Zhe Wiz

Well, here we go again! #14! Anybody getting tired of my coyote reports yet? A bit of a rough night. The sensor was going non-stop! First a fox, then another fox, then a SKUNK, then another fox, then another fox AND, what's this? A coyote hanging back WATCHING the fox at the bait pile! And to think I was THIS CLOSE to putting the gun away and going back to bed when I saw yet another fox! For some reason the coyote wouldn't approach while the fox was there. Very odd. I watched her for quite a while through my new scope (more on that in a minute) as she circled, sat down, got up, moved, layed down, moved again and finally sat down at 190 yards away, up the hill from the bait pile. She just sat there, watching. So I watched her for a while and finally decided I could take the shot comfortably. So I released the safety and squeezed the newly adjusted 1lb, 2oz trigger! Boom! Lost her in the flash of the 6mm Rem and muzzle lift. Unsure if I hit her or not. Looked around for IR eye shine thru the scope (told you it was new!) but only saw the fox trying to decide what to do. No sign of the coyote. Went back in the house, grabbed flashlight and 22 pistol and headed out to see what happened. Got to where she was sitting and found BLOOD! And I could tell she was dragging her right front leg which would have been the entrance side. Good sign, but blood was light and she's headed to the neighbors where I DO have permission to track. No need to take advantage, however, as I shine the light 20 yards down the blood trail and see her piled up! Yes! Another rather large, and very blonde female, just the way I like them! ;-) Pretty girl. Anyway...the scope. I missed a coyote yesterday morning. It was very dark and quite foggy. I could tell there was a coyote at the pile, but orienting it was HARD. Unless it moved I couldn't distinguish head from tail. I tried to line it up and fired, but missed completely. Sooo, I finally mounted my new Pulsar Digisight N750 on the 6mm Rem I bought from my brother. The setup that will become my dedicated coyote gun. I sighted it in late yesterday, about an inch high at 170 yards - the distance to the close side if the bait pile. This scope is awesome! Does not matter how dark it is out! With the IR illuminator on I could easily pick where I wanted to place the bullet, sooooo much easier than a day scope. "Night and Day" different. :-) Before I aimed for a general location, now I'll be able to pick a pelt friendly spot once I gain confidence in the gun and load. So if a motion sensor and bait pile weren't cheating, adding night vision must now put me over the edge right? :-) Don't care! Again, my mission is to kill some coyotes, not hunt them. I hunt deer, not yotes. :-) Starting to wonder if I'm even making a dent in the population though. 14 dead and they just keep coming! Anyway, here's number 14. Beautiful pelt destined for a friend of mine. Zhe Wiz

The bulk of it is two deer carcasses from this past hunting season. They were January deer shot early during the Tompkins county DMFA season. We butchered them and put the "left overs" up there. I can also say they LOVE crows. Between the foxes and the yotes, the crows are nothing but a pile of feathers by morning. I just added 2 to the pile on Monday. I managed to hit two with one shot out of the 22-250. Sounds impressive, but there were literally HUNDREDS of them on the bait pile, sensor was going NUTS. I lined up a pair and fired. I was surprised I ONLY got two, but I guess you can't expect much more from a 35 grain varmint bullet. :-) Much easier than shooting a yote at night. :-) Definitely the deer carcasses are the longest lasting. Between the cold weather, the snow and the quick alert system, they've lasted 2 months and counting. Zhe Wiz

My wife was curious, now not so much. :-) Last night after I shot the yote, a fox tripped the sensor about an hour later (even after all that shooting and commotion!). My wife was not happy. I hadn't gotten back to sleep yet, but she had. I need something that repels foxes, but not yotes. Foxes are fearless around here and persistent. They hit the pile 4 or 5 times a night on the nights they do come by, and they're very hard to scare away. So unfortunately I had to promise that tonight I will leave the sensor off all night. That will be quite painful, I think I'll sleep worse with it off wondering if something's on the bait than I would if it were on and I knew I'd be alerted. Oh well, what's a night or two of no yotes in return for a happy marriage, Right?? :-) Zhe Wiz

