, just go just go play the rabbit. it don't matter. Just go just go play the rabbit. Well, that's not the answer to it. If he could get set up on the coyotes, he might play the rabbit and of course they'll come in. But there's a lot more to it. I don't want to put it um talking about like low density areas and this could rub some people the wrong way, but when it comes I don't it shouldn't if you think about it, but when you talk about calling low density areas, it actually takes a little bit more strategy. Well, it you know, you've got to There's there's strategic measures that go into place for you to be consistently successful in a low density area when you're calling coyotes. Well, one of the things one of the big things and something we probably ought to touch on too, the you mentioned it a little bit talking about all the post and stuff you see. One thing that that this podcast ought to ought to help with is all of the arguing that people get in over whether they should play. You'll see people get plumbed bent out of shape over vocals versus prey distress or house versus rabbit in certain areas. And you'll see people get all been out of shape over should you locate, should you not locate. M what we're learning as and I'm one of those people when I've had certain ideas about certain things and then I've adjusted that as I've learned more and realize well I wasn't 100% right about or I may have been 100% wrong but when I start figuring out stuff and back to your point about hunting more areas you start seeing some of this and you start realizing that there's more than one way to skin a cat or kill a cow. So yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, the sometimes, especially like we were talking about when you've got transient coats and a high population of transient coats on the population, it is absolutely true that playing prey distress, whether that be rabbit, bird, whatever, that may be all you need to do. But you also need to keep an open mind that if you're calling that area and then you go somewhere else and that's what you would normally do where you've been hunting and you go to another area. Like if for example, if you were to come here and hunt and you're not having success, you better be open to instead of playing prey distress sounds and or only playing prey distress sounds, you better be open to playing some of those vocals. Same thing with the locating stuff. If you're in an area where your co population is high enough that you have high odds of sitting down in range of coyotes, whether it be transients, residents, whatever, you just got a higher population, then I will agree there's no point in riding around locating cos beforehand. You can just make a a good guess on you can look at the train and know where your cows are going to be. You can know where the cover is going to be. You know it's holding cows. You can go in and have a lot of success. I'll never argue with anybody about that. On the flip side, those people shouldn't argue with people that have high success by locating coats in low density areas because they've done it enough to know that that ups their odds and puts them in a position close enough to coats to have success. And when you're locating coats, you're more than likely hunting den resident coats, which are going to put the odds in favor of vocals over predistress sounds. And when you are making blind stands, the odds are in favor of you setting up closer to transient coats, which are going to put the odds in the favor of prey distress sounds. And some of that stuff is are things that over the years I've had to I've had to be open-minded about and learn as I go hunt different places because if I just went if I just loaded up in my truck and left Arkansas and I did this in earlier years, you load up, you go to a spot, you know what works at home, you know what's worked for you in the past, that's what you're going to do when you go somewhere else. And if that if I go out there and sit down and I start my stand with three house social sounds, some pup stuff, a pup fight, and end with a fight and I'm not calling coats very often, then I need to be open to maybe starting with playing the rabbit and I've done that in places and or bird or playing like in this last I give you a prime example. If I had been calling at home the same week that we called to Kansas and Oklahoma, I would have opened my stands with vocals, went to social, played multiple little pup stuff, mixed in a a fawn or a [ __ ] or something like that for a prey distress sound and then ended with a fight. That would have been the sequence that I would use. I would have more than likely called coats because I typically do in this area, but that's not the sequence we used in Kansas. in Oklahoma. We started with about three praise sounds for two to three minutes each and then we went to that sequence that I was just talking about with the vocals and we called the majority of the coats were transient one-year-old coats come running in under the two-minute mark to those prey distress sounds and then a couple of the older coats that we killed and one of the younger coats came to the vocal stuff. So, we were still that broad net was still picking up extra coats and we had numerous coats because of the filming that we didn't heal that came to a variety of vocals or pre distress sound that I'm not counting because I didn't get to we didn't kill them. So, we didn't get to look at their teeth and know what we were calling. But we had a big enough we killed enough coyotes to see that there was definitely a it tied into what I've seen with the research, what I've seen with the raising the coyotes and what I've learned about coyotes from looking at all that stuff and hunting, us doing these podcast, etc. Well, I think the key words here were open-minded. I mean, it's just like you went out there to Oklahoma and hunted with Paul and Jonathan out there and you know, you running a collar and you going out there running the same stuff that