In this episode, Jon Collins and Torry cook discuss tactics to up your odds while coyote hunting.
Welcome to the FoxPro podcast brought to you by FoxPro Game Calls. Upping your coyote hunting odds. Welcome back to the FoxPro podcast. On this episode, we have Mr. Tory Cook of MFK on the line. We're going to cover a few things that will help up your odds for taking more coyotes over the next several weeks. What's going on, Tori? It's been a while since you've been on. Oh, I know it, man. It's been busy. been doing a little bit of hunting, but here lately, last few weeks, have been rolling out those brand new X48s. I've been busy loading those things up and uh and also running that new programmer that uh released and I tell you what, that thing is nice. It is a breeze to work with and uh has made my job a lot easier. Good. Good. It heard some, you know, I guess it's one thing to be said for for listening to your customers. We've had a lot of people complaining about the the old style programmer and it was time to get uh rejuvenate that that system a little bit and I think we've I think we've found something good right here. I think the guys up there in the office knocked it out of the park. It's always good to hear somebody like you who you know you guys are on the computers every single week programming these things and shipping them out. So, if it's making your all's life see your all's life easier, you know, it's going to make all the hunters out there their life easier as well. Yeah. And if anybody thinks I'm bragging on it because we're tied to Fox Pro, they're wrong cuz they had never heard me talk about any of the other programmers. Not that I didn't like them or that they didn't. You never brought nothing up before. They they this new one is on another level. It is extremely user friendly and like you said it it has addressed I don't know of anything else you could do to it. Of course, FoxPro is always making things better, but I don't know of anything else that could make it any more user friendly. It's it's very clean to look at and I think even a beginner will be able to function with it and not only easily add sounds but also easily categorize to you know they can keep it as simple or get it in depth and as detailed as they want to with categorizing their sounds and their their categories and uh and it's easy to do. What are you thinking about the 48? That's what I was just fishing to bring up. I love it too. Um, I did a video, some people may have seen it, talking about, you know, when we got the 48s in, I really didn't think I would swap over because I love that X24 so much and I like the X360, too. The the sound quality, but that the X48 is that's what I'm carrying now. I really like it. The sound quality, the small package, I mean, it's it's going to be tough to beat. It's people have asked me how it compares to the X24. It's just it's the hot rod version. It is the souped up hot rod version. It's just a more it's just a stout version of the X24. So, as much as I like the X24, this is just a upgraded version. Yeah, get a lot of questions on that and I think the best way to describe it is is the X24 is an excellent unit. still is, always will be, but the X48 is everything that the X24 is and more and all the way around. More features, better sound. It's just it's just uh I don't know. It's uh it's a unit that that we've been looking, you know, looking for for the last couple years here and we're all excited it's out. Everybody remembers though X2S and this is kind of I've said this is kind of what the X2S should have been and uh they knocked it out of the park with this one. Well, the upgraded speaker system alone, and I've had people ask me about, you know, different file types and all that. That upgraded speaker system, I don't care which sound you put on it, it's going to sound better. It's that that alone is what really caught my attention was, you know, when I put some of my sounds on it, I actually swapped my whole X24 list over. Of course, I still got my X24 sitting there in the truck, too. But um when I swap my sound list over to that X48, it's a it's a real deal. It's it's a really good unit. Yeah. Yeah. It uh you know, total different remote. Guys are used to TX1000. You will have to uh learn a different remote, but uh you'll pick it right up and I think you'll like it more. It's uh just does so many cool things. It's a it's a great unit. If you've already got one, you know what we're talking about. And if you don't have one, well, if this intrigues you, you better get to ordering one. I know one word that sums it up. Deadly. It is deadly. Ma, hey, made for killing. That's it. Three words. It definitely is. Well, let's get to our topic at hand. We want to share some stuff with you guys that uh we've got a few points here that we're going to cover and really think that they if you put these in play uh it'll up your coyote hunting odds. Uh one thing that I've heard Tori talk about a few times and and this has been brought up from you know ever since the beginning of coyote calling when you get a couple buddies get to get to talking back and forth. And this is uh talking about some of the best times to go coyote calling. And it wasn't too long ago, I heard Corey bring up um a phrase. He said, "Hunting behind disturbances." And that's one thing we're going to talk about right here. And those disturbances can be storms, high winds, rains, and even human disturbances such as like cutting hay, cutting silage, harvesting crops, and so on and so on. You want to talk about that, Tori? Yeah. One thing I noticed um you know after raising coats and getting to watch them on a daily basis and getting to watch them behind any kind of disturbance, high winds, all that stuff you just mentioned. And other people can relate this to when they've seen, you know, crops get cut, hay get cut. Everybody knows that those disturbances cause a chain reaction from the bottom of the top. Not only does it disturb the microorganisms and bacteria growth and all that kind of stuff which creates all kinds of new smells, it also creates all kinds of activity from the bottom to the top. So you get that that on the very lowest smallest level right on up through your your insects and then your rodents and you know just the domino effect of everything feeding and reacting to that disturbance and after raising and watching coats I I really noticed that anytime a disturbance like that in particular storms in my case in the woods high winds would come through those coats would get real active right after that. And there's a couple things that are causing it. For one, if you have rain or or high winds or anything like that, it disturbance. It disturbs all of their scent marking. Everybody knows that coats mark heavily. They're constantly marking. They mark their food. They mark their boundary. They're just constantly marking. Well, anytime you have these disturbances come through, it disrupts that and disturbs that. So, that's one reason they do it. They go around and they start reestablishing all their markings. So they get active for that reason. And then they also get active because of that chain reaction we were talking about. When it creates disturbance and other animals get active, it's just common sense that the coach are going to get active too and take advantage of, you know, like high winds and storms. Take advantage of baby birds that have been blown out or any any other type of animal that has been um, you know, blown out of a nest or, you know, gives the cows access to an easy meal, they're going to take advantage of that stuff. So they go out and hunt just like with the you know you take a bulldozer and a clearcut fire anything any type of disturbance are