Seaons over time to go over your notes

[uncle buck]

Ah the end of the season...The time to reflect back on your predator calling hunts... Things you did well, and then the things you did not so well.....Find the answers out why you didn't do well and then make an effort to correct the things that you know need correcting.....

Start to ask yourself questions like?

How Many Red Fox did I call In?
How many Grey Fox did I call In?
How Many Coon?
How many Coyotes?  If the answer to this is not many what so ever then you do need some training for sure!!!!!!!!!!!


Now start to ask yourself...How many of these that came in did you get busted on?  If you did get busted try to determine the reason why you got busted.... Was it set up, lights, guns,  other hunting friends with you, not enough hunting lands, not enough time in the field, ?   Then you need to make an adjustment for next year to correct it..

Nothing like getting busted a few times or over and over in a season to make you to start to think of WHY?



Just like everyone gets a rating in work.. you need to give yourself a rating and try to improve where you made your mistakes?  
Truly don't worry about Uncle Buck, or Scott, or Buckwheat, or Hern...just using members name to show you need to compete against yourself..Don't worry about what the other guy is doing...

Come on 2009-2010 Fox season. However even I need to do some improving before the new season arrives.

[Hern]

Good post.
Am always trying to outdo myself for sure. Sometimes work or weather gets in the way. But am always trying to get the odds in my favor.
I don't compete in money hunts, I have nothing to prove or ego to stoke.
Stay to yourself and learn and hone skills, but don't turn away from other information after sorting thru the chaff.
Learn to work all predators. This will give you a greater insight of animal behavior and one can work different critters when the place/time is right, this will keep your interest and more fur in the shed.
It's not the ones you kill, it's the one you don't kill....

Don't worry about numbers, they will come with experience, time spent in field, big territory to hunt and good population of critters.
When I was A young man attending fur auctions, I would get 'ticked' if someone had more fur than me. And some folks did. Dang, they must be doing something illegal.
No so.
As I got expericend and older, I began to envey that man that had lots of fur.
I knew he busted his backside and put in long houurs. AND GOOD FOR HIM.

[Hern]

ub, do you do any pre-season scouting or in-season scouting?
Reason I ask, I would like to know your success on kills by doing scouting and other before the hunt work? (like picking stands, preparing stands, cutting brush, placing baits and such).
by that...Does your 'scouting' pay off?

[bigben]

the biggest thing I did this year was not do enough pre season scouting.  although I had one goal and that was get a bobcat.  the fox I got this year was a bonus.  I ended up doing some hunting for myself and not others which was ok but I would rather see someone get their first fox.  This year I want to scout more through the summer and maybe do some summer calling just for the heck of it.  I know for a fact that the in season scouting I did put me on fur that was there now and not was there at one point.  there were a few fields that have been productive in the past but hadn't been so this year.  after a week of snow and only two sets of tracks on the property I figured the odds were not going to be that great in calling that fox in.  there was plenty of food and cover but no fox.  for some reason they were not running that property.

if your not on location your simply not gonna call anything in.  And just because there were fox there at the start of the season doesn't mean they didn't move.  sacrafice an afternoon and check your propertys mid season. 

[scott]

i learned a lot this year, i should have gotten more properties to hunt that is for sure.  next year i am going to hunt the public ones that produced this year first and leave the private ones for late in the season.  i also learned that more coyotes are showing up on our fox sets therefore we are shooting mostly lead BB's as our smallest shot.  standing 30 yards downwind of the caller for greyfox and shooting 4 or 6 shot cost us a couple of yotes.  we didn't call a lot for coons but when we did we saw them, we should have hunted more just for them, i saw a show last night where they were calling coons during the day, it looked like a lot of fun and the coons really responded.   i started with about 14 poperties to hunt and 5 or 6 produced so if i get another 10 or 12 this year i hope to have 10 good propeties at the end of next year. 

[catmando]

next year i going to go hard at it again, ive spent the last several years guiding bobcats but im done with that now, ive done the daytime coon calling and its fun but you really arent calling them in they are trying to get away from you, i need to start playing the wind more, i got used to the good ole days when 10 grey fox was the norm, ill use more mouth calls next year,

[scott]

ive done the daytime coon calling and its fun but you really arent calling them in they are trying to get away from you,

the way they were doing yesterday the coons were attacking the decoy pretty neat, looked like a real challenge with the .17 or 22 mag. 

[uncle buck]

ub, do you do any pre-season scouting or in-season scouting?
Reason I ask, I would like to know your success on kills by doing scouting and other before the hunt work? (like picking stands, preparing stands, cutting brush, placing baits and such).
by that...Does your 'scouting' pay off?

