Was pulling traps on a piece of ground yesterday because it’s just getting too deep to go with my four wheeler. I was dragging bottom almost the whole way.

As I rolled up to one of my sets, a T bone with some bait. A previously pretty successful combination, there was a set of coyote tracks going toward it in my prior wheeler tracks. As I got closer the tracks swung out in a semi circle starting about 25 feet back from the set. It made a loop around the set and came back into my wheeler track about 25 feet beyond the set. I’ve never trapped this ground before and only had a handful of coyote sets. Most of my sets were for wolf and bobcats. Trail cams and tracks in the snow can do a lot to humble a trapper.

On another property where I can get around still I found a cow skeleton still being worked by coyotes. It was interesting with a new dusting of snow to see how they worked around the area. One thing I’d never seen before was a coyote walked between two 8” pine trees about a foot apart and about 20 feet away from the carcass. I can’t say that I ever have seen a coyote do that. There was plenty of room around these two trees. They are pretty sparse in this field. Neither tree was big enough to provide any cover. Curious. Next check I’ll set around this carcass and will set between those two trees with a blind set. I’ll have to move the carcass further away to comply with the regs. Can’t be within 30’ of an exposed bait.