going to create opportunities for coats for multiple reasons like I said scent marking and then also opportunities for catching easy prey. So, uh, and one thing I like about the disturbances, you know, we've talked about other weather related events. The one thing about weather related disturbances, I I like stuff that makes sense, you know, that I can that I can tie back to a reason. And I think everybody can, you know, just use common sense to to see why these disturbances would cause those reactions to take place from the top to the bottom versus trying to figure out, you know, will the moon phase change things? Will the wind direction change things? You know, there's not a there's really not anything that we can use for a reason. and you know, you can't put your finger on it, but with these type disturbances, you can put your finger on what it is and why it makes sense that coats will be more active. And if you'll hunt behind the especially as soon as it stabilizes, if you'll hunt behind those disturbances, it'll definitely up your odds. Whether it be a cut, you know, cut crops or you're hunting in the woods where a storm fronts just blew through or even open ground where you've had heavy rains. any anything like that is going to cause animal activity to to spike or increase because they're going to get out there and and do, you know, all their scent marking and just checking things out. Yep. Well, when it comes to like uh storm fronts, uh would you rather hunt on the back side of them versus the front side? I definitely would. And and again, a lot of that comes from watching the coach that I raise. I don't notice the I don't notice what I would say is a consistent reliable predictor of of a behavior change in front of the storm fronts. I'm not saying that sometimes when there's you know we can feel it sometimes. I'm not I'm not saying that there's not something related to the front side of it, but it's definitely more obvious on the back side of it because without fail, every single time you have any kind of disturbance like that, I guarantee you I can watch those codes and they're going to be active at some point fairly close to when that ends and starts to stabilize back. They're going to get up and they're going to start covering ground, scent marking, and just checking things out. They're looking for those. There's so many smells. You know, it blows if you got high winds, it blows a lot of stuff down. If you have a fire come through, if you have a dozer work, if you have tractor work, all of those things cause a lot of changes and a lot of new smells and a lot of different debris and all that kind of stuff on the ground. And those animals, coats included, they just instinctually go check that stuff out. So that's where I see the biggest, you know, change in movement or uptick in movement is on the back side of those fronts versus the front the front. Yeah. Yeah. Well, makes makes total sense to me, especially when you're talking about human disturbances, especially when you're talking about cutting hay or crops. You know what I mean? Everybody loves a freshly cut hay field. And you know, um, we do a little bit of farming. I don't know how many times we've been out cutting hay and actually have coyotes come into the field after you've been at it for quite a while, especially when you're fixing to wind down. It's just it's just like ring ringing a dinner bell for them. They're out there mousing. It's not just they're hunting. Seem like they're just curious. They're just coming out there to see what's see what's going on. So yeah, they they have to check out all that new stuff and u you know a lot of people don't know it but there that bacterial microorganism disturbance even when you just walk through the woods or another animal you know it creates all this disturbance on that level that creates new smells. You know that's the that's the very beginning portion of it. And anytime you put high winds and water or fire or anything, you create that and those animals are are going to check it out. I think we did a podcast not too long ago where I was I just finished burning some stuff. Yeah. Yeah. While that stuff is still smoking, I come back in there and checked it a couple days later. Turkey tracks, deer tracks, coyote tracks, that place is full of it. all those animals are going in there checking that stuff out and take advantage of uh of all the new um things to I guess explore and and take advantage of if they find opportunities. So hunting behind disturbance disturbances can up your coyote calling odds then. Correct. 100%. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, that's a that's a pretty good little little tidbit there. Let's move on to the next one. Uh, and this is something else um that I think is very cool. We haven't talked about it a ton yet, but you recently conducted a coyote howling study. Now, tell us what you learned from that. Well, my buddy Joey Wor said, I' I've said, you know, it's about two years that I was working on this. Well, he told me, he said, "You're lying about that." He said, "You've been working on that for years." And I said, 'Well, I've had it on my mind, you know, for years. But in the past two years, again, after raising coats, I was able to, you know, kind of take what I what was a theory and really test it more because I've got these coats, they're free range, so I get to hear the the howling activity throughout the year. You know, no matter what time of the year it is, I get to hear how much they're howling on their own or not howling. And I also was able to test howland and howland response. And I did that over the course of about two years. And I didn't do it every single day or night, but I was pretty consistent with it there for about two years. And I had my Fox Pro sitting there and I had my diaphragms, MFK diaphragm sitting there. And in particular when co Howland was in a lull where they weren't as vocal I would notice that you know I might take the e call or the diaphragms either one and how and not get a response on cos that I know are there you know these are the the coast that I've raised and this also ties right back to the theories that I had while hunting coats before and after doing this and I've seen it hold true but you could take those periods of time where vocals were at a loyal coach were not very active with their howling and I might howl with the e call or howl with the diaphragm and not get a response. Turn around and howl in reverse order, not get a response and then howl over the top of the ecoall with the diaphragm and a lot of times get those cos to vocalize. I mean, it was a very a very measurable uptick in, you know, in vocalizations using both and doing that over the course of that two-year period and checking it on a regular basis. Now, when they were real vocal, it didn't matter. You could start with either one. You get one loan how out and they're they're entering you back. But it was very, you know, obvious that when those coats were weren't as vocal, that combining the diaphragms and the e-coll and howling with both would up the odds of getting a vocal response. There were times where, you know, they just wouldn't howl. But there were a lot of times where I howled with the e- call, howled with the diaphragm, no response. Turn right back around and howl with both and get a response. And since then, especially over this past summer, had numerous people I've hunted with. We went to Tennessee, couldn't hardly get a vocal response. I was hunting with Trent and Tim Alman. And we started doing some of that. Started getting vocal response. Had Ched Burke, Greg Gallagher come down. Same thing. We had numerous vocal activity howling with both versus just howling with one