Coyote hearing.

[bluealtered]

I have people from time to time ask me how to sneak up on coyotes and my first answer is always the same, they can hear you at least a mile away and if you aren't sneaking as quite as possible then they can hear you probably two miles away. After saying that i sometimes get the your full of B.S. look, however it is true.

Two years ago while calling one spring morning up on the mountain i got a response from a coyote that was behind me, way behind me. It was so faint i almost didn't hear it, i will guess two ridge tops away, i had the call turned down because i knew there were coyotes in this area. I only got that one response from over the hill and after about a hour i said enough and sat my rifle down and went to collect my call from the tree i had hung it on which was about 75yds away from where i had been sitting.

When i got to the tree i saw a motion off to my left and 200yds away was a coyote who had just seen me but very slowly kept coming towards me until he was maybe 50yds away. The problem was i had sat my rifle down back where i had been sitting, i did have a compact .45acp on me and i did shoot but i missed and the noise from it spooked him, he went straight up in the air and when he landed he was gone before i could get another shot.

He came from the direction of where the coyote response had come from and it took him almost an hour to get to me but he had heard the turned down call, (which was pointing away from him) and was coming in for breakfast.

There are two points to this, 1-coyotes can you a lot farther away than you think, 2-take your rifle with you when you go to get your call, that way you won't standing there with a stupid look on your face when you find yourself 75yds from where you sat your rifle down and both you and the coyote are eye to eye, and you find out that your 3" barreled .45acp isn't that great at 50yds.

 

[kcjim]

At 150 yds they can easily hear a light squeak from your lips. Called in coyotes while deer hunting this year on two different occassions from 150 yds with light lip squeaks.

 

[AckleymanII]

I had a great waterpoof coat that I used to hunt in. Outside of the coat would sound like a scratching sound when the sleeve rubbed against the body. I saw coyotes spook at 100 yards from this sound on one hunt. That coat became a Duck hunting coat.

 

[wedgy]

From up high in a heated deer stand I watched a coyote catch about a dozen mice one at a time by pouncing on them under the snow. Somehow he could hear them under a foot of snow then jump up and crash thru it and come up with a mouse. My next time out I started using the mouse sounds on my FoxPro and called in a coyote !

 

[STS]

I have watched coyotes come up out of a ravine and come 1.5 sections (miles) across the snow where I call in South Dakota. Sometimes they just poke along and sometimes the come like their tale is on fire. I'm positive they can hear the call at least 2 miles in good conditions.

 

[Sniper338]

Thats why you dont turn up the volume on a electronic call really loud. They can hear it from A LONG way off, then when they come if I quiet the call down more because if theu can tell if the sounds coming from 200 yards away and its too loud to be real. Thats why they hang up at 2 or 300 yards a lot of times because it becomes unrealistic when the call is too loud.

They have amazing eye sight too and catch movement very quickly. A motion decoy is amazing. Had them run in and tackle the decoy before. That works better than a call once they get close enough to see it.

 

[markT]

They can surely hear. They make their living hearing and smelling. I had a fox come in at about 80 yds at pitch dark and I thought it was a coyote. I slightly gave it a lip squeek and that fox sopped like he had been set in concrete. Amazing animals... I respect them immensely.(coyote)
Wonder if they are researching transplanting coyote ear drums in humans? Wouldn’t that be great?

 

[1K6BRA]

I shot these while out deer hunting in New York this year.The larger one a male stopped at a squeak at 100 yards. The smaller one a female would not stop at a squeak so I barked at it at 100 yards,that did the trick.

 

[bluealtered]

That one that caught me trying to get my call out of the tree caught me with both of my arms up unhooking the call, so there i am frozen in place as he took what seemed like forever to sneak those 200yds, my arms felt like they were about to fall off by the time he got there and i tried to shoot him. Being in cameo from head to toe and not moving helped bring him in but didn't help my shooting.

Something else to consider that may work to our advantage is that coyotes and some other animals see in a different color spectrum than we do. There was a two part article in one of the predator hunting magazines years ago explaining this but somehow i have lost that article and have been looking for it since then just so i could reread it.

 

[jds holler]

And another thing: not only can they hear you from incredible distances, but they also know EXACTLY where you are.

I've spotted coyotes coming from over three hundred yards, and since they were coming steadily, I quit calling. They will continue to exactly where I am, looking intently for the rabbit or whatever food they anticipate. They don't miss the location of the sound by a bit. jd

 

[AckleymanII]

Coyotes can pin point a sound at 1 degree at 1000 yards!

