Prepping for Success this Upcoming Fur Season

With the days getting shorter and the temperatures finally dropping, there’s no better time than now to start preparing for your best coyote season yet! Even if you never really took a break from calling coyotes all summer, the most productive months of the year are just ahead. Here are several things to consider and address now, before the best months for calling arrive.

Do I Have Enough Land Access for the Amount of Time I’ll Be Hunting?

Land access is one of the most crucial pieces of calling coyotes. If your access is limited and you plan on hunting a lot, your properties will get hunted out fairly quickly. This can result in coyote numbers being thinned to the point where densities aren’t great, and/or the excessive amount of pressure you’ve put on an area—because it’s the only place you have to hunt—can make the remaining coyotes less responsive to calling.

A simple rule of thumb is to calculate how many stands you plan to make each month from October through February. Take that number and multiply it by two. That will give you, at a minimum, the total number of stands you should have access to.

If you have that many stands in your database, you should be in good shape for the season. If you don’t, it’s time to spend a weekend knocking on doors and generating a larger selection of stands for yourself. Building a deeper rotation of properties will help keep your ground fresh and more productive each time you call it.

Have I Spent Enough Time Shooting My Rifle?

There’s nothing worse than doing everything right, calling in a coyote, and then shanking the shot. Coyote hunting happens fast, and most of the time, you only have a few seconds to touch off a shot. One way or another, your body will resort back to habit during those brief moments of excitement. It’s up to you whether you’ve created good habits or allowed bad ones to take over.

Spending some time at the range shooting in realistic situations is the name of the game. If you sit in a predator seat and shoot off a bipod, you should spend the majority of your range time shooting coyote-sized targets while sitting in your predator seat and shooting off your bipod. If you primarily shoot from a tripod while standing, then that should be the focus of your practice.

You don’t have to break the bank buying ammunition all summer, but in most cases, the more you practice in the off-season, the more productive your shooting will be once the season arrives.

Is My E-Call and Remote Set Up for Quick and Easy Access?

As I mentioned earlier, things happen fast in coyote hunting. If I’m spending most of my time on stand staring at my remote and trying to find the sound I want, then I’m not spending much time actually looking for coyotes.

If a coyote happens to show up and you need to quickly switch sounds to get it to stop or come back for a shot, the clock is ticking there as well.

Lucky Duck Predator Calls makes this extremely easy with its sound management system. You can simply remove the SD card from the call and modify the sound library however you’d like on your computer.

You can delete sounds and folders you never use, create new folders, and then drag and drop the sounds you want into those folders. You can even control the order in which folders and sounds appear on your remote screen. Simply create the folders in the order you want them and then add the sounds in the order you want them to appear.

Taking a little time to organize your sound library before the season starts will simplify your remote screen and make finding the sounds you want much quicker. When a coyote shows up unexpectedly, you’ll be able to spend less time looking at your remote and more time watching it die in the scope!