or the other. So, it definitely without question ups your odds of vocal response, which gives you some advantages of moving on coyotes and, you know, knowing if you're close enough and all that kind of stuff or just finding them if you're trying to locate, you know, that that ups your odds of getting a vocal response. So, uh, and it also another thing that it ups your odds on is even if they'll howl with one or the other, I've noticed that when you're hunting coats, you may start off with your e-collar, you start off with your diaphragm. And if you don't get those coats killed pretty quick and you wanna you want to get them to vocalize again, swapping from one to the other or howling with both of them like I was talking about while ago. All of those things up the odds of continuing to get vocal response and it also ups the odds of callins while you're hunting. So those are if you're not I've always said you you'll see people get in arguments over you know running a e-coll hand call diaphragm I'm only going to use one or I'm only going to use the other right and uh a smart man the one that is the most well-rounded will end up with the most coats because there are times where one or the other or combining them together is where you have the highest odds and the best advantage of calling coats, especially when they are in those periods of times when they're not as active vocally and a lot of times when they're not as active vocally, they're not as active period. So, it'll be just those, you know, those days where coach are not calling as good and you can swing the odds in your favor a little bit by doing some of that. Yep. So take advantage of using your e-coll along with either diaphragms or open read howers. You know, put put more than just one style of how out there is what you're saying. E- call house with either mouth diaphragms or hand hand type howlers. Use them in conjunction to get uh to to drag out those hows from coyotes or out there in the woods. Yeah. Or out there in the sage or wherever. Yeah. and and briefly I guess while we're on it you know mentioned locating we've covered locating in full so I won't stay on it but for just a second but there are situations low population all kinds of things are and and like my case I just like to do it because it gives me advantages but locating can up your odds on getting on and and killing coyotes there's a there's another up your odds tip well it tells you where the coyotes are at it can give you a good inventory on how many coyotes are right there in that area or in that family group, it can just really help you put a game plan together to go in there and that's definitely going to up your odds. Absolutely. Just, you know, we talked about it the other day. It's just like if you only had time for, say you was going to go hunting tomorrow morning, you only had time to make five coyote stands and you knew where five groups of coyotes were at because you located them, you going to go make those five coyote stands, you going to go make five blind stands. Yeah. Yeah. And I I always say it, you know, if you people say, "Well, locating is a waste of time." Well, if you've got, you know, if if you've got five stands, you were five blind stands you were going to make, but you got up just an hour earlier and wasted that hour locating, but you heard three groups. What are you going to do? Are you going to go hunt those three places where you no coats are first, or you still going to make those blind stands? And let's just say that you didn't hear anything in that hour. You can still make your five blind stands at any time you want to. But right, if you know and they might prod and they might produce. We're not saying not make them, but which one would they rather make, right? Well, anytime I've ever had that conversation with people about locating versus not locating, and you you ask them, unless they're just being hard-headed, and you say, hey, if I tell you there's coats here, if if you just tell them, hey, there's coats on the on the left hand side of the road up here, which side of the road you think they gonna make the stand on? if everything else is the same, wind, all that kind of stuff. I guarantee you they're gonna go where they know the coat's at every single time. So, it just ups your odds knowing where coats are at. And um you don't have to do it if you don't want to do it, but hey, that's where that's where John's going. I need all the advantages I can get. There's a lot of people upping their odds by locating. I see the post every single day on uh on Facebook, but uh just uh just another one that can help you out if you if you want to take advantage of it. Yep. So, ways to up your odds. We've got hunting behind disturbances. We've got using e calls, diaphragms, and hand calls in conjunction locating. And then I think this goes right into our next one. Let's talk about ecall placement. Proper e-coll placement in accordance with your wind direction. You want to take it from there? That's a huge deal for me. I mean, it's always a factor, but we just released a video where we were talking about that in particular. Uh because I'm shotguning. I'm always shotguning. No matter what the terrain looks like, I've you've been with me. It doesn't matter how how open or how thick. I'm I'm just toting the shotgun and and I've got a lot of confidence that even when I'm in wide open ground, I can get coes where I want them in shotgun range by one the sounds that I'm using. I've got confidence in those and then also confidence in placing that e-coll. Um prime example of that stand we were just talking about the way the wind was. We had a left to right crosswind, but this particular property we were set up on, we had permission on. The coaches were actually across a gravel road, two fences, and on neighboring property that had a lot more cover on it, but we couldn't hunt that. So, we were setting up as close as we could in this wide open ground, but that pasture field was slapped full of cows and there was a pond there. And we were set up on that pond levy, pond down, and kind of had a little bit of backdrop with that levy. Well, those there was a little slight rise in the field and there were all these cow trails that were coming to that pond. They were all tying together right there, our setup where we were sitting on the pond and then they kind of filtered out multiple cow trails that just kind of filtered out and ran towards that property we were calling the coyotes on. Well, I took all of that into consideration when I was setting that e- call out. I we needed to get the coyotes in the shotgun range in wide open ground. So, I just moved the call up wind and almost parallel with us. It was out in front of us just a little bit and I set it right on one of the coyote trails that ran straight towards where we had located those coats at before daylight. And so the wind combined with the cow trails and there was also a little rise in the field. I backed the co one of the reasons I set the call a little bit closer to us is because I knew if I backed it up just a little bit, they wouldn't be able to see the call because of that little bit of rise. If id set it closer, they could have popped through into our side and they would have been able to see where the sound was coming from and they it might would have hung them up. So, there was three three different things going on right there with the placement of that e- call that ended up putting two coats right in our lap, killed them both with a shotgun. And I think the placement of that e- call was was a keep. It also helped keep the way we had it set up, it also helped keep them from looking right at us because we had an offset and upwind. So, multiple things that