Scouting trip

[Frogman]

Frogman and alscalls spent Tuesday (8-12-08) evening scouting some private land about 40 minutes South of us.  The property owners have been having trouble with coyotes.  They have lost several kittens, some ducks and one of their dogs has some facial damage from a fight with coyotes.  They called Frogman and arranged for several neighbors to meet with Al and I on Tuesday evening.  By the evenings end Al and I had gained access to nearly 1000 acres of private land in 5 adjoining farms.  Here are some photos:



If you look carefully there are some white plastic covered round bales in this photo way off in the distance.  That high point overlooks several high meadows and looks like an excellent place for a stand if we can get the wind right.  That high up the wind might not be much of a factor, what do you guys think??



More of this property.  There are lots of meadows and woods.  Some are meadows down in the valley near the creek, others are high meadows like you see in these photos.









Pretty much everything you can see in these photos is included in the farms we have access to.  I just hope we can help them out by thinning out the coyote population a little.  One concern I had is that we didn't see any scat.  Most of our scouting was driving around the different properties, but I was keeping an eye out on the dirt roads for tracks and scat.  We did find some tracks but only one pile of scat.  I don't know what to think of that.  We played the siren on the Foxpro a couple of times and got a response from down in one of the hollows that sounded like an old dog.  We heard nothing that sounded like a pack.

We did make a lot of noise as we drove around.  We didn't try to be quiet closing car doors or talking to the land owners who were giving us the grand tour.  Do you guys think the lack of scat, tracks, and vocalizations means there aren't many coyotes, or do we just need to scout a little more and walk the area more quietly??

I'm really excited about these properties and look forward to hunting them soon. 

Jim

[wv_yoter]

Nice job Jim. Is this the land you told me about ?

[Frogman]

Jason,

Yes.  These are the people the DNR asked me to contact about their coyote problems.  This is some really good looking property.  I'm just concerned a little about the lack of sign.  We just need to get down there and look around a little more.  We know there are coyotes there because nearly all the land owners have had problems with them.  We were probably just too noisy last evening to expect the coyotes to respond to the siren.

Jim

[MDM]

thats some very beautiful land

[KySongDog]

Jim

For sure you have hard evidence that the yotes are there from the landowners.  But when?  My guess is perhaps you haven't located their travel routes yet.   But, hey, I should be the last one on this forum to be offering advice.   Hopefully the others will give you something useful to work with.

[DirtyDog]

Jim......good luck and let us know how it goes. 

[Frogman]

Al and I are going to try to get down there on Saturday afternoon.

Jim

[alscalls]

Nick and I have more land right next to this spot just about as big........sure is a crap shoot where to start though.

[golfertrout]

  i will prob lay around n stretch my underwear :roflmao:   or maybe wax my lawnmower :roflmao:

[Jimmie in Ky]

Just remember that a thousand acres is only a portion of a groups territory. They are there somewhere, it's perfect ground. Work the shoe leather express and find th main travel route through it. Once you do work it th sign out until you know where they are coming from.

This would also be a good area to do road work as well late at night and sundown in particular if you can. It will speed up the process some.  Jimmie

[Frogman]

Jimmie,
      Thanks for your response.  I was hoping you would contribute to this thread.  Your posts have always been very helpful.  I will try to post an arieal photo of this property if I can remember how to do it.

Jim

[Frogman]

Here is an aerial photo of this property.  I'm just kind of guessing at the boundaries.  I know the old road to the South is the Southern boundary for most of the parcels.  I think the Northern boundary is actually further to the North than I have shown but I would have had to reduced the scale of the map to show all of it.  Be very aware that the terrain is actually much rougher and hillier than it appears on this aerial photo!!  Two of the high points are shown in white.  I hope this helps!  I know it won't look as good as I had hoped when it is reduced by the computer.



Jim

[Jimmie in Ky]

Wow! Too many way's in and out of there to count. I would check th creek in the center first then the western creek. That center creek bottom seems to have a lot af areas for food sources attached to it and would definately be my starting point.

I would like to see what is just to th south of those farms if possible. Jimmie

[Frogman]

Jimmie,
    That middle hollow is where we heard an older sounding coyote respond to the siren.  It only barked a couple of times and was the only response we had.

Jim