Silence and not being seen walking into stands

Newpond0

Newpond0

Active member
As a new predator hunter (I've made maybe 25 stands total) I've now realized I've probably been giving my position away coming into my stands. Walking paths or roads crunching around, crunching getting off those paths to some higher ground area with visibility, and being generally impatient travelling to spots.

I've read on here not to skyline yourself so I've been incorporating not going to the top of the hill but instead almost to the top and walking around. I've also tried getting off the paths and walking edges of woods real quiet but I feel like I'm not covering enough ground.

I'm thinking to let go of the covering ground idea and just be as stealth as possible and call way more often...any advice?

By the way I've shot 1 coyote so far and seen 1 bear charging down the hillside a few hundred metres away that must have busted me before really coming in
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Thank you for the replys guys! I guess what I was thinking is to start walking silently like this guy into my stands

Is that what people are doing when they talk about slipping into stands quiet and unseen? A combination of moving like this and thru the forests and not the paths?
 
Sprinkman said:
I think I'd be walking backwards if I went that slow:ROFLMAO:
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lol maybe you’re right…this tactic would mean park the truck and do that walk for an hour or 2 to get in a few hundred metres and call a set. If nothing, another few hundred metres in an hour or 2 and call again. Keep repeating…I’m gonna try it. But how quick would you move or how would you get in discreetly Sprinkman?
 
I'm by no means an expert sneaker, but some of what he said works. No one sneaks in without making a little noise with their feet. Just slow down, watch your step and move as quietly as possible. Keep your gear quiet as well. 66 seconds per step is pretty ridunkulous.
I live in an area that is almost always dry, It's harder than heck to move into any stand without making some noise. Just keep it to a minimum and you will do fine.
 
you're going to make some noise, just dont make real loud noises. an hour to go 100 yards or so ?? NO WAY

watch the wind, it should be coming towards you or a cross wind, from where you think the coyotes are. if its blowing towards them, the games over before it starts.

they like to circle down wind of the call. set the call at least 100 yards away from you, get hidden against a tree or some brush, call and get ready.
 
Coyote notice lights flashing about(headlamps) and unnatural noises(metal sounds). Crunchy snow. For me frozen bean and cornfields are crazy noisy. And walking in frozen ripped ground is tough without slowing down. Remember crossing wire fences, the noise and vibration will run through the wire.
 
Didn’t watch the video, but my logic going into a calling stand is pretty simple. I’m going to get setup as quickly and efficiently as possible for whatever the conditions permit. That doesn’t mean the fastest route to where I’m going to setup. For example, I’m not going to walk across a pasture out in the open for 300 yards to get to my spot. I’m going to hug the edges and use any cover to my advantage. But I am going to move as swiftly and quietly as the conditions allow. On really dark nights, I have no issue with heading across open fields. I’m constantly scanning no matter what approach I’m making.

This is in reference to “calling” coyotes. For “stalking” coyotes, which isn’t very common here in the northeast, you probably wouldn’t change much other than slowing things down and really paying attention to where your feet are landing with each step.
 
Yet all this and farmers shoot them from tractors, lol.
Wilderness areas and you better be sneaky. Down here you can get away with a lot of stupidity, like spotting one from the truck and lip squeaking him in close enough for a shot while resting your rifle on the drivers side mirror.

The issue here is being able to see/spot them while calling.
 
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First of all, you're not stalking a coyote. Coyotes are not aware of every aspect of their surroundings to notice you on the skyline. As a matter of fact, if you are calling, the coyote is doing all the stalking. They are expecting to find an easy meal that is almost dead. That realization, for a coyote, trumps a lot of the mistakes you might have made getting to your hide.
When you raise a coyote with a call, he might be a ways away from you. The first thing you have to do is be patient. Give them enough time to get to you. If you think it's time to give up, stay a little longer. Be vigilant, look for movement in all directions. There might be one hung up and cautious.
The first coyote I ever knew that I called, I was sitting in a clump of rocks hunting deer. I was on a ridge at the head of two draws. At the bottom of one of the draws, I spotted a coyote at maybe 100-150 yds out sitting on a squirrel hole waiting for something to pop it's head up. I started squeaking on my palm. All of a sudden, the coyote got up on all fours, looked around and then hightailed it in the opposite direction. I kind of chuckled that that didn't work very well. About 20 minutes later, I looked to my left and there was a coyote standing there maybe 15 feet away. I hunkered down in the rocks and started squeaking again. He ended up walking right to me, maybe 5 feet. He was curious and confused. He backed off slightly and moved around behind me, winded me, and took off. After that, I was hooked. That coyote taught me a lot of what I know now about calling
 