I believe this type of sensor monitors the temperature differential to detect "movement". Right now that differential is high with snow on the ground and a warm blooded creature passing by. I worry that on an 80 degree night, the differential may not be enough for it to pick up movement. I also worry about false positives as the sun comes up and warms the ground...will it "see" movement? Not sure. A complete guess on my part, I have no idea if it will work or not, may have no issues whatsoever. Certainly works nearly flawlessly in the winter. The good news is (?) it's currently illegal to shoot yotes after March 31st, so I wont' need them over the summer. I won't move them to monitor deer movement, as I have cameras for that. Now that you mention it though, I may try one of the other sensors just to see how well it works during the summer. I'll probably leave the bait pile sensor right where it is for a while so I can get a sense of how it works in the summer. Eventually I'll pull the batteries and save them for next season. Zhe Wiz

And the dead coyotes just keep on coming! #13 woke me up around 11:20pm. Same routine, confirmed it wasn't a fox with the binocs, then grabbed the 22-250 and loaded TWO rounds this time. (I really DID learn my lesson!) :-) Waited for a broadside shot, took it. She did the "bite the thing that's biting you" dance as I reloaded. By the time I lined her up again, she was on an all out run at a 45 degree angle away from me. I picked a spot ahead of her and fired when she got there. Did I hit her? No idea. By the time I recovered from muzzle flash and lift, she was gone. So a tracking I did go. Found her some 200 yards from the first shot, 50ish from the second, 10 yards into the woods, dead. Big nasty wound on her right side which is probably the exit from the first shot, but I can't be sure. Will have the skinner count holes. Anyway, that's #13 overall and I think 6 plus a fox using the motion sensor/bait pile combo in a relatively short period of time. This time it was yet another female, a relatively small one. Zhe Wiz

Very cool! I'm a little curious to see if it works as well in the summer as it does in the winter, but so far I'm loving it. Works better than I could have imagined. I'm not sure how much longer my wife will tolerate getting woken up in the middle of the night, but so far she's playing along. She's not very happy with it, that's the only downside so far. :-) Probably be easier if I could keep the foxes off the bait. They are PERSISTENT little things. Friday night I had a pair of them that hit it like 5 times between 9PM and 3AM when I finally turned off the receiver so we could sleep. Like you said, price is right too. Zhe Wiz

I've been giving them to a buddy who skins them and sells the pelts. In return I get the occasional bottle of home-made maple syrup, venison jerky, black raspberry jam, etc. and the pleasure of eliminating coyotes off my land. Good trade for me! :-). Plus he's tanning one of the hides and giving it back to me. Zhe Wiz

And again! Interesting night to say the least. Alarm was triggered at a little after midnight. Confirmed coyote with binocs then grabbed the 22-250. Waited for a broadside shot and fired. Thought it was a good one at first, it went down, then to my disappointment stood up broadside again! No problem, shoot again right? Wrong! I had only grabbed one bullet! Went running (in the dark) for another, banged my shin on the trailer hitch, swore a few times, got back, loaded up and...nothing, couldn't find it. Long story short, I followed a very meager blood trail about 300 yards to the woods. Decided I didn't want to tackle a pissed off coyote in the woods at night with my 22 pistol, so returned to the house. Before I even tried to get back to sleep, guess what? Yep, alarm triggered AGAIN at about 12:50. This time I did not wound her. DRT. Oh, and I brought TWO bullets this time. Lesson learned. So this scraggly thing has no tail! Can see where she used to have one, now it's just a 2" stump! And no, it's NOT the one I wounded the first time. Tail had been missing for a long time and was completely healed. :-) That thought crossed my mind too! #12, adult female:

I've been alternating between my Rem 700 22-250 and my x-bolt 243. I use 35 grain hand loads in the 22-250 at 4400+ fps. Great load for coyotes, drops them in their tracks and quite pelt friendly. The 243 isn't so pelt friendly, but I'm currently using an 80 grain TTSX deer load made for penetration. Sounds like you should have a motion sensor like I use. :-) Zhe Wiz

Now there's a compromise I could live with. My land borders state land, so it would be a minor inconvenience to have my crossbow legal on one side of the line, but not the other. I could live with that. Zhe Wiz

And another! 4:11 wake up call. Looks like maybe a young male, still pretty big. Much more "blonde" than the last few I've shot. For the first time ever there were more than one at the pile - three in fact. So there are at least 2 educated coyotes left. :-) I need a semi auto 223. Anyway, more proof that the motion detector works!! Thanks again osbourne for the great idea! I need some sleep... Zhe Wiz

Actually, just yesterday I "built" a shooting bench in the corner of my garage, just below the window. I leave the window cracked about 2", rest the bipod on the "bench" and shoot out the window. Don't even have to poke the muzzle out. :-) I am so spoiled, I love this place! Before yesterday I had been opening the walk out door of the garage and laying down to shoot, but these last few coyotes have been too smart, bolting as soon as I open the door, even though it's 175 yards away. This one had no idea what was coming until it was too late.

