Coyote Help

[tryinhard]

I spoke with a guy this morning about trapping his place. He has over 1000 acres of Ozark mountain ground with food plots scattered. He says he has coyotes on his trail cameras but can only catch a few. He has even had professional trappers come out & the best they can do is 7 in a season. What's missing here? He says he has made sets & put cameras on them & the coyotes just walk right by them. I'm thinking a curiosity scent might be the trick? Any suggestions?

[bigbob]

They've been educated, gonna be hard to catch. If all they've seen are dirtholes/flat sets, might mix it up with some Cable restraints or cubby's.

[bigjohn]

Probably most of the coyotes he had on the place. A 1000 acres down there isn't going to support many coyotes. Just not their kind of habitat. Don't know what he considers a "professional" as far as a trapper goes. I'd think a experienced trapper would recognize he wasn't going to be covered up with them.

[tjm]

What John said, 4-7 early and 1-3 stragglers would be my expectation unless he has something special going on or a range overlap. These hills are a desert in winter. Fox were more plentiful because smaller dogs eat less, but since the coyotes or disease or pick something eliminated the fox, coyotes all we have. The CA near me that I trap some times is 2,106 acres and some years you can walk the whole thing and not see a a single coyote scat, do that every week, all winter. It holds deer , coon, squirrels, grey fox and not much else in winter. A mile or two away where there is a chicken farm and goats has more coyote traffic even if they can't get to the chickens and goats. I believe (possibly wrongly) that in this part of the world smaller active farming operations produce more coyotes than large tracts of barren timber. Active pasture will contain voles and cotton rats that have a hard time living in open woods.

[tjm]

One other thing to keep in mind when talking to owners of large tracts is that if they see three coyotes in a week they have "lots of coyotes", even if the sightings were the same coyote three times.
And a a set or twenty sets made on the down wind side of a trail isn't going to slow any critter down, til you walk the ground and make the sets that the coyotes walk right past , take all that "with a grain of salt".

[krank]

Well...Historically if you show up and try to catch a yote then the landowner appreciates it and lets you in to do other things like fish or hunt. I can just see one coyote that follows the guy around when he checks trail cameras and gets its picture taken at every one.