Now vs Then

AWS said:
It was an interesting life. I lived three years in a tent in northern Wisconsin, had a shack up in the Beltrami Island state forest, had winter lines and ran spring beaver lines , fall/winter lines were from my home before the diviorce, spring beaver was a tent line living a few weeks in the bush up near Orr MN. When things got tough we worked the beet harvest in NW MN to put together a grubstake for the trapping season. My trapping partner was a huge man 6'7" and over 300lbs and didn't do well in a canoe. So I ran the water line and him the land line. He'd drop me and the canoe off on the river in the morning and pick me up at a bridge at night and the we skinned until we went to bed. When things slowed on the river I'd move the line downstream to the next section of river. When the river froze we both worked muskrat huts, mink trails and fox.

Like the old mountain men said it was "High times" then the bottom dropped out of the fur market, interest rates went to 20.percent and construction went in the dumper. I went back to work to put together a decent grubstake for when I turned 62 that was 15 yrs ago and have been hunting and fishing since.
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That’s so awesome. Hope you’re enjoying your days
 
Called and shot my first predator, a red fox, in 1971.

I'd say there are more coyotes around now, than in the 80's, at least in Colorado. I think that's because we do not have trapping any longer and the pelt prices have dropped through the floor.

In the 70's, when coyotes were worth $50+, every farm/ranch kid hunted them hard, shooting and trapping them. Now, they shoot on sight, but might not actively hunt them.

Now there are E-callers, which can be good and cheap, and that might shorten the coyote hunting learning curve somewhat.

I equate using a hand call vs. e-call somewhat similar to hunting wild pheasants with or w/o a good dog. With a good dog, I might hunt a field that was just hunted w/o a dog, and I (the dog) might find a bird or two.

With a hand call, I think I have an advantage over e-calls, especially in the Jan-March season, when coyotes have been hunted by less serious guys using an e-caller
 
For the guy who hunts solo, remote e-callers are a huge advantage. When you have two or three guys on a stand, the advantage goes way down, although you still have the sound away from movement and you usually have more volume if needed.

At least for me, mother nature always had more say on coyote populations than hunting pressure or anything else. Some years areas would be well stocked but the next year it was a ghost town. Go back five years later and it hunts well again. Usually good areas bounce back. That's how we always found good areas to hunt. Constantly driving. After ten or more years of that you'd usually end up with quite a few decent areas.
 
In the 1970’s the fur market was strong and my heavy winter coyote pelts were averaging close to $100. That was fantastic money then but it seemed there was less coyotes around in those years. I held a trapper’s licence then which netted a few coyotes but my main target was muskrats and beaver. There was quite a few other people also trapping at that time as was a few guys with coyote hounds.
Shooting coyotes over bait also netted a few but I never tried calling in those years.
No dedicated coyote rifle then as I used whatever I happened to have at that moment which could have been 22 LR, 30-30 or .308.
Getting permission to hunt coyotes was never an issue.
The 1980’s seen the fur market soften but coyote population seemed to increase along with my enthusiasm to hunt them. I now had a 6mm REM which I loaded lighter weight Speer TNT bullets for coyotes. Most of the coyotes I shot were over bait but I did get into calling also. My first mouth call was an Olt cottontail distress which probably scared more coyotes than attract. I never was very successful calling until I purchased a Burnham Bros predator call which seemed to turn the tables. Soon after that, other calls like Fawn distress were added to my collection which took coyote hunting to another level. With basically no one else calling coyotes it seemed I stumbled onto something magical. Hunting pressure for coyotes was almost nonexistent and getting permission was never an issue.
1990 saw a 223 Rem added to my arsenal which seen a fair bit of action throughout the 1990’s. Coyote numbers were high and myself along with three other fellow hunters did our best to keep numbers in check. Spot and stock, shooting over bait along with calling resulted in some good coyote numbers but prices were not good. $10 for a whole coyote was about it. Hunting pressure was still almost nonexistent and there was no issues getting land access. In the mid 90’s my son (who was shooting a 257 Robert’s) and I had some fantastic results calling coyotes on numerous stands. Early January of 1996 we shot 7 coyotes on the one stand ( he got 4 and 3 for myself) He was hooked on coyote hunting from there on.
In the early 2000’s the fur market slightly strengthened and so did the interest in coyote hunting. Various distress hand calls were purchased along with my first howler. I remember the first morning before using the howler, I was somewhat skeptical but after pulling 6 coyotes across a lake that first time with the howler, I was hooked.
Hunting pressure wasn’t a thing and getting permission to hunt coyotes wasn’t a problem.
Then came the time e-callers became legal to use here. I jumped right on board and brought a Foxpro which was a fantastic new addition. However as others have mentioned, the internet and so on, produced a huge interest in coyote hunting. Now there was multiple coyote hunters with e-callers in the area which ended up changing my strategies and locations to some degree. Fur prices continued to climb upward which not only made for extra hunting pressures but trapping/snaring increased a lot also.
I never had an issue with getting permission though.
Now with a weak fur market, it’s almost like the early 2000’s again. Very few ( if any) coyote hunters in my area now.
There was times I never knew what I might call in.
 
What a wild time it must’ve been back then. Sure sounds awful neat.

The hype and attention that Predator calling gets these days, sure is crazy. That’s coming from my perspective too, I can only imagine what it’s like coming from that era.
 
I started hunting them in the 80s and did not have a clue on how to even start. I saw rows of coyotes strung up on fence posts along the county road and was blown away that people were killing that many. I thought there was one secret I needed to learn to be able to do that. I looked up to that and thought maybe one day I could do that. Eventually, I got to where I could start stringing them on fence posts. I have since changed my attitude and have a little more respect for the coyote and what kind of message such a site sends and says about the person doing it.

When I started there were no DVDs nor did I know anyone to show me how to build a basic set-up. Someone getting into it today could grab a sandwich and Dr. Pepper, pull up the internet, and in one evening have a pretty solid foundation of "How TO" do the basics. However, one can not buy or read themselves into solid woodsmanship skills, I think the best experience comes from going out and making mistakes and learning how to not repeat them regularly. Sometimes I go out and don't know what to do but I have a pretty big toolbox of things not to do, lol...
 
LONEHOWL said:
Fur boom like 50s 60s 70s when trappers and callers were selling fur. I knew a guy that bought new pickup every year or every other year back in the day from furs. Ended like 79 or 80 they say.
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What do you mean "they say?" You make it sound like "they" were prehistoric neanderthals. 😁 I was one of those caveguys. In 77 through 80 I lived down by Jackson Wy. and made more money shooting coyotes than I did working. I averaged over $80 for those pale high desert coyotes on the hoof. You could get a new 3/4 ton pickup for $5000. I think back about those days now and conclude I was a real dumb a$$ for being out on some of those BLM roads, 20 miles from the nearest highway, at 20 below zero, in a 76 Ford pickup with a carburetor and points ignition. I'd probably would have died if that thing would not started. But......the calling was epic. It was pretty common to kill 8 or 9 in a day. The biggest problem I had was keeping them from freezing together in one big blob of coyote. None of the oil and gas exploration was going on in the Red Desert region back then, so I don't ever remember running into another caller out there.
 
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