For years I called eight to ten coyotes in a whole season and could not work out what everyone else knew that I didn't. I assumed it was the calls. Then I started writing my numbers down, and the answer was embarrassing.
My entire bad year was two of my current days.
Not a secret sound. Not a better rifle. I was hunting a handful of days a season, on country I had never scouted, making ten stands when I should have been making eighteen. That is the whole gap, and it is arithmetic before it is skill.
This book is that arithmetic, and the seven or eight things I changed to make it work. Every number in it came out of my own log, including the bad ones.
Not on sale yet — the second edition is being finished, and it will be worth the wait. Leave your email and I'll tell you the day it's ready.
What’s actually in it
Twelve chapters, about 10,000 words, and a set of overhead diagrams for the wind setups that took me years to work out.
- The Hundred-Coyote SeasonThe math, and why fifteen days is the real number
- Survey the CountryNight howling 8 to 15 spots to find which ground holds dogs
- You've Got to Find CoyotesReading sign, and the scouting ratio nobody keeps
- Be QuietThe truck-to-seat routine, and the contest that proved it
- Start SouthSun at your back, and when I break my own rule
- Use the WindShooter placement, the killzone triangle, taking the downwind away
- Call LessVolume seven, not thirty-two, and why silence works
- Start EarlyHow 15 to 18 stands a day beats 10 to 12 by seven days a season
- Pick Up the ShotgunThick cover, 20-yard windows, and the ground everybody drives past
- Closing the DealThe half that walks away, and how to lose fewer of them
- What to Play, and WhenFour instincts, and the sound order through the season
- Keep the LogFour numbers a day, and what they tell you to fix
Read a page before you decide
This is the opening of chapter seven, unedited.
If you've read my 101 tips you'll know I used to tell people to run the e-call at full volume, continuously. I was wrong, and this chapter is me taking it back.
We run a Lucky Duck Revolt and we start distress sequences on volume seven. Over about ten minutes we'll work up to 19 or 20. We don't go near 32, which is max, unless the wind is really howling.
Most hunters over-call and play it far too loud. You don't need volume to kill coyotes. I've squeaked in dogs from over 500 yards with nothing but the noise a dog's squeaky toy makes.
That is the register of the whole book. Numbers where I have them, and a plain answer where I don’t.
What this book is not
I would rather lose the sale than have you open it and feel misled.
- It is not a gear list. There is a free one on this site and it is more use to you than a chapter would be.
- It will not teach you to shoot. It will teach you to get a coyote close enough that the shot is easy.
- The numbers are mine, not science. They come from one caller’s log, hunting mostly western country. I have hunted the South and the East enough to know the principles carry, but I am not going to pretend my sample is anything other than what it is.
- It will not make you deadly in a weekend. Out of your first hundred coyotes called you might kill twenty or thirty. I killed about thirty out of mine. That is normal, it is mostly coyote fever, and it has to be worked through rather than read about. Out of your second hundred you will kill forty-five to sixty. I kill seventy to eighty now. Closing that gap has a whole chapter to itself and it is the most useful thing in the book.
Who’s telling you this
I am Chad. I guided predator hunters professionally for about ten years across Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Wyoming, and I have run this site since 2014.
On day one of the World Championships we made 24 stands, called 7 coyotes, shot 5 and recovered 4. In 2018 we called over 250 coyotes in a year, though I was guiding through most of that and did not shoot at the majority of them. My best day ever was nine dogs, and I have had more goose-egg days than I can count. All of those numbers are in the book, because one that only prints the good days is no use to anybody trying to plan a season.
I still get coyote fever on the first six or eight dogs of every season, fifteen years in. Anyone telling you different is selling you something.
Not on sale yet. Leave your email and you'll hear the day it is.