Hunting coyotes in cut fields

coyotes

Cut field coyote hunting

Nothing attract coyotes as well as a freshly-cut field. If you find a freshly-cut hay field, hunt it. Because if you cut it, they will come.

Cut Field Buffet

A freshly-cut field to a coyote is the equivalent of a buffet for humans. The variety of fresh food brings coyotes from miles around. Farm machinery cutting through an overgrown field yields many different food sources for a coyote.

Fresh small mammal carcasses can be easily found with the great nose all canines possess. The machinery does not discriminate between the grasses or the small rodents and rabbits that called the field home. Many small animals fall victim to the blades of a mower creating a smorgasbord for the local coyote population.

Coyotes will work the field like a blood hound looking for all the critters that fell victim to the blade. The farm equipment did all the hard work and the predators soon move in to clean up all the scraps. Easy pickings for the coyotes means easy pickings for the hunter that takes advantage of this opportunity.

Cover Is Gone

The next factor in a freshly-cut field is a loss of cover for small animals and insects. Cut fields create a huge advantage for predators. The cover is now gone and great numbers of insects and remaining rodents are now left with less escape cover to hide from predators.

A coyote can now track a mouse or insect that travels too far from the bordering cover. Smart rodents and rabbits live near the field edge and can normally easily escape to cover along the edge. But a huge, open area now is an easy kill zone for any predator.

Predators now have an advantage in finding game that just a few days earlier had the upper hand in easily getting away. Coyotes will often perch on the new round bales and just wait out their prey from above, and then pounce at any given opportunity. Look for coyotes on hay bales late at night.

Hunting Advantage

The loss of cover and easy pickings for the coyote also creates an advantage for the coyote hunter. A huge bait pile has been created naturally for hunters to take advantage of for a short period of time. The new lack of cover also gives us hunters an advantage as we can see farther.

Coyotes are easy to locate now in the freshly cut field and from really long distances. The advantages that brought the coyote there to hunt are the same exact reasons you should be there to hunt. Strike early at this opportunity before the fields begin growing again.

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