Preseason Predator Scouting?
For Calling Coyote, Fox, and Bobcat it’s Smart. For Calling Mountain Lions it’s Critical. Summer sweat equity puts predator hunters in prime fall calling areas.
When reading the various predator hunting and calling forums I’ve noticed that most of our wildlife calling sportsmen and predator hunting ladies call it quits after April or mid May. I realize this might be due to coyote pups and the desire to never leave a coyote litter to starve. But if you choose not to hunt there is no reason to sit out the summer and wait for fall to head back to your calling areas. Summer is a prime time to locate new calling areas and reinvent the way that you’ll call your old hotspots when the temperature finally drops.
The serious predator hunters I know are either summer season hunters or spend the summer preparing for the fall. For me, scouting through the summer is a mix of walking my old honey holes for sign, mapping out better ways to set up and call in them, and driving/walking new areas looking for scat & tracks that let me know where to spend some time in the fall. When scouting for coyotes, fox, and bobcat, I use a combination of my truck, maps, GPS, Google Earth, aerial photos, good optics, and above all, my feet to really get to know my calling areas.
After looking at my maps to determine several ridge and bottom formations that I’d like to explore, I drive to the new areas a begin looking for sign on and near the roadways. I find that predators, when plentiful in an area, are inclined to use roads or the adjacent cattle trails as travel lanes. Their tracks and scat are usually prevalent. When I find a hotspot of predator activity I start hiking through the area, using a notebook document the setups I believe will give me the predator calling edge in the fall. When September 1st arrives I use my notes and highlighted maps to guide me back to these places.
Mountain Lion scouting is a different game. While map and field research are critical elements of finding cougar populations, getting away from roads is very important. Cougars, especially big males, occupy territories as big as 60 to 100 square miles. While roads figure into their travel paths, I find that they most often use long ridges and equally long hardpan drainage & dry creek bottoms as travel routes. Locating areas that mountain lions travel, bed, and hunt, requires lots of footwork and time spent looking for tracks, scrapes, kills, and scat. Time spent in the summer always determines success in the fall when calling these big cats. Cougars are a low-density predator. Calling them with any consistency requires an intimate knowledge of the territories they inhabit, the paths they travel, and the places they lay-up during the daylight hours.
Summer is the time to take random out of your predator calling equation. If you want for more fur on your stretchers in the fall, get off the couch and earn your predator sweat equity. If its mountain lions you seek, summer scouting isn’t optional. June, July, and August are critical months when looking for fall cougars.
Hey, if you needed an excuse to hunt all summer, now you’ve got it. Take your camera, and electronic predator call or a lanyard full of hand calls and have some fun.
See you out there,
Mark Healy
Email: info@wildlifecallers.com
