# Predator bait, not working?



## Sam22 (Jan 22, 2003)

I hardly put any time into predator hunting these days, I have other things I do in the winter. So to say I am a novice is an understatement. 

A small deer got hit in front of a family member's house last week so I got a salvage permit and thought I would try to bait the coyotes I had been seeing on trail camera all year at one of my private land deer spots.

I took the deer out to the property and chained it up, off the ground, to a tree about 60 yards in front of a deer blind. I set two cameras on it, near the ground to be sure and catch the coyotes ect. It has been there like 5 days and nothing has picked at it. There have been plenty of deer that walked up to it, and looked at it, but nothing else. I know it is frozen, maybe I should have cut it open with a knife to get the smell in the air a little more? 

It seems to me like it will have to eventually get eaten by something, right? What might I have done wrong? or was this just a dumb idea to begin with?


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## 9 (Jan 17, 2000)

Quite a common occurance and a lot of explainatons of the cause but few know the mind of a coyote. Might take a week or two or three or maybe the coyotes won't ever touch it. Yes I know, lot of stories about fresh shot deer being eaten before the hunter gets to them but that's a completely different scenerio!


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## Waif (Oct 27, 2013)

Deer positioning seems un natural.
Scavengers might be apprehensive about being exposed too. Eagle or hawk vs birds that could be pecking at it inspiring attention and competition. 

Stimulation / prey drive reacts well to body scent and warm blood. Has to be a chasing feeding time element involved though too.

Or , your yotes might have other options they prefer conveniently more than scavenging a dead deer?

Denning time I've seen better roadkill attention.

Last fresh picture a friend posted showed a yote peeing on a different dead animal that crows and eagle had been working. Yote did not feed.


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## FREEPOP (Apr 11, 2002)

They know it's there, they'll walk by for days or weeks and then suddenly, it'll be gone over night. Just the way they are.


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## Sam22 (Jan 22, 2003)

FREEPOP said:


> They know it's there, they'll walk by for days or weeks and then suddenly, it'll be gone over night. Just the way they are.


Time I have. I am just going to leave it until the spring. Maybe I will get lucky and one will start coming to it between now and then.

I remember a while back a guy in the UP had a bait going for predators, he was on this forum I thought, and he had some success. He sat in a pop up iirc. 
There was a guy somewhere in the NELP that was selling coyote hunts for a while, and part of his hunts were sitting over bait.


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## FREEPOP (Apr 11, 2002)

With cameras there, it will increase their shyness, IMO.
Depending on where you live, 5 days isn't long in the life of a coyote. Their travel routes can be quite large sometimes and if they stumble across some easy feed, it will be longer.


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## sureshot006 (Sep 8, 2010)

Probably cause you stink to a coyote!


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## FREEPOP (Apr 11, 2002)

sureshot006 said:


> Probably cause you stink to a coyote!


True
I don't cause I roll in things when I'm outside


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## jiggin is livin (Jan 7, 2011)

I get a couple pics almost every night/morning at about 130am of a coyote or two walking the same exact path, literally almost daily. It is a cell camera, so I don't need to go by it for any reason, but if I do walk out there, I won't get another picture of one for at least two weeks. But the stupid f'rs will run across my frozen pond right in front of me in broad daylight. 

The harder I try to understand them, the less I do. 

Coyotes- The women of the wild!


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## sureshot006 (Sep 8, 2010)

jiggin is livin said:


> I get a couple pics almost every night/morning at about 130am of a coyote or two walking the same exact path, literally almost daily. It is a cell camera, so I don't need to go by it for any reason, but if I do walk out there, I won't get another picture of one for at least two weeks. But the stupid f'rs will run across my frozen pond right in front of me in broad daylight.
> 
> The harder I try to understand them, the less I do.
> 
> Coyotes- The women of the wild!


A coworker saw one cross in front of his truck the other day at about 4pm. At any one time that point in the afternoon there are 4-8 humans within 50 yards and vehicles entering/exiting the work site.

I think they come to eat the plentiful feral cats and the bunnies...


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## jiggin is livin (Jan 7, 2011)

sureshot006 said:


> A coworker saw one cross in front of his truck the other day at about 4pm. At any one time that point in the afternoon there are 4-8 humans within 50 yards and vehicles entering/exiting the work site.
> 
> I think they come to eat the plentiful feral cats and the bunnies...


I have seen more coyotes along 23 in the past year than the 11 years I have been driving it combined, and a couple of those times were in the afternoon on the way home. They are crazy around Northern Bay, Arenac and Iosco counties.


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## Wasman2. (Jan 13, 2018)

We have better luck with chaining it to the ground not up in the air.


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## skiingfastashell (Nov 21, 2021)

Wasman2. said:


> We have better luck with chaining it to the ground not up in the air.


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## snortwheeze (Jul 31, 2012)

jiggin is livin said:


> I get a couple pics almost every night/morning at about 130am of a coyote or two walking the same exact path, literally almost daily. It is a cell camera, so I don't need to go by it for any reason, but if I do walk out there, I won't get another picture of one for at least two weeks. But the stupid f'rs will run across my frozen pond right in front of me in broad daylight.
> 
> The harder I try to understand them, the less I do.
> 
> Coyotes- The women of the wild!


Yup. My cousin and I put road kill deer out at my private grounds. We had 4 at one time I think. 
A cell cam too watch them. Someone on here said "good luck with patterning them" which we thought we could. He was right! Random they are! 

Sitting out at night this time of year in the open is tuff, it's cold! We tried when we did few times. Missed once at a yote and cousin f'd up on a fox. He was playing on his phone 😤


Good luck sam!


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## 9 (Jan 17, 2000)

Nothing wrong I see with the”hanging deer“ in the photo, meats, meat and if they’re hungry they’ll eat it. Remember the hanging treble hooks with hamburger balled over it? The A-holes that used them caught coyote so what I see in the photo wouldn’t discourage a coyote for eating on it. I’ve nailed beaver to trees and they ate them.

The 1st 2 weeks of Jan I watched a dumped-off, stripped deer carcass that the coyotes were checking out. Not eating, just checking out. I did not set it up because I observed that the coyotes were swinging by, not hanging around or eating, just checking it out with walk-bys of about 8’ and swing off. There were two coyotes and they didn’t travel together and each came through twice in 2 weeks. I never set it up because there was no pattern at all and after 2 weeks never got close enough to eat any. 

I figure I know coyotes pretty well, well enough to consitently catch them but I can’t read their minds. Possibly if I went back two weeks later they might have decided to chow down but the odds of quality fur is going down everyday so why waste!


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## Wasman2. (Jan 13, 2018)

Before the cell cam, old guy taught me to use garage door sensors. Hear the buzzer, get up. Open window. Bang. He lives where he can shoot like that with no neighbors.


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## FREEPOP (Apr 11, 2002)

BTW, just because you don't get any coyote pics doesn't mean they don't know the deer is there.


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## 9 (Jan 17, 2000)

I believe coyotes know what everybody living around a section are having for supper every night of the week


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## BumpRacerX (Dec 31, 2009)

The pile at my place was hot. And then all the sudden it was not. Nothing changed. The canines kept coming. But instead of hitting the free meal on the pile they would just walk right on by. This is when I gave up trying to figure out wtf they were thinking. Nothing really changed. Not a human scent issue as it's 100' from the house and I walk down there every day. Never stopped them from grabbing a free meal before.


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## Spade (Feb 20, 2007)

I have discovered with my conversations with Seldom, trying to figure out coyotes will give you gray hair from all the stress.


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