uh that you can think about that'll up your odds instead of just, you know, walking out and setting your call down randomly. Exactly. Exactly. And we've done we've done podcast like full podcast on e- call placement before and I definitely suggest going back and listening to it. I think we did that with Tory or uh with Corey Gra I think we did. But it's an excellent podcast and it really can make a difference. You know, if you start thinking, you know, you know, coyote calling can be tough and your e-coll placement can make or break a coyote stand. It's just as simple as that. And it can also make the difference in killing one coyote versus multiple coyotes on a stand as well. So definitely definitely start paying attention to your e-coll placement. go back listen to that that episode over e- call placement and I guarantee you'll learn some stuff on that if you know saying all of y'all going to learn something maybe a bunch of you guys out there teach us something but if you're looking for some info on e- call placement go check that episode out because it is one of those things it's just key if you're just thinking one if you're just one of those guys think just all I got to do is set this out wherever and just hit play there's more to it than that I think we've all figured that out by now there there's a couple more things that we've I think we've touched on them before, too. Uh here's here's a place where the 360, you know, shines. But not just a 360. Any call that you set out there, not only are you do I think about where I'm going to set the call, I'm also thinking about which direction I'm going to point the source of my sound because you can you can guide cos to a certain degree and you can you can at least up the odds. So, if you've got uh if you've got cos that you would rather come to one side of you or the other due to wind or visibility, maybe you're hunting thick stuff and there's an opening somewhere, you can put and point that call or in the case of the 360, one thing that I do with mine is I turn one speaker off when I'm hunting in thicker cover. And I do that so that I can use those other two speakers to help me direct coats towards the strong side of the sound. And that one speaker that I've got shut off, I can put that. Most of the time hunting in the woods, you're going to have some blind spots. So, I can use that that dead side, no sound side. I can use it to help, you know, keep coats from coming where I don't want them and use the strong side sound to steer coats. And sometimes you can even get them to come more in your favor of the wind by directionally pointing your sound. So, uh, that's that's another one to think about. I've seen I've seen people, you know, they just throw their call down on the ground, the speaker may be about halfway pointed back at them sometimes. And that's not saying you won't call coaches that way, but you can put a little more thought and strategy and up your odds on some stands with the way that you It's working the code. You can you can kind of work that code sometimes uh by pointing that speaker a certain direction. 100% 100%. Let's move let's move to things and this is kind of goes right along with this because we mentioned killing multiples but let's move to things that you can do to improve your odds for killing multiple coyotes on stand. And I mean you were just talking about this the other day on the phone. Um, but one thing and I'm going to let you take it take off with this right from here, but uh I like killing the female coyote first. We've all heard people talk about you call in call in say a pair or whatever, try to figure out which ones is a female and kill that first. I'll let you take her from there. Well, that's another one of them kind of common sense deals too with especially during that pair bond. Once cows start pairing and especially get into pair bonding and into breeding, that male is tied to that female way more than she is tied to him. So when you call in a pair, if you can determine which one, you may watch them, a lot of times a cow will mark before it gets to you. So sometimes you can positively identify which one is the male or female. But if you can't and one of them's bigger than the other, you can shoot the smaller one first, hoping that, you know, odds are, again, talking about odds. The odds are higher that that's the female. And your odds go way up of getting that that second coat if you kill the female first because, like I said, he's tied to her. They're bonded. A lot of times she is either pre-estrus or in estrus depending on how far along they are with the breeding. But but he's tied to all of that and it's no different than a than a hen and a gobber or a dough and a buck. Everybody knows that the male is more susceptible to even even with humans. Even with humans when they get hooked the the he is hooked. So uh you get some you can get some pretty good call backs when uh when you shoot that female first. Yeah. Yeah. It seemed like one of them is is usually a little more uh dedicated to the other one. Ain't no doubt a little more loy a little more loyalty there. No doubt about it. And uh hey, there's this is another one goes right along with this and and we was talking about this the other day cuz I run into this situation. I knew where a family group of coyotes was at. I'd actually called um called this group earlier on and I knew they had some pups in there and only thing I did was killed a killed a helper coyote out of the group. So I knew I should have had a mom and dad and at least a handful of pups. Went in in there the other day. Sure enough called five coyotes out. And what it looked like was one adult and then four young of the year. And what I decided to do had great shot opportunities at all five of them. And what I did was I picked out what I thought was the adult coyote, which in other words was the oldest coyote plus the biggest coyote out of the bunch. And I didn't kill as many coyotes as I wanted to on this stand. I still killed a double. You know, I was soon as I seen five come out, I was automatically thinking, you know, I fix to take a picture with at least three coyotes. You know, everybody's probably done that already start taking a picture before you fire the shot off. But anyway, killed the old coyote first. It dropped right there. Hit pup distress number three. Sure enough, two more coyotes stopped before they got back to the woods. I was able to shoot the second one. Had a double on the ground. Um, now I didn't get get them called back out and there's something else that you that you could do in this situation that's going to help you out. We'll cover that on a on a next topic here. Uh, but Tori, you want to talk about that a little bit about killing? Like if you call in that family group of coyotes, why it's best to try to pick out the adult coyotes to put your first bullets in. Yeah. When you take out those adults, most of the time those pups are not going anywhere. Especially, you know, well, it doesn't really matter how far along they are through the den pup or even family bust up time frame. If you shoot a pup or two out of it, those adults might move that whole family group. But if you kill the adults, odds are they're not going to go anywhere. So you can move in and continue to pick off coats, especially during that family bust up time frame. Continue to pick off coyotes on that same day, that same stand, so to speak. Or you can come back and pick off more coyotes out of the odds are higher when you target the adults first. And I do this a lot, especially earlier in the year. Uh when you've got those adults acting as satellites around the pups, you can kind of stay back off of those pups a little bit, up the odds of calling