Hern I will scout for certain species...

In SCPA....Red Fox just seem to be on every property so I don't waste my time..However I do keep an eye open for scat and actual sighting of fox in late August and September if I am hunting doves or hunting chucks...

If there is one animal that I need to scout more for is coon... Coon we shoot them if they just come into the Gray Fox Pup sound.. However to truly get coon one should scout or it could be like finding a needle in a hay stack.

Also bobcat would be the same...You need to scout...You find them and you should call them in if you use the proper bobcat calling tactics.
Staying on stand long and letting the electronic caller rip with the cottontail rabbit and or woodpecker distress is a good strategy.

Coyotes...Snow never lies....you can see at a glance that they are there. Scat? who knows how long the scat has been there..  Best thing to do for coyotes is using your ears to scout instead of looking for scat...

What a gift to occur when your hunting at nightime when a police siren is heard from afar.. If Coyotes are there they just can't help themselves... The entire areas  awakes in yips and howl if one experience a medical or police using a siren by a near by highway..


By the way that is one sound every coyote hunter should have loaded on their Foxpro...A Siren.....On my FX5 it's sound number # 1 on my caller and or remote device..

[uncle buck]

ub, do you do any pre-season scouting or in-season scouting?
Reason I ask, I would like to know your success on kills by doing scouting and other before the hunt work? (like picking stands, preparing stands, cutting brush, placing baits and such).
by that...Does your 'scouting' pay off?

Prescouting for coyote call ins does pay off big time...My scouting consist of using my ears as discussed in my other post...Any howling while hunting other times is a good sign.  Also one should scout more for the deer yards not so much for the coyote scat..  Find the large quantities of deer after Jan your going to probably find the coyotes too.... I am not talking one deer I am talking about when the deer group up in a core area...

[Hern]

Our local Coyotes arent too vocal, ub. So waiting around, listening...would be a waste of time.
I look for droppings and tracks. Not a single track, but tracks coming and going...bingo!
Small and large tracks show a family group in using this area. If I find and intersection of tracks...bingo!
Droppings, fresh and aged shows me they feel comforable in this area and spend some time in this area....bingo!

Years ago, I would bring home fresh droppings and place them in the grass, in the sun and in the shade to watch them 'age'.
This was for my own knowing because I never heard of or read about 'how to age droppings'.
I did this during the summer, early fall and late fall.
I determined that sun, wind, time, humitity and contents caused aging process. Rain broke down contents. A simple formula but it gave me some insight when I now look at a dropping.
I don't know if this knowledge helped me in any way to kill predators, but I now know why no one has written about it.

[uncle buck]

Hern no your right they just do not howl for the heck of it.  However what makes them howl is the siren...The siren goes off and almost Automatic there is the pack of coyotes howling... see I hunt in more populated areas here in SCPA... Roads....are close by...Hence more odds of sirens happening then in the less populated areas of the state..

Also I am calling coyotes in and I can only think of one that howl right at the beginning of my calling.. The howl was distant too...right when I started...All the other call in's just showed up..Thats why many callers are startled.. All of a sudden the coyote is there.  it just shows up no bark no howl what so ever.. Unless they bust you and then they go a short distance and bark and or bark and yipe....

[lonewolf]

i feel like anything the more you put into it the more you get out of it. Keep up the good work out there!

[predator77]

 I did more wrong than right this year. I seen more fox pre season than any other before but called in less that ever before as well. Things I should have done different was my approach to my stands and call volume. I relied on my e caller and really had nothing new to offer a predator in the sound department. I didn't get out hardly at all when the hunting was prime. All in all it was a lack of dedication and at the end, patience on my part. Things I did well as always was my ability to be a stealthy hunter. I was always walking up on animals with in range. The problem was they seen me the same time I seen them and it became all or nothing with my reaction time and aim.

[uncle buck]

I took many new hunters this year...More so then other years..Hope that I started a fire in them to continue to enjoy predator hunting...
Outstanding learning experience for me too watching them fail, win, and the excitement in their voice and actions after they saw there first fox or coyote come to the call....

Looks like the predator hunting is winding down now that it's over..People getting ready for trout, turkey, warm water fishing...Ah to get good you have to think about predator calling 365 days a year...


Get out there and hunt some coyotes in the off season... Shoot Shoot Shoot...Get out and hunt chucks and use a rifle that you will be using in fox season.....Also use the same shooting styks to you will be using in the fall for fox... In  the summer months do some night time target practice too....

[furbug]

Do you charge to teach a slightly educated hunter? I have my own equipment.