Last night I was watching an Ed Schneider video about coyote trapping and he had a brushy fence line separating a cut corn field and cut soybean field and he mentioned how he figures coyotes prefer the cut bean field vs the cornfield as far as easy walking. I’m curious how some of you trapperman members would rank the crops from best to worst. Plowed field, standing corn, standing beans, cut fields, planted fields, hay fields, crp, etc.

Something I wondered myself. I’ll be following this one .

I would put a plowed field near the bottom. Standing beans and corn, either standing or picked, would depend if the rows were parallel to the direction they traveled. Around here, they travel pretty randomly through hay fields and picked bean fields.
My best location last year was a pinch point around the perimeter of a picked corn field. This year it was picked bean stubble and I left that trap there a month and never caught a thing.

Untreated hayfields, with lots of meadow voles, are the best places I have ever trapped for fox and coyotes. There's some sprays, that farmers use, that make the meadow voles and insects disappear. I've had very good spots turn bad, after being sprayed, for a couple of Winters, from being sprayed just once in the Spring.

Keith

The easier the route the better, if there is something to hunt in corn or cover they will do it.
The weedy, brushy fence is possibly better than the field.

In my area the picked corn field works well some years. One year picked up a few in the corn fields where they were not hunting but eating the corn. I opened up a couple of the coyote carcasses and checked their stomach and they were full of corn. I really think it depends on the year.

In my neck of the woods, I put fresh cut hayfield at #1, nothing else comes close. Keep a rifle in the tractor with me. Many times I see yotes walk out to the whine of a hay mower. Shot a bunch, also like to make sets at trails, corners and ridges 1st night after a cut.

Here after the chisel plows run and all the rain grass is king. Watch where your hawks are hunting. Yotes will be there to.

Beans or corn here, I catch then in both about same.

I see my mostly grass catches when it's real muddy, cold.
I'm thinking they prefer to hunt and travel in the grass over wet cold mud

Picked bean fields with a travel corridor are always my best spots. I have one place thats 160 acers, brushy fence line on one side draining ditch on the other. He rotates corn and beans 80 acers at a time. I always set both sides and the beans usually out produce the corn 2 to 1. Very little pasture ground here but that can be good also.

Rodents come into cut crops to forage.Fox and coyote follow to eat the rodents.Just sayin.

Regardless of crop,spin ditches are always well traveled.

If you have fields with minimum till or no till and you have windrows where combines left straw, stalks etc.; even if baled or chopped there is some material there and all the seed, be it beans, corn or wheat that come through are there as well. Rodents find these windrows and so do the predators. Around me most corn is corn silage, then 8-16K of liquid manure and chiseled in or knifed in. Not much there. Beans, ditto some times. All alfalfa is typically late cut in early October and thus hay fields work as good travel areas for coyotes. We have smaller field sizes here with more fence rows and crop change ups thus we have more edge area to set. Finding the better ones is always a challenge and a year to year thing from a crop aspect.

Bryce