Once I was hunting up on a rocky hill, and I could see easily 1000 yards. I was using a Weems Duo Tone hand call. Around 700 yards I picked up a coyote coming hell to beat the band, and I quit blowing the call immediately. He was on a full blown greyhound race on some very rough rocky terrain! At 300 yards, he stopped to see what he could hear, and I did not have time to let the cross hair settle before he was off again. I was sitting between two big rocks, the coyote ran right to me, with dips and gullies hiding his approach. I heard the pitter patter of feed on the hard dessert ground behind me, swung around and he was within 3' of me. He of course took off like he had rockets on feet, running back the same way he came in. To this day, I still can not believe just how he pin pointed the exact location of my Weems hand call.

 

[TAJ45]

Different topic Ackleyman but tell us about the one that dissed you when your trigger was too light......heh heh. Don't leave out the hind leg part.

 

[OKyote73]

I once Sat down with a buddy to make a call overlooking a large sagebrush valley, well over 2 miles long. We got situated in amongst some old farm equipment but there was numerous junk scattered around, like around 15 acres of junk! I sat my gun on the shooting sticks and blew on my mouth call for less.than 10 seconds, spotted a shiny coyote in the sun, heading towards us. She was well over a.mile away, probably closer to 1.25 miles distant!
I decided for some odd reason to just see how far she would come and didn't make.Another sound. She got to within 80yds of me before my partner shot her, with less than 10 seconds of calling, and that was reasonably quiet!
This was also in the far western Oklahoma panhandle so there.was some wind involved, probably 15mph. The hearing and locating ability of a coyote is truly amazing, smartest animal I've ever hunted! I like to say that.when our world ends there will only be termites and.coyote left!

 

[Rustytigwire]

OKyote 73
Out there se of Boise City its so flat when you can see vehicles miles away while spotting targets. Antelope at 2 or 3 miles.
First pdogs there had 6 inches of snow.. Winter mirage is amazing out there.
Awesome place, awsome hunt account! Thanks for sharing and refreshing good memories.

 

[OKyote73]

Rusty, that hunt was around 10 miles NW of Boise City, just at the edge of the Cimarron river breaks. Black Mesa was off to the west on the horizon

 

[jds holler]

And if you think their vision and hearing are phenomenal, just imagine their sense of smell. If you don't carefully plan and map your approach and stand to consider the breeze, you are simply wasting your time.

I sometimes wonder how we get any of them at all. I frankly believe that there are some old dogs who just never get got. jd

 

[bluealtered]

While hunting down in a place i call the "Y" years ago i set up and very quietly started calling, i had made a quick blind maybe 20yds from a spring run off drainage ditch that was maybe a foot high and at most a foot wide. I was able to see in almost every direction and thinking it would be a long shot because i had a lot of open ground around me i had turned the scope up to five, i was using a ar15. I had no response of any kind for almost an hour. I was just about to move when maybe twenty yards from me up pops a coyote in the little ditch in front of me looking for that rabbit, it was looking the other way and i was able to get the AR up and take the shot through a scope full of blurry fur.

When i walked down to look at it, it was a very old skin and bones female with no teeth left in her head. I don't know how far she had come in that little ditch never looking once to see where she was going but still able to come up within twenty yards of me.

 

[jds holler]

When i walked down to look at it, it was a very old skin and bones female with no teeth left in her head. I don't know how far she had come in that little ditch never looking once to see where she was going but still able to come up within twenty yards of me.

Just think how many seasons that gal had survived to get that old and "seasoned".
I'd say that probably 90% (or more) of the coyotes I've called and killed have been first year pups. The ones that make it through their first year get exponentially harder to get.

I've grown up and lived in good coyote country all my life. However the fact that we have a great coyote population simply means that we also have a huge population of coyote hunters and trappers. Coyotes aren't exactly born dumb, and it doesn't take long for them to get even smarter.

I can't believe how stupid I was about hunting them when I first started, and I still see guys like me trying fruitlessly to get them. I just love to see a big 4x4 parked out in the middle of a sage brush flat with the Fox-Pro on the hood blaring away while two guys sit in the cab drinking beer and waiting to be charged by a hungry pack of yodel dogs. -- jd

 

[bluealtered]

jds, true'er words were never spoken then what you just said! If a pup here makes it through the first season it knows Every single call sound ever made or it's dead. And yes every spring the newbie callers are here as well staying comfy and warm in their truck, I can always tell every spring what calls wally world got in that spring simply by listening to what these guys are playing full blast off the hood of their rig. I have honestly heard them from three ridge tops away before, it makes me wonder how many of those $500 foxpro's have ended up in the trash because they "didn't work".

I know for a fact of three big time coyote hunting shows that came here and built very nice blinds, (thank you!) but went home without any film because the local yodie's knew more than them. They seem to do better on the big ranch's that don't get hunted by anybody else.

Yep i made the same mistakes when i started out, even when a few old timers tried to help me. I bet i can't count the number of dogs i must have educated/scared off when i was just starting, it brings a smile to my face each time i hear those calls now.

 

[fyrewall]

I should be able to hear and smell stuff that good.