you would have run in Arkansas, you know, this past week and no coyotes is coming. No coyotes is coming. Finally Paul look at you and say, "Won't you play the rabbit? Won't you play Rose Bush Cotton? Won't you play Mrs. McCotinttail?" And then you look back, I was like, I won't never call nothing a rabbit this time of year. And you know, just not being open-minded. Y'all kept on going and struggled, not kill nothing. But you played a lot of rabbit. Y'all caught a lot of coyotes. And the rabbit was one of the reasons you did it. But you was open-minded enough to listen to those boys say, "Yeah, you out here in Oklahoma. You ain't in Arkansas no more. This is, you know, we suggest you do this." And you did it. Well, and capitalize on it. exactly how that played out. As soon as we got out there with Joey and with Paul and Johnny, first thing I did, you know, and I was running the call a good bit. We swap back and forth. All of us swap back and forth running the call, but we were basically playing the same sequences. But the first thing I did when I when I started talking to them, I said, "What uh what do you think we ought to be running? You know, what's working out here, boy, and I'm whatever they tell me, I go with that." even though it wouldn't necessarily have been what I would have done at home. And I know they're successful. I know they know what they're talking about. So, I took the advice and we started calling and uh and killing cows. But it's uh all of that stuff is eyeopening when you start traveling around and especially I don't know I get a lot out of it. I hope our listeners do too. I like knowing or having a strategy and kind of knowing why something's happening. Why are we calling these coaches? I question that every time I call a code in and looking at their teeth and, you know, different things that help tie all that stuff together and kind of connect the dots. I feel like it makes me a better code hunter when I go to some of these places and know those things. know that, hey, I'm in a I'm in a higher density area right here. I probably ought to start off with some prey distress stuff because there's a good chance there's a coat right here pretty close by that I can call in. And then, you know, if I don't, I've still got my vocal stuff going right back to I ain't got to listen to it yet, but I I definitely will be uh tuning in to the podcast you and Al just did because it sounds like that's exactly what it was covering. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, one thing I got to I guess I got to backpedal. I would use the the phrase or the term you got to be more strategic or use more strategy in low density areas. It's probably not the right way to put it. It probably the better way to put it is is with the scouting stuff. Yeah. Um if you've got less coyotes and say they're spread out way more they would be than in a high density area. Of course that's the definition of low density versus high density. But the thing is the the the hard part is finding them. It's the easy part to call them up. If you can get on them, you can call them and you can call them to a lot of different stuff, but it's what a lot of I think some people that hates I was talking about. You know, I challenge everybody to go try different states. If you're in a high density area, I know everybody wants to kill more coyotes, but it you might open your eyes if you go hunt a place, a state area, whatever that actually has less coyotes that you have to work harder for them, work harder to find them. It'll make you a better coyote collar and coyote hunter in in the higher density places and vice versa. You know, these guys that uh that that live in these lower density places and those are the places they hunt. man, if you go to a place and hunt where it's a much higher density, yeah, you're going to have more success most likely. But the thing is with having that success and getting into more coyotes, you're going to learn from those coyotes because you're going to have those more opportunities uh that you could gather up, you know, just gather experience from. So, I challenge challenge our listeners, you know, if you've got the resources, the time, availability, you know, to go travel a little bit and the connections. Um, of course, there's public ground all over the place. Travel around, go hunt these other states and and you'll be able to uh uh get a better connection with what people are saying when you see see some of these comments online. uh maybe some of the struggles or some of the successes and you know help you put two and two together or or understand whatever. But I do challenge people to do that. I think you'll I guarantee you'll get enjoyment out of it. It's it's pretty cool. Especially go you get to learn stuff about how just different terrain, how coyotes will move through it and how they approach the call. I mean you learn all kinds of cool stuff and plus meet up with some new guys just like uh meeting up with Paul and Johnny and them boys. you never hunted with them before. Got to hang out with them, learn from them, and of course, I guarantee they learn from you as well. So, sound like y'all had a good good time out there. Oh, it was good stuff. And one other thing to consider, and we've talked about this before, too, on other podcasts. I just want to kind of tie it into this. It's that transition time frame. So, when we made those hunts in Kansas and Oklahoma, we're in early April at that time frame. And we've talked about before, you know, when you come out of the sequences that you're using, your sounds that are working during that late winter time frame, whatever though, and a lot of times that's involving a good bit of prey stuff. When you start coming out of that going into your den and stuff, don't just completely abandon what's working because you got to keep in mind during that April time frame, you're still dealing with mostly adult cos. You don't have any pups on the landscape yet, family groups on the landscape yet