in the adults. And if you get one or two of those adults killed, then your odds, I mean, then those pups just become even easier to kill if you want to move in and kill them because they're going to come to those adult co vocals as soon as they hear them. and your social sounds like greeting lines and stuff like they're going to run right over the top of you. And so that ups the odds of killing out that whole family group. Whereas if you go in and you shoot those pups first, let's say you move right in on the group and you turn your call on and you call in that that water pups and you go to, you know, shooting up the woods, you may or may not, the odds are lower of you calling up the adults after you've called in and killed pups and kind of disturb the area. Uh whereas you shoot the adults first, your odds are a lot higher of calling the pups. So those things, uh, whether it be on the same day and picking off multiple coyotes or whether you're planning on coming back the next day and banking on those co still being roughly in the same spot uh that you found them in, located or knew they were in, whatever. Yeah. So like on my particular stand, caught in five coyotes, killed an adult first, got a young of the year stop. And these are these are these young of year coyotes got their killing teeth in. You know it's it's bust up time. Got another one stopped. So I had a double on the ground. So the next question is and you brought it up is going to be my next thing that that I asked you about moving up after a kill. So I actually called these out into an open pasture field from the woods. I knew where they were at. I was pretty tight on it. I was within 150 yards or so of the woods. Have pretty confident I get them out in the open. You know, it's kind of my style. I like filming them in the open. Sure enough, got them out there. Killed two. The other three go back into the woods. Do you think it was a pretty Now, I didn't do this. You know, I finished filming my stuff, gathered everything up and left, but do you think it was pretty good odds that I could have moved down into the timber where those coyotes went and reset up and made another stand and maybe got another one or two? It it would have surprised me if you had done that and not killed another one because moving on coaches regardless of time of the year, regardless of whether they're in family groups or not, moving on coaches, closing distance on coaches, changing position, putting a applying a little more pressure with your moves. I think that's the number one thing there is in in co hunting. I think that is I say the number one thing. You've got to have all that other the basic stuff down with, you know, your setup and your wind and it being good. But one of the number one things that will make the difference in a blank stand or a productive stand is being willing to move up and close distance on coach that you know are there that you haven't killed yet. And you can do that on in a situation where you know different from yours where you hadn't even killed a coach yet but you know coach are there and for whatever reason they won't come to you where you're sitting. A lot of times you can pick up and move just a little bit whatever you think you can get by with doing and that will really up the odds of you calling in a coat. And then in the situation you're talking about especially during that family bust up time frame when you've got coats that are kind of busted up and scattered out. You can ease in, set down, pick up a coat, move deeper towards that group or towards the next coat. If they're separated out, you can move closer to the next one, pick it up. And a lot of times by moving just a little bit, you'll end up with multiple coats at the end of basically one stand, even though you made two or three little moves on that stand. We had uh Joey was down here filming with me not too long ago and we had a prime example of that. I had located these coats in a creek bottom couple different times and most of the time when I located them they were in a particular spot. Well, that morning before we made any stands, we passed through there and how well these there was a the coyotes were kind of scattered out down the creek and the nearest coyote I dropped a pin on the nearest co to our access point for the wind is where I dropped the pin. So, we didn't get back in there to that spot till around I think it was midday or after I think it was after lunch. We got back in there, moved in about I think we sat down about 300 yards off that first pin, that nearest pin. Sat down, howled, had one coat answer, went right to squeaky squeaky coyote runs in in seconds, kill it, sat there a few minutes, didn't call anything else up right there. Didn't hear any other coyotes. Those other coyotes, that one coyote was the only one that vocalized and nothing answered it. But we knew that there were more coyotes scattered down that creek. And I had that second pin. It was another probably another 600 700 yards deeper down the creek where these coats had been staying at most of the time. So me and Joey just packed up and we moved right on past. We walked right past the dead coat, stayed going down the creek and we got about 300 yards or so from that next pin that I had. sat right back down and I'm trying I think babysitter. We howled and the whole group lit up kind of scattered out down the creek right there and I can't remember if we I think we called in another four coyotes all separate. These coyotes come in separate. Um we started calling them in on babysitter and ended up killing calling in four more and killing three. So we ended up with five coats called and four dead just off that. and we got three of those coats based off of making that move. Had we not made that move, one coat. So, and that happens over and over and over again. We've done it before, too, where we'll go in, sit down, kill a couple two or three coats out of or one coat or whatever out of a family group and then leave and turn and turn around and come right back. We might have, you know, killed them on the first stand, go make two or three other stands, come right back and move in just a little bit deeper and set out and pick up another coat or two out of that same group. So that those little moves uh really up your odds on picking up extra coats. Yep. Yep. Or just getting one killed, you know, just getting one killed period. There are even more examples of setting down coyotes howling. You try to call them up in a spot, they don't come right there and you move up a little bit and you set right back down and you may go right back to the same sounds that they wouldn't break to when you were 200 yards farther away and they run right over you because you made that little move and applied a little bit of pressure to them and they can't stand it, right? Yep. I like it. Well, one thing we just talked about said talk about killing teeth coming in. That moves us right into our next little topic and that is use more prey distress. Here we are into October and this is prime time to start using more pre- stress sounds. Now, we all like using our vocals and we just talking about vocals all through this podcast and and everything else, but if you're somebody that thinks that only thing you're ever going to play is vocals. That's just what you kill your coyotes to. Trust me, you are leaving coyotes out there in the field, out there in the sage, out there in a prairie, out there in the woods by not implementing prey distress sounds into your calling sequences. Oh, 100%. And and the flip side, if you're only playing prey distress, you know, that's the you need to be you got to play or I say you got to. I don't guess you've got to, but if you want to have depends on