Still doing some research for my home schooled coyote trapper project, and have been getting up to speed on Robert Waddell. He seems to have it pretty well dialed in.

Anyway, found this reference to 4 tips on his blog site......

https://onemansquestforathousandcoy...s-to-make-you-better-coyote-trapper.html

OK, makes sense....but what bait?

So then I found this.......pretty informative about what makes a good bait........except??



Except.......no mention of any brand. I get the idea that maybe Robert was keeping all he was making for himself and a few associates?

So what brand is out there that is along the lines of what he is making?

Ask the ten best coyote men you can find what the best bait is and you will get 12 different answers. Your best bet is to ask the coyotes in your area yourself by testing. Take the video you linked above as an example, my testing has shown that there are better meats for a base than bobcat meat in my area.

I have found plain beaver liver works. So does fish. As does cavens, carmans, RK, Beaudettes froggy ed, grawes mustang sally.

You just gotta test it like was said above. For example, i bought grawes prairie fire bait, never caught a coyote, but i would have been the possum trapping king in arkansas with that bait. Couldn't keep possums out of the sets baited with prairie fire. But, grawes mustang sally was nailin the yotes.

I have been using keg creek baits for the last 6 years with very good results . And easy people to work with.

Getting dialed in on your season homework planning , master a couple of good basic set types, anti freeze method as needed, and fine tune your location selection abilities is where the answers lie.

What most can't understand and don't see in any video or end of the day catches is the behind the scenes planning, experience and work ethic that makes it all look easy.

Lure and bait are only tools for the trapper that make things work better. The rest is hard work, finding good animal populations/habitat and as many naturally occurring draw > dead dump stations to take advantage of the more frequent visitations. Man made draw stations can be employed if you have the time and want to put the work into it.

Have you asked the MO guys here? https://motrappin.freeforums.net/
or officers here? https://www.missouritrappers.com/officers ..you DO belong to your state assn, don't you? This is just another reason we should all belong to our home state assn.

.

not only will a lot of different baits work. Some just might be better than others certain times of the season.

I would bet there is a difference from region to region. I've tried so many baits and although you won't catch them all on any bait some things that I discovered are:

Deer liver: My number one go to bait. It's natural and during bow and gun season the coyotes feast on it. I often mix it with deer hair or the deer hair from around the tarsel gland. Deer lung is almost as good. Check your state regulations first.

Deer meat: Almost as effective as liver. Again, check your state regs.

Beaver: Widely used in many area with success but the coyotes just don't respond to it here.
Beaver carcass's are left untouched and eaten as a last resort.

Commercial baits: Tried a lot of them, have had limited success on Hiawatha Valley, mostly on young coyotes.

Lure: Hands down, bobcat gland lure just plain kills coyotes here and the best I've used is Weisers.

I realize this is what I have found in my area and I'm sure its totally different in other areas.

I appreciate all the responses and help.

What I picked up on the video, and why I mentioned it was the reference to taking a meat base, putting a light taint on it to get the odor to carry.......and then adding the fatty acid scent to it in the form of various fats and oils. A bait a coyote would want to eat.....so would work for vs. something they might roll in.

If all the commercial made baits follow this basic method......and all are more or less the same.......differing by meat base, glands, fats, etc, then it does get down to testing a few of them. But if it turns out that only 10% or so of them are made like that, then I would like to focus on those to start and work my way out from there.

And I also know that bait alone is no magic bullet. Only one piece of a much larger puzzle. My big focus for now is on location. Where coyotes are likely to be and just as important.......why.

Location is key. I noticed several of my sets had multiple catches while other a few hundred yards away remained untouched. Same cover same sets and bait. Recognizing what stands out and makes some spots hot and others duds are the key. If we do this we can put out less sets per location and spend less time there with the same catch rate. Going further being able to recognize other hot spots I walk past will increase the catch rate. I'm working on it but it will be a life long lesson.

In my area I experimented this year. Early season eggs, both hard boiled and raw seemed to work very well. December and January the baits that worked best for me were mice, skunk meat and a Keg Creek bait.

I made that same bait from that video but with bobcat meat and didn’t catch any coyotes, but I did catch a bomber bobcat. Well at last years prices it would have been a bomber cat haha. The only cat I’ve ever caught with a buried trap or with bait.

I think the problem is there's no commercial maker that's going to tell you the recipe to his bait. I would bet most have an oil of some kind in them. But not all oils are equally attractive, nor are glands and also the amounts used will cause different reactions to a bait. A good place to START your testing is as Robert said "if your dog wont eat it then a coyote probably won't either" if your wanting an edible bait.

Well I just put some sets out with slightly tainted bobcat leg bones with a good amount of the meat cut off. I’ll let y’all know how it works. It’s worked in the past, we shall see.