that are that are out of that den and into the pup rearing time frame. So your prey distress sounds as that transition is moving towards pup rearing can still play a big role in your sound sequences along with the transient stuff we were talking about. Then as you start moving into that pup, people to keep in mind is that as those pups come out of the ground and you start getting those family groups on the landscape, your vocal stuff is going to continue to increase in effectiveness. You're going to have more coach landscape that are going to respond to that. Not only are the adults that are in the helper coach within that family group going to respond aggressively to vocal stuff, but that's also going to be what your pups respond to the best. How social sounds, even getting into the pecking order stuff with your pup fights and stuff like that, those even those little pup goats are going to respond better to vocals typically than they do to to pre stress. So there's that transition stuff that people have to keep in mind that go along with the time of the year that you're calling, what the coyotes are doing, and then also this transient versus resident, high population, low population. All of those things are are stuff that should be considered. You talk about strategy. Those are all things that should stuff that you should be thinking about as part of your calling strategy depending on where you're at, time of the year. all of those things. And I think that it Well, I know for me it adds more coats. Yeah. Oh, for sure. For sure. I've got a I've got a couple questions for you. All right. We all know you're a shotgun man. Yeah. Was there a time while you were in Oklahoma that you wish you were packing a rifle? Cuz that's a wide open terrain out there. totally different to what you're used to. I don't know that I wish I was back in the rival just because I I don't want to ruin my reputation to one, but on just about every stand with the exception we did make some true shotgun stands where the the cover was tight enough that shotgun made more sense. But I did sat down on numerous numerous stands both with Joey and Paul and Johnny that I thought this is stupid. What what am I doing? Why am I sitting here? Because it was almost it felt almost as useless as when Joey made me hunt with it without it loaded. It felt like I was just sitting there with a big old heavy stick. But standout stand and I I told you about this stand and I posted on beautiful stand. I mean what I'll remember this stand forever. We were sitting on this river and I call it a big creek. Some people either way it was a a big creek. Do you know what the you know what the diff you know what the difference between a river and a creek is? Where you from? It's the distance. Oh, is it? It's the length. It's the length. Okay. Well, so you look at there. I learned something. Learned something just then. Whatever this thing was, it was it was just winding down through wide open ground. I mean, far as you could see. And we sat down there and I I've got a shotgun laying across my lap and I'm thinking, "This is stupid. I'm just I'm just here to watch." Well, we kick on Rose Bush Cotton and it ain't but a second. Here comes on the opposite bank running down the edge of this river and uh it gets up there and I'm thinking you know Johnny or Paul one of them have to shoot this co. It never lets up. It's hard charging the whole time or coming pretty pretty good running in gets down crosses the river comes right across the river hits the bank on the other side. The cow never stopped. We tried to stop it. I finally shot it on the run running right at X24 with wide open country as you can see. I'll never forget that stand just because of the way it laid out and that cow hard charging the call crossing the river and us shooting it right there on top of us in shotgun range and a spot that you would have never even considered backing a shotgun if you had any sense. But I didn't have much sense and end up killing with shotgun.
Well, hey, I might have told you told you wrong on the difference between a creek and a river. I'm googling it right now because I had to do this because I was like, I don't know if I just told him the right thing or not. But it says in here it says in truth there are no technical differences between rivers, streams, and creeks according to the United States Geological Survey. Well, whatever it was, I think they I think it was called a river. Either way, it was it was a pretty good if it was a creek, it was bigger than most creeks. You know, it had some deep holes in it. And you know just uh it says while there are no strict definitions to distinguish these waterways from one another, we tend to reserve the term river for the largest of these flowing bodies of water. While creek is used for the smallest and stream often applies to waterways that are in between. What whatever it was, I'm good with they're wrong. I'm good with it being a creek or a river. Seems like every time I go hunting with somebody or talk to somebody, I get into it with get into it with them. Usually always in fun. It ends up being funny. But uh that's like Joey didn't know what a tit was. And I'm I'm talking for our listeners. I'm talking about land features. You know, little point tit that sticks out. There have been numerous times where we've got on land features. Now we're on creeks and rivers. So, uh, whatever it was, that goat run down the bank of it, crossed it, shot it with a shotgun, and it was a it was a stand I won't forget. That's for sure. And that wasn't the only one where, going back to your question, sitting out there, shotgun laying across my lap, can see, I might see as far as I can see, and a coyote runs all the way in to the Fox Pro, and we kill it with a shotgun. That happened numerous times. Awesome. Matter of fact, most most most of the stands we made would have been considered rifle stands. It would have been smarter to have a rifle, but we killed most of the cows with a shotgun.