Well, it worked again!! Woke me up at 12:50am, dead by 12:55am. :-) An adult male this time. 10th coyote for me since moving here 13 months ago, 3rd one thanks to motion sensor in my back "yard". This time used my "deer" load: 85 grain Barnes TTSX from my 243. Zhe Wiz

Noodle, I don't doubt you kill them with one shot. HOWEVER, I've shot a lot of deer and seen a lot shot. The ones that go 10 yards are the exception. I double-lunged a small buck this season with th 243, he took off on a dead ass run and piled up 100 yards away. I've shot them in the heart with a 12 gauge and had them go 50+ yards. I double lunged a doe with my ML this season, she JUMPED A FENCE and went 50-75 yards before expiring. So you must be hitting the shoulder, because it has been my experience (and I'm not young) that vital shot deer, when the shoulder is NOT targeted, go WAY over 10 yards MOST of the time regardless of caliber or bullet. Very hard for me to believe that ALL of your deer have gone less than 10 yards no matter how good of a shot you are, UNLESS you're targeting the shoulder, which I don't like to do. Anyway, this is obviously off topic, so I'll quit now. :-) Zhe Wiz

Hmm. Never more than 10 yards? You must always hit the shoulder. I've fired many bolt action rifles from the sled: .204, 22-250, .243, 7mm-08, .17 HMR, also my Savage smokeless ML. All are bolt action (except ML). 12 gauge is obviously the biggest kicker (excepting the ML) and its also the only semi auto. It also has the cheapest scope (Bushnell Banner vs Sightrons and one Bushnell 4200 on the 22-250). I have no major issues shooting groups with any of them from the sled EXCEPT the shotty. I shoot BETTER with a bipod or front rest and my shoulder, but they are all acceptable except the shotty which is all over the place in the sled. I tried so many different slugs, wasted a lot of money before I figured out the lead sled/shotty combo was the issue. And honestly there's only so many ways you can "seat" the gun in the sled. Believe me I've tried everything - holding it tight, loose and not at all. I've tried LOTS of weight on the sled and just a bare sled. Nothing helped until I replaced the sled with my shoulder. Which only serves to remind me why I like my 243 so much. :-) So am I saying its the sled? No. It's something with the combination of the sled and my gun and scope. Not sure what it is, don't really care now that I have a solution and a gun/scope/slug combo with which I am confident to 150+ yards. I may upgrade the scope someday, but I'm so in love with the circle-X reticle that I can't bring myself to change it yet. And hopefully by that time Tompkins county will allow rifles so I can retire the shotty altogether. :-) Now come on noodle...10 yards, really? :-) Zhe Wiz

I use Remington 3" Accutips. Shot 3 deer at over 125 yards with them this year. I have to say though, that my gun doesn't shoot well out of the lead sled. I have a tough time getting good groups unless I let it pound my shoulder. Zhe Wiz

Yep, saw those reviews. The tone is high pitched, and I suspect a lot of us don't hear that frequency as well as we used to. For me a combination of tractor driving (I grew up on a dairy farm) and gun shooting w/o protection (I don't do that anymore, even these coyotes and the 7 deer I got this year were shot with ear muffs) has left my left ear very weak. I don't hear that tone well if I'm sleeping on my right side, but I still hear it. I am a DEEP sleeper, rarely hear anything, but I have the receiver in my B/R and it wakes me up. With normal noise and the receiver in the same room or the next room, there's no issue hearing it. My wife, who has NOT ruined her ears, can hear it all over the house even with the TV on. Is it blast your ears loud? No. Is it loud enough? For how I use it, yes. I have a sensor in the mailbox too. When the mailman comes, even with normal "day time" noise I hear the alarm. Our downstairs floor plan is very open though. Plus keep in mind you can program up to 8 sensors, each one beeps one time for it's number, so the first one you connect beeps once, the second twice, and so on. I have the yote bait pile next to sensor 2, the first beep wakes me up, the second confirms it. If you have trouble hearing, Adding a couple sensors to increase the number of beeps is an option. You could also buy more than one receiver and have one upstairs and one downstairs, for example, though that obviously increases the expense. Bottom line is I think it's loud enough. Similar to my UPS when it starts beeping. I was worried about it when I bought it, I'm not now. It's hard to know if it would work for you, depends on your hearing and how loud your environment is. Try it, if it doesn't work, send it to me, I want a second receiver. :-) Zhe Wiz