You are putting way too much thought and maybe time into this.

Go to a local deer processor and get some blood shot scraps with maybe the livers, hearts, and empty stomachs.....grind or cut into usable-size pieces...preserves with sodium benzoate..and add glycerin if too dry. Ready to use..

If you cant get the deer meat/parts...get as many beaver tails as you can...grind or cut into small chunks...put in vented amd fly-proof bucket over summer....by next fall it should be making oil. No preservative needed....ready to use..

For a good change up: add skunk essence to either the deer bait or beaver tail bait. Can also take your favorite coyote lure....or any coyote lure....about 4 oz to a gallon of bait...and mix with the bait.

If bait making ain't 4 u....buy commercially...but you won't get any info about ingredients from a manufacturer. Would you give out your commercial formulas?

No, I would not expect any commercial bait maker to spill the beans, but was hoping someone might be making something highly similar and suggest that. I don't see a lot of difference between a BK Whopper or Sonic Double Cheeseburger, etc. Just looking for a similar. Week old, off color gas station sushi would not be a similar.

And I also appreciate the suggestion on the simplicity of the deer meat bait substitute. I've already got the 3 year old deer meat in the freezer.....not eaten as the processing was suspect to begin with. I can think of a few other things I've already got to kick that up a notch to make that appealing to dogs.......so ought to work.

I will say this,if your in good coyote area and the prices stay where they are for next year,I wouldn`t be wasting my time trying to make a bait.Get some Apple road bait and go catch some coyotes.I have used it out west,in Pa. and down south and it worked for me.If the bottom falls out of the coyote market,That`s when I would play with new stuff,but that`s just me.

I let the people who have dedicated their lives to lure and bait formulations make my bait. My time is better spent learning other aspects of trapping. Just my advice.

Hay day if I had a freezer full of venison I would take three packages of ground venison , fry one , taint one and use one fresh. Now you’ve got until next fall to see which one they like the best . Better yet put a camera on each bait hole and post the results on here .

Appreciate all the help. The Apple Road baits were already on my short list. Between a few of the commercial baits suggested and deer meat, rat meat, etc, I've got plenty to work with as far as putting something in a dirt hole or pipe that a coyote can find and want to eat.

Emphasis now switches to location......where to put the hole or pipe. Finding all the travel routes using places like this........judging from the amount of hair on some of the bottom barbed wire fences coyotes are crawling under, they are using these trails as much as the deer.

now you have to ask yourself whether you want to fight the deer or have a good way to keep them at bay. they just might be my second biggest nemesis here, the first one being a lack of coyotes.

Again....dont overthink this. Set locations are where you see coyote tracks. They were at that location 4 a reason and will likely return. If cant see tracks due to leaf litter or pine straw...look for scat. They will return.

Make sets within inches of the tracks and scat......not feet or yards away. Follow this guide and you wont have to worry over your bait and lure choice. You could urinate on the set and catch a coyote there.

So I guess I'm getting the bait and location dialed in....at least close.......



Showed up day after I put down the bait, which was fresh tainted pork ribs. Nothing else. No lure or urine.

Also put down a block of wood.....about 20 feet behind bait.....and got a sniff on that too. Almost 100 videos and this was the only coyote action I got in the course of a week.

Problem being a ton of deer, grinners, coons, skunks at night....every night.....red squirrel working the bait over in the day.......all in abundance. Hard to filter out all the trash.

Ground deer meat down the hole cant be beat

You cannot beat this simple straight forward information. Good solid stuff.


Mac

Appreciate all the help. At this point I think my understanding of which baits and why has increased about 100X over what it was when this thread was started.

What I've also come to believe is that in the big picture of things, trapping coyotes is built on a 3 legged stool. The set, the bait or lure that draws them to the set, and location. Of the three, the location dwarfs the other two. In the order of what is important, location might be 70%, the set about 20% and bait or lure only 10%.

So most of my effort for now has shifted to a study of locations. Where to put traps, and more important...to me anyway.....is why.

Along these lines, here are some findings. Was walking down the road the other day and stumbled upon this......



In case you can't tell, that was a pair of coyote tracks crossing the road. Prints put down by muddy paws.......like they had been painted on.

Came from here......a dip made by a ditch cut on an otherwise close to the ground pasture fence.....



Tracks lead to this trail on the opposite side of the road.......less subtle in person than it appears in this photo....



Then there was this crossing, which wasn't subtle at all......




Once you start looking, you notice coyote fur hanging from barbed wire all over the place.

So both of those were travel locations......but why? Traveling from where to where?

So looking at an aerial photo, I see this.......



