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.