Agreed! I was very happy to see it was another girl! It's actually the THIRD female in the past 3 weeks. I shot a smaller one (probably this year's pup) in broad daylight a couple weeks ago. I'm a little sleep deprived this morning (took a while to get back to sleep after the adrenaline rush!) but lovin' the motion sensor setup. It's incredibly accurate, and with the blacked out LED, they have no idea they've been busted. Hopefully I can take care of a few of the "smarter" ones that haven't been coming out during the daytime. Zhe Wiz

Well, it worked again tonight. Alarm woke me up at about 12:10am, just a few minutes ago. Confirmed it was a coyote with the binocs, shot her with 22-250 at around 170 yards, no light. That's 2 using this method in about 2 weeks. Another adult female, haven't weighed her yet, but she's in the 35-40 range I think. This one was calmly eating. I suspect because of the blacked out LED she suspected nothing. I did have to shoot her twice, hit a little low on the first shot. Now then...back to Animal Planet. :-) Zhe Wiz

It's two parts: an outdoor, battery operated sensor and an indoor, plug-in (or battery operated if you want!) receiver. When the sensor "sees" motion, it sends a signal to the receiver causing it to beep. Except for the LED that I disabled, there's no other indicator on the outdoor sensor that it has been tripped. Zhe Wiz

Yes, I have had one successful coyote kill using it so far. It's the thread called "A Good Yote". I've also passed on several (or maybe one many times!) foxes as well. I replaced the sensor with my light blocked version yesterday. Hopefully my scent will die down in a day or two and they'll start visiting again. Will definitely post if I get any more. Thanks for the idea. :-). We have WAY too many around here, need to thin them out. Zhe Wiz

Thanks to this thread I've bought and have been using the Chamberlain CWA2000 next to my bait pile to catch coyotes (and foxes, as it turns out) hitting it at night. It has worked very well with very few false positives, in fact I've NEVER had a false positive at night, though I did have a few daytime false alarms when it was really windy last week. The only thing I did NOT like about it, was the green LED that flashes on the sensor whenever movement is detected. That might work fine for it's intended use, but it seems to spook the Coyotes a bit. Because Chamberlain hid the LED behind the same lens as the sensor, I couldn't simply tape it up from the outside. So, I ordered two more sensors (need 'em anyway!) to experiment on. Turns out it's VERY simple to cover up that LED, and probably remove it if you're electronically inclined. Two screws is all that holds the circuit board on. I popped those off and dabbed some black silicon over the LED. I had to be careful not to get any on the motion sensor which is right next to it, but that was pretty easy too. I used a toothpick to poke the silicon into the gaps between the LED and the motion sensor. Seems to work great! I can no longer see any light leaking out. So anyone looking to do the same thing, I highly recommend it. You can get one sensor plus the inside receiver for just over $50 on Amazon right now, additional sensors are just over $20 each. The range of the sensor to the target is SUPPOSED to be 30 feet, but it seems to be a little more "near sighted" than that, though I haven't done a lot of repositioning it or measuring it to confirm my suspicions. The range from the sensor to the receiver is excellent. It's supposed to be 1/2 mile. Mine is 180 yards from the house, and I can have the receiver just about anywhere in the house and it picks up the alarms. Zhe Wiz

Now just make it official so I can sell my compound bow and go all in on Xbows. Zhe Wiz

That's certainly possible. I've lived for for 13 months, the previous owner was a deer hunter as well, though I don't think he hunted in general as much as I do. If he tried to thin the yotes, he failed miserably. The other thing too is that my house is set back 1/4 mile from the road, but otherwise it's a light residential area down there. I can see how they may be light shy due to back porch lights, headlights, etc. Or, I'm right next to state land too, it's possible they've been hunted with spotlights. Zhe Wiz

It's a green LED, no filter. The handheld is a white light with a red filter. I do have a red LED for the same light, but I honestly don't see a reaction difference between the two. At least none that I can specifically say was the result of the light's color. Zhe Wiz.