Arrows depict crossing locations. Looks to me like they were traveling from large wooded area to the north to another large wooded area to the south, and following fence lines to do it. And also using the same travel routes as the deer. Not sure if they were following the deer or if both were using what was easy?

Anyway, back to location. Even though the pack of yotes in this area are traveling a square mile or more, getting after them still comes down to finding a place to set a trap so that from all that real estate to pick from, I've got to find a way to get them to step on a trap pan that is about 3 square inches in size. Neat trick if you can do it. I see sign a lot of places, so I might be able to throw a trap down anywhere and get lucky eventually, but I'm looking for shooting fish a barrel level locations.

What I'd like to see is a coyote location thread, along the lines of the big picture aerial photo. When guys catch a coyote, why did they pick that exact location to make their set. There are hundreds if not thousands of youtubes on how to make sets.......quite a lot of baits.......but not very many on picking locations, except in passing reference.

The quest man used a part of a muskrat down the hole. And he caught 900+ coyotes. Rats just have that odor that nothing else can compare.

There's a pretty good location thread in the general land trapping archives with satellite pics.

If you want concentrations find dead livestock or make your own dead pile of stuff coyotes want to eat. If your serious about putting up #s this is the way to get into concentrations of coyotes. Otherwise learn were coyotes like to hang out through a little leg work and experience and figure on picking them off 2 or 3 here and 2 or 3 there. Food, cover and were family groups overlap. All my good spots are close to cattle.

Yup......if you go back to the very first post I made to start this thread, I put in a link to Robert's 4 tips for trapping coyotes. The one I got sidetracked on was the reference to the "good bait". What I managed to skip over, but have come back to was the reference to location. The part where he said location needed to be narrowed down to 10 feet or less.

If looked, and if a thread like that exists.......I missed it.

The other thing I've been looking for, and can't find, are any GPS studies that include tracks. There are a few that include dot points with a circle around all of them to depict overall home range of individual packs, but none that show the daily travel routes. A few of those would show exactly where they go.....and from that, typical patterns would emerge.

The closest I can think of to duplicate that would be to get on a set of tracks in the snow and start walking. I'd do that too, but it will have to wait until next winter. I did that once......and not far from here. But that was 40 years ago and I've slept a couple times since then. Can't remember where he took me. I do know I was packing a rifle and thought if I stayed with it I'd get a shot. After the 2nd time I crossed my own track and no sight of him, I concluded he was toying with me and probably having a good time doing it.

RW,besides the muskrats,also used a ground,prepared bobcat meat,based bait.I don't know what if anything was added to it.I assume that bait in the video is it.

I have some ground muskrat bait that I am anxious to use.It smells great but I wish I had included the muskrat fat.I will fix that in November.Good thread,guys.

Sorry,double tapped.

RW,besides the muskrats,also used a ground,prepared bobcat meat,based bait.I don't know what if anything was added to it.I assume that bait in the video is it.

I have some ground muskrat bait that I am anxious to use.It smells great but I wish I had included the muskrat fat.I will fix that in November.Good thread,guys.

You need to use all the rat scrapings In that bait. Anyway that's what I was told.

I used ground snow goose to great success, only had an extra 40lbs from last year and already over 80lbs this year. Honker, no, but snows they seem to like. Wierd just like me.:) I mixed left over apple pulp from cider season and the ground goose. Magic.

I'm sorry HayDay, I too looked and I can't find that thread. I know I've seen it somewhere...Maybe I'd had too many beers at that point!

I use Deer Dust.
I get it from local Deer Processor. Free
It's the leavings from the bandsaw (like saw dust to a wood saw)
No cutting up meat, no grinding, no mess, no clean up, big time saver, natural Canine food and Free.

Great base to get started making your own bait.

What it looks like right from the bandsaw-


Deer Dust can be used straight up or mixed with other goodies as mentioned in video & above replies.
Did I mention Free, no mess, no clean up?
Canines have to work to get every morsel. Can be made into a paste bait as well.

Thanks I'm going to look Into this next fall.

Finally found what I was referencing...A lesson on LOCATION, in the General Trapping Archives-1st page. May not be what you're looking for, but that's what I was talking about.

Hay Day what your doing is what it takes to figure out location ! Reading where I put traps or where the Beav puts his traps is not going to gain you a lot of insight on your ground . It takes years of boots on the ground not pages on the internet, I’m not trying to be a wise guy here . The good coyote trappers here in these pages will all tell you that you can learn a lot with a satellite picture ( pinch points funnels ....... ) but just because it looks promising does not mean it is until you put eyes on it . A look at your map says maybe they are headed to water from that big block of woods , or maybe the are avoiding the farm to the right ( looks pretty congested around there to me ) . The only way to find that good spot for a trap is to look .

Ttt