Testament to the to the call and the sound. I took a to the call and call placement and stand set up. Right. All all of those things. We uh we went in Kansas one year and I took shotgun because I wanted to try to you know film some shotgun stands with while we was out there and anybody ever hunted Kansas know there's plenty of open prairie and we were calling a lot of it but I take his shotgun every once in a while and of course Jeff Gif with me. He laugh just belly rolling laughing you know just making fun of me and finally I got it right on one stand he was over there smirking with his six creed he's like couldn't wait to pluck one right out from underneath of me I be dang we got on a on a denim pair of coyotes and I had that X24 sitting off to the left about 12 steps from us and we end up shooting coyote at about 18 steps so I was like yeah yeah That's shotgun got it done in the wide open. That's good stuff when you get to see them come from that far and then shoot them right on top of you. We had uh we had another and I'll admit I was I've hunted some open ground. I've hunted a good bit of what I would consider open ground, but I hadn't hunted anything that looked quite like some of that stuff. We went to a I think yeah it was the very first stand we made and they told me said this this terrain is going to change drastically and it did. We made the first stand. U I think it was that last morning that I was out there and we got out of the truck. It was, you know, breaking daylight. We had sat there for a few minutes. It broke daylight. And I sitting there thinking, I don't see how this is ever going to work. I don't see where how we're going to get set up without anything that's out here seeing us because you could seem like you could see everything in all directions. I mean, there's a little bush here or, you know, a little crack in the in the terrain there, a little mound or whatever. We get set up and I'm thinking, well, if we do call a co, it's going to take him a while to get here. Shoot, we sat down, turn the call on. It ain't but a second. Of course, I didn't have any binoculars, but Johnny and Paul were both prepared and we ain't been sitting there. I mean, less than two minutes, probably less than a minute. seemed like just turned the call on and they're already looking at codes that have popped up and like man where these things where they even come from and that was a good stand too going back to the to the pre distress versus vocals and why sometimes you need to play them all. We went through what had been working two or three prey sounds these coats move away from us. I think I was on the third prayer sound they go over the heel and out of sight. It was over 1,000 yards to the where they went out of sight at. I flipped on full rut which is was recorded during breeding season. Coyote comes by I mean instantly co comes burning over the hill. Never lets up. It runs into shotgun range. But we did kill that one with a rifle and it's just and I finally finally hit the right trigger. Yeah. Hit the right trigger. We And we did a podcast on triggers. Yeah, there's a lot to that. Hey, I got another question for you, right? This is a would you rather question? Would you rather hunt that Oklahoma terrain or the thicket of Arkansas? Uh, somebody else just asked me that. go for
just day in and day out. I'd have to go with just my what I cut my teeth on. These tickets, they're not very fun to hunt. You don't get to see the coats come from very far away. You if I was going to go if I was going to go hunt tomorrow, I'd go right back out there and hunt that stuff with them boys. That was Yeah. Yeah. But as far as just overall, if I if I could only do one more hunt ever, I'd have to do it right here at the house and call some that nasty BRS and [ __ ] and kill one right there in my lap. Have to be a vocal coat. You know that. Yeah. Yeah. Vocal coat and the stuff that got me got me started. Yep. No, I agree with you. I get asked all the time, you know, go all over the place hunting turkeys and coyotes and all that. You know, ask what my favorite place is. If you only hunt one place, where you going? And it's always a tough one. It's a tough one. You know, if it's somebody here at home, you know, you know, they're want know maybe insight on where to go make a trip to or something, I'll give them, you know, give them that. But when somebody just straight up asked me like, you know, I really like this place. I really like, you know, I really like Kansas. I really like Arizona, you know, just go on with all this. But, man, it's always good to come back home to Kentucky and do a little hunting just cuz it's it's home, you know, it feels right, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, there's there's something to that just I guess the sentimental ties to some of that stuff. But I always have to flip the script on you. So, I got a I got a question for you. you was talking about you still love them turkeys and I know you like to deer hunt too. So you've got you have one hunt left. That's it. No more. Yeah. Yep. You can hunt you can hunt any animal you want to hunt under any conditions in any state. What's it going to be? It's probably going to be a turkey. Okay. Well, you I know it shocks a lot of people. You surprised me. I thought you would I thought you would have went with the coat.