how many co you want kids. That's right. It goes right back to what I was talking about earlier, people arguing over, well, only use hand calls, only use e- calls, only use diaphragms, all of that stuff. The the guy that's going to end up with the the most at the end is the well-rounded caller that uses it all. And the same thing holds true with your sounds. If you learn how to use all of the sounds, and you have more triggers, more tools, you're going to call more coats. And tying right to what you just said with upping the odds, when those up shed those baby teeth and put those killing teeth in, it automatically that is a that is a marker for family bust up and it is a marker for when they start fending for themselves and have to start catching on their own. And of course, they're fairly inexperienced when they first get those teeth because the adults have been helping out all this time. Now they got to do it on their own. So when they hear prey distress sounds and they're functioning as an adult now and they're having to be independent coach taking care of theirel, it's just common sense that it's going to up the odds of you calling those coaches in particular. You'll still call the older adults, too, but it's going to up the odds of you picking up some coats. Just like I said, we turned on squeaky squeaky. This is a busted coat, you know, pup coat that has put it killing teeth in and it runs right to a prey distress. And so you can take advantage of that and not only up the odds of calling coyotes, but up the odds of calling more coyotes when you set out and you turn on that prey distress, rabbit, rodent, bird, whatever, and you get a coat or two killed on that. And then those that are hung up that didn't want anything to do with the prey distress, you swap right over to your vocals and you you keep killing. But those those killing teeth coming in is definitely a marker for use more prey distress. Yep. Yep. And this goes right into the next thing is is you hear we see the see the thing pop up all the time. Just play the rabbit. Well, the next thing is don't just play the rabbit. There is there are tons tons tons of great uh prey distress sounds. He's just talking about it's a coaxer sound. Squeaky squeaky. And there's so many other awesome coer coaxer sounds such as b squeaks, there's mouse distresses, rat distresses, just on down the line, just on and on and on. Plus, you got tons of different bird distresses. You got all your common birds, uh, your woodpeckers. I mean, it's just the list goes on and on and on, and they're all extremely effective. Do not just think that you've got to play a rabbit. You've got a lot of stuff that you can choose from. And not just that, you can play raccoon sounds and just on down the line, you can play fox distress sounds, which is food for a coyote. Yeah. Well, you know, the the just play the rabbit deal, that's that's kind of come back around. Just play the rabbit is a catchphrase that's been around for as long as predator predator hunting's been around Benton Bowman's. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, and it it is a catchphrase because just playing the rabbit does work. I mean that is the rabbit is that is probably the original sound played for predator calling and it works. So it's a good idea to play the rabbit and a better version of that is to play prey distress sounds like you were talking about. But don't get too hung up on on that catchphrase because that is what it is. and a lot of people using it that have brought it back around and and got a lot of hype. They know that it's just a catchphrase and they don't just play the rabbit. But, uh, that that's something that and something else if you really want to break it down by the numbers statistically, the rabbit is the most sound played with probably the biggest if you were comparing it to like fighters across the board. Across the board, no doubt. the if the rabbit was a fighter, he would have the biggest losing record in the game because it is played it is played by far the most. And there's a lot of times where it fails. A lot of times when it works, but there's a lot of times when it fails and other sounds if you'd have followed with it, you would have killed a coach. So kind kind of like Brett Favre in football. you watch much football like Brett Favre, he, you know, he had tons and tons and tons of touchdown passes, right? He also had tons and tons and tons and tons of interceptions, right? You know, you got putting it out there for for sure. And the rabbit gets put out more than any other sound. Statistically, it's the lowest odds if you were to to crunch the numbers on it, but it's also a good sound. Something else with the rabbit is most people play the rabbit first. So there's a lot of times where you've got coyotes that were going to come to anything. But the the bottom line is you need to be playing it all. That's what that's where you're going to get your most callins because there are coyotes I get to this is something that's unique. We've talked about it before. I get to sit with the coyotes and watch their reaction to sounds. I've been recording a lot of new stuff here lately. I was sitting out there the other day watching a little coat named Jewel. She was sitting about 40 yards from me. I was sitting by a tree and she was just sitting down beside another one. The e-coll was about 200 yards from her and I had somebody else running the remote just running through sounds. And I was actually videoing this. I was videoing this coat watching and went through multiple sounds. Some sounds were new sounds, some sounds were old sounds. And she would just sit there and and intently watch and twist her head. You know how they'll turn their head back and forth? Never made a move until that old submissive beggar came back on. And that got her up and she still she still didn't completely commit to it. But that one got her interest, but ran through multiple prey sounds, ran through and for whatever reason, she just wasn't all that interested. But I've done that. I do that all the time with coats and you'll get to see different ones that trigger on different sounds for whatever reason and and then on some days that same coyote may jump up to it doesn't matter what it is. It's just the mood of the coyote that day. That's why some days we have really high success days and and other ones we don't. But uh that stuff is neat to watch and it shows you that playing multiple sounds and having multiple triggers is a good idea. And here's another one. I mean, this one really drives it home. Went to I think I told you about this. We went to uh New Mexico, hunted for a few days. Me and Joey were hunting with uh Felipe Baka. Got out there and we hunted three days. And the fir and we ran the same sequence all three days. I was running the we didn't run the same sounds on necessarily every sequence, but we had the same structure as far as the category of sounds. We were starting with prey distress for a minute or two. Usually playing one or two different prey distress sounds, then going to vocals, then into social sounds, then into pup distress, into fights. That was pretty much the sequence every day, all three days. The first day that we were there, we called every single cow, starting with prey distress. So, we were playing the rabbits, playing the birds, playing the rodents. We were starting those stands with those sounds. Did not call a single coyote. We called coats on most stands. Didn't call a single coat to a pre- distress sound all day long. Everything came on either house, social, or a fight. Every one of them. What was odd is the very next day, we called every coat soon as we started with the exception of one. We called every coat