Ever Wondered what those 'yotes are doing this time???

Amazing night to sit outside with the night optics and hope for something productive. I’m not calling at all but every time they communicate, they’re all around me and close. The classic serenades, interrogation howls….. it’s fun to believe they have no clue that I’m amongst them. However, at around 3am, every last coyote was directly east of me at no more than 300yds, doing barks I haven’t heard all season. I’ve seen the alarm barks on video and this seemed similar but there was so much short kiyi and “wowrow” mixed in. They’d combine it with single barks to as many as 5 straight barks. This went on, literally, nonstop for close to a half hour! Any of you fellow dog slayers ever heard anything like this or have an idea of what happened?

As for the sightings tonight, the only eyeballs that lit up belonged to a trio of cottontail rabbits. Geese were slightly restless tonight with occasional, short bursts of honks. Train whistles could be heard for miles! Super still and surprisingly bright for a moonless sky and very mild in temperature. I heard lots of leaf rustles, sticks breaking, and I thinking I heard a buck working a rub line…. I’ll have to check that out in the daylight.

Anyway, love to hear some thoughts on the coyote language.

Wow… crickets!

Well, I don’t think I scared them off none. Walking back from my parents house last night I could hear interrogation howls and barks off to the Northwest and just as I reached my front door, a reply came out of the patch between me and my neighbors to the south. There’s less than 200yds between us. These buggers around here…. it’s like they’re not scared of anything. I’m sure that’ll change the day I shoot one but in the meantime… they’re both entertaining and aggravating!

I very rarely hear coyotes in my hunting area vocalizing at all. Once in a while they will light off in the early evening, but it does not last long. I strongly suspect that this is because my hunting area now has wolves, so the coyotes learned long ago that mouthing off is likely to bring the big bad wolf pack in to kick their buttskies, so they learned to shut up.

Sorry, can’t contribute anything. Interesting that you have such vocal coyotes.

Grouse

I gave one a dirt nap 2 weeks ago…

big_g wrote:

I gave one a dirt nap 2 weeks ago…

Well thanks for telling us Big G. Geeze… I must have missed the thread with pics and the hunt report with the GoPro video of the totally awesome kill shot that you posted.

Grouse

big_g wrote:

I gave one a dirt nap 2 weeks ago…

YAY!!!

Grouse, the coyotes up at the cabin are the same way since the wolves came into the area. They’re very brief in their communication. 10 years ago we could hear them often through the night but that has changed drastically in the last 7 years or so. I live in the “country”…. you know, where people buy a 5 acre lot, build a huge, vaulted waste of space and think they’re pioneers now…. It’s closing in steadily and the free shooting will probably come to an end some day but until then, it’s a situation of DNR public recreation area bordering private lands. The new residents are strongly unresponsive to the nature all around them and with all the gardens and landscaping, cottontails are really thick around here. Without wolves around, I think they’ve gotten somewhat conditioned to the human presence and low threat of being harmed. I’m looking forward to changing that…. someday….. right now I have obligations elsewhere and I’m going to have to abandon my desires for a spell but when I’m able, I’m planning to follow up on all of this and see what things look like during and after predator season. This could be fun if I get the area figured out!

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TheFamousGrouse wrote:

I very rarely hear coyotes in my hunting area vocalizing at all. Once in a while they will light off in the early evening, but it does not last long. I strongly suspect that this is because my hunting area now has wolves, so the coyotes learned long ago that mouthing off is likely to bring the big bad wolf pack in to kick their buttskies, so they learned to shut up.
Grouse

Grouse, here at home I’ve found the opposite to be true. More and more, when a wolf opens up nearby the coyotes will light up somewhere else. Then another group, then another. I listen to up to 3 seperate groups of coyotes from the back porch at night, almost every night. We still hear the wolves, but not as often-though they’re still around and we see the signs of them. I’ve been told by a local wildlife expert that coyotes will actually drive wolves out of an area-not by sheer force necessarily, but by activity in the area, and the wolves will pick up and move(where I live “locally”, there’s plenty of room to move). While I can’t vouch for any of that, I can say that through 6 years of observation, the presence of wolves around me has had zero impact on the coyotes, or their talkativeness. Makes a guy wonder…

-Rev

deertracker wrote:

Awesome! Way2go deertracker!