I think I think one of the things about turkeys that gets me, one thing I love, I love springtime, you know, it's the time of year that we hunt them. Um, turkey hunting and coyote hunting have a lot of similarities. Yeah. And it was between I go ahead and tell you deer was last on the list, right? Uh, and I love deer hunting and I've always told people about deer hunting. Like my old boss, he's all about deer. I mean, he he ate up with it. And he used to ask me that stuff all the time. And but anyway, well, deer hunting, you know, I'd probably as far as just killing something, I'd rather kill a big mature buck as anything. Yeah. But it's the hunt. It's the hunting part of it. It ain't the same. You know what I mean? Just sitting in a tree stand. But but it was between coyotes and turkeys. And I think I think if turkeys was in year round and they always gobbled and they always strutdded and it was just always that and you could kill however many of them that you wanted like you can coyotes then it' probably be coyotes. Yeah. But I think where it's at short, it's just comes in once a year and it's only in for a short amount of time and they'll only gobble and they'll only strut through that certain window and it just being in the spring. I think that's what separates it. Yeah. So I think it's odd with coyotes like too much of a good thing maybe. I don't know. Yeah. I Well, that's what I was just going to say. I I think sometimes if you ask people that I know for me if you ask me that same question at different times in my life my answer would have been different. For example there when I first got into turkey hunting right now that same question I asked you turkey out of the three deer turkey cows turkeys would be in third place last place. I still love to hunt them, but when I first got into turkey hunting, if you'd asked me this back in the 90s, it' have been if turkey would have been first on the list because I was eat up with it. I was learning how to do it. And then eventually I got to where I was traveling around. I was killing a bunch of turkeys here, there, and you know, just wherever wherever I was at, and got to where I guess I just done enough of it and so much of it. I mean, I got after them and them things was gobbling. I was getting after them and uh and I have then the coyote stuff, you know, I kind of started getting into it really heavy and I'd always loved bow hunt deer. It's always been right up there, right up there floating around at the top if it wasn't at the top. But turkeys had that top spot for a little while and then when I first started getting in into the coat stuff and started getting after them really heavy, they were at the top spot. There was a time where I would have hunted a code over everything else. And now, yeah, now it's it's probably back. If I could only do one more, it'd probably be uh a big buck in the river bottoms with my bow, you know, just that's and that that's kind of a coming back around full circle to kind of what got me started, what I fell in love with first as far as the the bigger bigger game hunting. I'm not ever going to drop. I still like the squirrel hunt, but they'll never be back in first place. They might have been first place when I was 56. Well, me and you got a lot of Well, you know, it's just saying like it
I'm just a hunter. You know, I I've made trips go out west to shoot prairie dogs. That's going to sound crazy some and I do I'd do that next week. You know, I loved it and I do a lot of squirrel hunting. We don't talk about it none, but I I look forward to opening day of squirrel season right here at home. I mean, I had grew up doing that and remember doing that with uncles and dad and great uncles and we'd have squirrel hunting competitions. We'd split up, give each other I mean, I loved it. I loved it and still will go shoot a few every fall. Um, but yeah, I don't know. It uh turkeys just I I've said this many times, I owe a lot to the wild turkey and I owe a lot to the coyote and they're probably going to be my top two spots. it comes to the deer stuff. I love deer hunting. I love killing big buck, which I don't really kill very many big bucks, but I like killing a mature buck. Let's put it that way. Well, my style has a lot of people at it. There's a lot of people in it. But, uh, one thing I do, I will say I love scouting for deer. I really I think I enjoy the scouting aspect of whitetail deer probably just as much or more than I do the actual hunt part of it. I love running trail cameras. Love getting out and just looking and you know all that. I don't know. I just I'm just a hunter. You just said what I was going through next as I've aged. Kind of going back to what I said before about the turkey hunting. You know, I've been going out the last time carried my gun, you know. I'm just listening to him gobbling. Yeah. But my favorite thing outside of the hunting, I like it better than the hunting. Me and another buddy were just talking about this. the learning about the coyotes and the scouting, just going to whatever it