to just right off the bat on one of those prey sounds mainly Juicy Cotton. Juicy Cotton and Weed Eater were the two standout sounds that second day. Every coat came to prey distress. The exception was a triple that we killed. We had two coats come running in together on I think it was Juicy Cotton. And then I shot both of those and looked over my right shoulder and there's a coat running away that was also coming to the prey sound and I flipped on I think I flipped on food bus. Pretty sure that's the one I flipped on. Anyway, turned on a fight and turned that coat around. He made a big circle and come right up there and we had all three of them laying on top of each other. But the first day all vocals, second day all prey distress sound. And then the third day it was just a variety. We caught some coats on prey. More more what I would call a typical day where you're getting some bites on different stuff. But that's just a prime example of of why you want to play it all because we had a we had a what you could call a just play the rabbit day. We had a day of 100% vocals and we had a day of good mix everything. Yeah. And that happens all the time. Speaking of Felipe, did you see the mountain line he killed? He called up. I did. I did when we were out there talking about that. Good grief. Yeah. He uh he texted me and sent me some pictures. I was like, "Good grief." Oh, woolly looking sucker. Killed. It was a It was a goat killer. Evidently been in a goat pin and had just killed just killed a goat. And he went in there with his X24 and played uh played kid goat distress. Called sucker right up. Hey, it's a big old line, too. He's got me beat right there. I had never killed a line. He's a If y'all don't know who Felipe Baka is, y'all look him up. He a real deal. He's a He's a cow. He's a predator killing Sbuck. That is for sure. He knows what he's doing. We were We were messing with him on We were killing cows the whole time, but we got to messing with him, telling him, you know, he wasn't putting us on good stand. So, Joey just released the video of Frank the T. He had these coats named. I mean, that's that's how well he knew his ground. He had some of his cows named and uh oh so he carried us over there and Frank the tank and Big John that's what he called them. They're they're no longer with us. They're dead. They're those troublemakers are no longer there. Just like that mountain line. Yeah. But he he definitely knew where he he knew where the where the critters were at for sure. Yeah, that's good. I got uh I got one more to cover here before we get off here for for upping your odds and that is understand the coyote life cycle and apply to your calling. You want you want to take off with that? That is that is we went we went over we've beat this dead horse a lot. You know what I mean? We've got tons and tons of podcasts that everybody can go back and listen to. But it it's a Yeah. And it's such it's such a big deal. I think that's probably people have heard me probably say it on other podcasts. I think I've learned more in just a couple of years raising coats and watching all those behaviors and and the sounds associated with them throughout the year throughout their life cycle. Watching them go from den and all those behaviors and sounds right on up through pup rear and family bust up into, you know, rolling back around to pairing or pair choosing, pair bonding, breeding, and then back to denning and getting to see all of that stuff play out at close range and see all of the different sounds and behaviors that go along with it. Yeah, there's no doubt it has, like I said, in just a couple years, it really upped my odds on calling and killing cows because it showed me things that I mean, everybody knows certain sounds or any sound will work at any time of the year. But if you know what coaches are doing at certain times of the year and what their primary focus is during that portion of their life cycle, you can use that against them. use those behaviors and those sounds associated with those behaviors to to really up your odds when you go in there and set out on them because you know what is has the highest odds of triggering those coyotes based off where they're at in their life cycle. So that's a that's been a huge deal. Yep. We've got we've got tons of information out there for you guys for that. We've got, you know, monthspecific podcast. We've got, you know, denning podcast, pup rearing podcast, multiple family bust up, we've got pup dispersal. We've got several breeding season podcast. We of course we're going to have more and more to come. But definitely go back if you if you're new to the podcast, go back through the library, find those podcasts, and you can really really learn a lot about what's going on in a coyote's life for certain times of year and what you can do to capitalize on them. Um, a prime example of it is what we just covered with those killing teeth. You know, until raising coats and watching them and then watching the behavior of those pups change and then realizing, hey, those things are are shedding their baby teeth right now. They're putting in those permanent teeth and I'm seeing a transition that ties right to those teeth coming in. And when you realize that and you tie that to your hunting, just like what we were talking about with the with, you know, adding prey distress and using a little more pre still using all our vocals and all that kind of stuff, but that time frame and that behavior associated with that time frame in their life cycle just, you know, when to make those changes, you know, when to do your your sequence changes and adding sounds or playing more this or more of that at certain times of the year to up your odds. And that's just uh what we talked about with the killing teeth is a is just a perfect example of knowing those things and recognizing it. And if people recognize that, you know, in their area, if they're going out there killing coats and they're they see that they see that uh you know, they the coaches are putting in those teeth, then if they kill a coat, it may they may think it's a a full grown coat. They look at those teeth and see that it's a you know, a a pup that is put in his permanent teeth. It's going to tell you a couple things. It's going to tell you what stage those coats are in. And it's also going to tell you, hey, there's probably more coats in this same a there's probably a family group in this area, so I need to hit this again or I need to keep calling or or whatever. There's just some things that you can learn from that knowing about their life cycle that put things in your favor. Yep. Yep. That's good stuff. We've covered some pretty good pretty good stuff here that that can definitely up your odds for coyote calling. We got hunting behind disturbances. uh talk about playing using your e-coll in conjunction with diaphragms and handcalls, locating, e-coll placement. Um talking about killing female coyotes first if you have the opportunity, shooting older coyotes first, moving up after a kill. Um talking about using more prey distress, playing stuff other than just the rabbit and just more than just uh coyote vocals as well. understanding the coyote's life cycle and applying it to your calling. One thing I want to ask you here before we jump off, Tori, I actually got two things I want to ask you, but this one out all that stuff that we talked about and maybe you have a one laying back there that you we haven't talked about, but what is your number one tip for guys and gals coyote calling over the next couple months? What is the number one tip that you can give them that's going to help them up their odds?