First thing I ask is are you a successful big game hunter and I don't mean sitting in a shooting shack? If so, you already know how to approach an area or stand sight. Coyotes are very wary but not aliens.
There has been good info given already but a minute a step is not one of them.
 
jmeddy said:
First thing I ask is are you a successful big game hunter and I don't mean sitting in a shooting shack? If so, you already know how to approach an area or stand sight. Coyotes are very wary but not aliens.
There has been good info given already but a minute a step is not one of them.
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No I’m not, I’m new to hunting. The style of hunting I have picked to learn and be my foundation is calling. Everything I’ve learned is from this site, videos, and my own trial and error in the woods. It’s all calling in the wild no farm sets

I’ve read on here guys talking about slipping into sets, quiet and unseen, and it’s got me thinking and analyzing how I’ve been entering areas, maybe overthinking it. You also never see guys in videos showing themselves entering a set so I’m wondering how a real predator hunter would do it.

If anyone who does videos wants to do one on how you enter a set from truck to turning on the call I think the new callers on here would be very interested in that.
 
'calling in the wild, no farm sets' I assume wide open spaces or at least no 'human' presence. You're probably calling them from a longer distance so absolute 'silence' is not needed. Other 'critters' crunch through snow/weeds/crop too, but they don't clunk or talk. I also don't think yotes sit around watching the horizon for danger. I'll give an example. I can't walk far, ride my ATV to the popup and get inside before dusk. Feeder is 75 yds away. After dark I see a spot, turns out to be a yote sitting at the edge of the field waiting for snack. Turn up the mag on the IR scope and watch it scratch its ear. How long was it there? At least 15 min as I originally thought it was the base of a tree. Missed first shot - second shot and it dissappears into the brush, not to be found. Here I'd been in the pop-up, drinking a coke, smoking, snorting I'm sure (sinus problems) and scanning for an hour at least waiting for dark.
 
Here I'm in row crop country, groves of trees around building sites, creeks. No big woods or big grasslands. Not unusual for coyote to hear sounds of walking up to 300 yards, crunchy or calm winds. I always note the timing of wind speed changes, and will stop/slow down as wind drops, move or speed up my walk when wind is up.
 
we have used the sound of cars driving down the road to hide the noise we make when walking in crunchy fields. used that trick to get 200 yards closer to a pair that bedded in a field and didnt want anything to do with our calling. we shot them anyway :)
 
When you think about noise when hunting, how many times have you tensed up thinking a deer was coming you way and it turned out to be a grouse or squirrel. You heard it quite a ways off. Consider a coyote can hear a mouse shuffling under a foot of snow.

The forest isn't silent there are turkeys scratching for food, deer walking, there is a whole symphony of sounds. Trying to stay in that spectrum of sounds goes a long way.

Out here we have range cows, there everywhere and they aren't real quiet. We do have a lot of bare ground so it is easier to be quiet in your movements.

An old story, my BinL came out to central WA for a week of camping and coyote hunting. The day he arrived we got 8 inches of heavy wet snow. That night it dropped below zero and stayed that way for the whole week and froze everything, you had to crunch into every stand heck you crunched getting out of the truck. We crunched into stands for three days and never saw a coyote. Then we started over, going back to those stands and stepping in our old footprints and killed 6 in the following three days.

I try and stay quiet on my approaches, watch and feel where I place my feet, my gear is on my back so stocks and chair legs don't get hit by brush or branches, try not to drag my feet.

I joke sometimes that my white van is camouflage down here as the BP patrols all the back roads in white trucks.

Good luck
 
AWS said:
When you think about noise when hunting, how many times have you tensed up thinking a deer was coming you way and it turned out to be a grouse or squirrel. You heard it quite a ways off. Consider a coyote can hear a mouse shuffling under a foot of snow.

The forest isn't silent there are turkeys scratching for food, deer walking, there is a whole symphony of sounds. Trying to stay in that spectrum of sounds goes a long way.

Out here we have range cows, there everywhere and they aren't real quiet. We do have a lot of bare ground so it is easier to be quiet in your movements.
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All true Erich, I know coyotes are in tune with just about everything they hear, see and smell. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard something while hunting and tensed up with anticipation, only to have it be some non Target species. But a huge caveat to this, is the amount of times I knew immediately that it was a human approaching and my excitement waned.

The solid, rhythmic, two step sound of human footsteps has saved more critters than probably even scent. It, in the very least alerts them and focuses their attention until they can confirm their suspicions.

When conditions allow, we can move quickly, quietly and efficiently. When conditions put the advantage in the quarry’s favor, we need to slow down, be cautious and calculated, or simply retreat until conditions better favor us.
 
For some reason in this area if a road grader is working the gravel road, bedded coyote (during the day) will get up and move. This is an issue during a stalk. Even on windy days. School bus, coyote don't even lift their head.
 
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