is. I love to go walk around in the woods and strategize and start putting these plans. You I say strategize, it's almost more like fantasize about you start envisioning all these things and I'm thinking about all of that's the good thing about it. We don't have to pick just one. there seasons and different times of year, but I'm sitting out there fantasizing about and strategizing about what I'm seeing, you know, is this place holding turkeys? Is it holding coats? Is it got big deer on it? You know, and I'm I'm thinking about all of those things and where I would set up and, you know, that could all come together. And that I get excited about that stuff just because you start Yep. you know, you start playing it out in your mind. And the same thing with the coach stuff. And people ask me about that all the time about, you know, learning about coats and recording coats. Does it change your hunting and stuff? I love the learn sitting out there and learning about these coats and and theorizing about stuff and reading these research papers and doing the hunting and then getting on these podcasts and talking about all that stuff and putting it all together. Yep. That's probably my That's probably my favorite part. The hunting side of it is still fun because after we do all this learning and theorizing and talking about it on the podcast, recording sounds, all that, then when you get when you go out and you put all that together and you kill a coat, it's not really the it's not even the killing of the coat that's the big deal. It's just that's kind of makes all that stuff come full circle and is the cherry on top, I guess, so to speak. But it's all that stuff leading up to it that Yeah. that made it the best. Oh yeah. It's just like, you know, it's like you asking me that. It's like this morning it today was the first day I haven't turkey hunted since Kentucky spring turkey season come in. And I've hunted Florida and I've also hunted Virginia. Um it's like this morning I woke up. I woke up because it's just y Can y'all hear these dag on dogs? Yeah. Hush. Anyway, had to throw my notepad at him. U this morning, woke up at the same time I've been waking up to go, you know, turkey hunting just because I'm in that groove. And man, you would a lot of people be like, "Oh, yeah. Get to sleep in." Man, I feel I almost got up and texted Mark Larice and said, "On my way." Mark Larice is less than 200 miles from me. Yeah. I was going to drive to Tennessee, go turkey hunting. I mean, I cuz I'm pumped about it right now. That's what I want to go do. But I didn't think about deer hunting. I ain't thought about deer hunting in a while. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but when it comes towards Halloween, turkey, the last thing I'm thinking about, you know, I'm thinking about them bucks chasing doe's and all that type stuff. And plus, I'm coyote hunting heavy. But I will say week in and week out, I'm always thinking coyotes. Daytoday coyotes. But yeah, turkeys up at the top. Well, here's here's one more thing before we jump off here. You're talking about hearing stuff and listening to stuff. Guess what I've been listening to about every day. Well, every day. Coyote puppies. Got got a bunch of them again this year. Been recording heavy. Recording heavy. Got two litters right now. I know where another litter is that uh Is that right? Yeah. I'm gonna have to dig this third litter up, but I'm trying to I'm keeping my eye out. I'm trying to let her going let her raise them for long as I can and then uh just before them eyes open up, I'll stick a shovel in the ground right there. But that's uh been keeping me keeping me bus. It sounds like a sound like a lot of new voices. It is. It is. Be Yeah. But uh that's good. Hey, you remember just the other day I sent you some trail camera pictures? Yeah. of his female coyote and of course a male coyote would they intersect. I got a property here behind the house just for you guys listening that uh uh it joins right up with my house here. I always lease it. Anyway, there'sund 184 acres back here. I think that I've got 20 acres right here where I'm sitting. Anyway, there's a pair of coyotes hunt. I've got three trail cameras on there because this place is good for turkeys. So, I got three trail cameras out there just on field edges just to try to catch strutters walking by or whatever. Anyway, I'm getting a lot more coyotes I am turkeys, which is all right. But one of these coyotes is was heavy heavy pregnant. You know, I sent trail camera pictures to to Tori just for him to check her out. But anyway, Tori, what I was getting at, I was getting pictures of this coyote every single day. I stopped getting pictures of her three days ago. Yep. What's that mean? Hey, I bet she's in a hole. Yep. Yep. Yep. Probably pretty close there, too. Got to be. Got to be. Cuz you wouldn't think she'd be traveling all that much cuz like those two trail cameras uh that I was sending you pictures from, they're probably they're at least 800 yards away as a crow flies. So, at least. So what you're what you're telling us is here in a few months you planning on killing about six seven goes right there. Yeah. Yeah. Over the next few months. Yeah. Yeah. I'm planning here probably about Memorial Day weekend. Well, I have to see what's going on cuz they got corn planted in there and corn's about 3 in tall in there right now. 4 in tall. So, when it gets to where it got to be hunted or I ain't going to see them, I'm going to go in there and probably kill the daddy and a helper. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Then I'm going to go in there probably a couple more times this fall and and clean the rest of them up. Yep. That's the That's the good thing about it. You know, you you know you gonna have a crop right there to get after it because they unless something crazy happens, they ain't going nowhere till till you uh take them out. Yep. And it's it's kind of goes right in along with what we've been talking about too. Um I wouldn't say I'm in a super low density area, but I'm in a lower dens density area compared to other places. And I'm not really hunting a lot of transient coyotes, we might say. So what I'm doing is usually I'm focusing in on these these family groups, which I'm going to have right back here. And what I do is I I go back a handful of times throughout the year focusing on certain family groups to get to get my hunting in around here. So I know I should have at least two maybe three or even four really good hunts just out of this one family group back there. Anyway, two to four. Hey, one other you just made me think of something and we've touched on this before, but I'm gonna throw it in there. I didn't get to test this theory. We didn't we didn't do it this way, but I know that it has worked in the past. You can go in there and play them little bitty puppy sounds as your predistress sounds, especially in a situation like what you're talking about. And even if you have a transient coat, that transient will come is coming for a different reason, but that transient will come in there with full intentions of eating that puppy. Yeah. Yeah. They will work. I'm not, you know, they might be they might be a little bit, but but if you don't have to tie this together, if if you're in a area that transients are using working between territories and you don't have a a territory in there and you play a little puppy sound, that transient's not going to be scared to come to that pup sound, right? It's gonna run right to it because you don't have a core area set up. They're aware of all of that with scent barking and all that. So you can play a little puppy sound and they'll run over it just like they would a rabbit with full intentions of eating it. That's that's one thing I asked um Al about, you know, he likes decoy dog hunting stuff. We got talking about de decoy dogging a little bit and uh we got talking about you know I asked him a question like if you get these coyotes that come to prey distress and you're trying to decoy dog you know if they show up to the prey do they act different towards the dogs whether they showed up to a coyote vocal you know you know I kind of always had my mind you know if a coyote comes to a coyote vocal during this denning season and you have a decoy dog out there and they see it you know they're going to you know they're expecting to see another canine, right? But, you know, if they're coming to a rabbit distress or a bird distress, they might not be looking expecting to see another coyote or canine or whatever. But anyway, he was talking about, you know, that if they're a denning pair of coyotes and they're going to work the dogs, it don't matter what they show up to, they see a dog in their territory. You know what I mean? Want to defend their territory. But he said, you know, you do have those times where you have a denning family, a denning pair, whatever it is, that shows up to your sounds and they see the dogs, they tuck tail and run. They don't want to fight with them. He said, you do do encounter that. But he he thinks that, you know, when you do have these transient coyotes that show up, they see the dogs, you know, they they almost always tuck tail and run because they don't have a territory to defend, right? Kind of goes right along with what you've been talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Um but he did mention he said you know these these trans these transit coyotes will show up to pup distresses and baby stuff just because they coming to coming to you know maybe easy meal. Yeah maybe easy meal. Yep. No doubt about it. It works for sure. Well about time to hang her up a probably. So we've been on here a while. I know we could keep going, but I don't know how long we can hold people's attention. I could probably come up with some more would you rather questions. Maybe we'll do it. We might have to do a whole podcast on would you rather do this or do that. Hey, them would you rather would you rather questions usually uh they make you think sometimes.
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