That could be one way you just cover too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean definitely definitely adding those prey distress sounds in and continuing your vocal stuff because of the family bust up time frame. That would be uh that would be way up there. Um there's several of them you know the we covered most of them that would be all of them all of them are all of them up there are a lot of them's tied for number one tied for number two and tied for number three. Yeah. moving moving on coaches, especially if you know you've got family groups and uh and adding those prey distress sounds to not just playing prey distress sounds, but adding those to especially maybe the front end or right behind your house and then going right on through with your your other sounds that are important during family bust up. Those things are going to definitely be important over the next couple months for sure. Got one more question for you and this kind of involves the X48 since you're kind of getting your feet wet with it. With the X48, one of the features that it has over an X24 is you can play two sounds at once. You can also while you're playing those two sounds, you can independently change the volume of each sound. And if you wanted to, you could also change the pitch. Now Tori going through October, November playing a bunch of different sounds with your coyote vocals, your prey distresses and all that good stuff. If you got on a stand where you think it'd pay off to mix two sounds together and play them at the same time through October, November, what would those two sounds be? What what if you was to hit Fox Fusion, which two sounds would you choose to play Fox Fusion? What kind of volume areas would each sound be in? Uh, I would definitely go with either food fuss or supper time. Those are both food fight sounds. And I would pair that with a prey distress sound like u juicy cotton, broke weed eater, u baby cotton mouth. All of those have been stout here. Squeaky squeaky even. Uh, all of those have been real stout. That's what I would pair them with. And as far as the volume range on that stuff, I would u I would run I would have to, you know, of course listen to it to see how it sounded, but just guessing at how it would come across. I would probably have my volume range on that great distress sound somewhere in the mid20s. And uh and I would have those fight sounds probably just slightly above that. and then, you know, just a notch or two above that um to put that mix in there. That That's something along those lines is probably what I would do. I like it. I like it. And and a followup to that, something I've already been playing with just I hadn't mixed them yet, but I've toggled back and forth between them and uh have paired them together a lot. pairing uh greet and wines mom and dad then call with either one of the babysitter or baby babysitter 2. Mhm. That's deadly. That's that's been really good uh doing that. And I've just been kind of toggling back and not playing them at the same time, but toggling back and forth. But I think it could potentially be even better mixed using that feature on the on the 48. Yep. Well, it's it's easily done. You have to put it to work here this coming week. What about what about John? What's he gonna do? Yeah, I've actually done it. It's you know, I shouldn't say quite a bit from but I've done it, you know, off and on in the past and almost every time that I'm mixing two sounds. It's either like a rabbit distress type sound in the low to mid 20s and throwing a food fight in the upper 20s. It's just a little bit little bit heavier, you know? It just makes sense to me. I've done it with fond distresses and say like uh MFK table scraps. The other ones that I've done is coyote uh pup distresses. You can pick any pup distress that you like. You know, whatever your favorites are and mix it with uh one of the raccoon fights. I've That has really done something. You know, th those can really break loose some coyote. Seems like if you hadn't mentioned it, I was gonna mention the [ __ ] deal. those [ __ ] fights, [ __ ] mixed with uh with co fight sounds, growling, all that kind of stuff. There's something about them coons that that get their attention sometimes. You know, I don't you know, when they come to those sounds, they they usually come fairly aggressive and it's it's like one of those deals like, you know, what are they actually coming to? Are they coming to the the raccoon? Are they coming to the pup? Are they they coming to both of them in conjunction? Are they coming to to help the other coyote? Are they coming just to watch? Are they coming to eat the [ __ ] You know, what are they doing? Well, you know, I just saw a post where people were talking about, you know, all these different animals coming to co fights. And I was noticing some of the people that mentioned specific sounds. It goes back to something we've mentioned before. I don't really think this is a theory anymore. Uh, at one time it was a theory I had. I think at this point I know that's what's going on because I see it too consistently with certain fight sounds and animals other than co showing up including coats of course but to where you've got a variety of different predators showing up to to cattle bites and another reason I think both of us probably picked a food fight to go along with those prey distress sounds after recording cos and watching them fight and we've talked about it for there are sounds associated with certain fights that you don't hear in other sounds. For example, food fights. Those cos are usually chewing and eating while they are growling and snarling and and all that aggressive stuff. And so you'll hear if you listen to like I mentioned supper time and food fuss or even table scraps portions of pound town. Pound town's a multiple. It has multiple stuff mixed in it. But you've got those you can hear and if people will pay attention when they're playing these food fight sounds, if they're truly food fights, you will typically hear portions of it where it's going and you can hear the chewing. And there's certain sounds associated with those food fights that I think not only cows are triggered by, I think other animals are triggered by it because they know it's probably know it's an opportunity to potentially get in on a carcass or get in on a keel or at least come in and check that out. And even if they're not an animal that would have an opportunity to take it away from the cow, a lot of times they don't know that. I mean, a stupid gray fox will, you know, that thing will come in there like, you know how aggressive they are. So, I think a lot of times those animals show up thinking it's food related. That's why they're showing up. Yeah. Because it seems when you get those type animals outside of coach showing up, it's almost always those type fights that are mentioned. It's it's typically not your pick and order fights or your breeding fights that that they're showing up to that stuff on. I'm not saying it doesn't happen on those, too, but it seems to be largely in favor of the food fights where you see multiple animals show up. So, yep. Ups the odds using those when you're mixing them with your prey distress sounds. It just uh like you said, it makes sense. It does. It does. Well, you got anything you'd like to leave us with? the usual. Appreciate everybody tuning in, listening, and uh using our products. Yes, sir. We got uh we've got some pretty cool episodes coming up, guys. I think it's really going to intrigue everybody. I like I enjoyed this one. You can take these tips that we just talked about, apply them in the field. It will definitely definitely up your up your odds coyote calling. We hope everyone enjoyed this episode and we hope you join us again right here on the FoxPro