Welcome to TheOhioOutdoors
Wanting to join the rest of our members? Login or sign up today!
Login / Join

Got a Yote

yote1.jpg

Shot this female the other day in Jefferson County with my turkey gun and #5 turkey loads at 15 yards. These Amish guys who have coyote dogs came down to hunt the State Forest that borders our Sportsmens Club and contacted a few of us to hunt along with them in case the dogs ran one up on to our club property. I was really impressed with these guys and their dogs. They were very nice and didn't care who shot the yotes. They were more interested in the dog work. I only hunted til about noon but had a blast.
 
It works...and we had a blast. They gave us the option of walking with whoever is tracking the dogs or trying to stay ahead of the dogs waiting for them to get hot on a yote then move in to cut them off. I spent most of the day driving around in the truck. I'd get on a road move about a quarter mile or so ahead of the tracker and dogs and just listen. Most of the times when the dogs got on a hot trail they would circle the coyote just as if a beagle would do with a rabbit except they would cover 3 or 4 miles. So if they got hot we would look to move in on a hilltop or spoil bank where they had already passed and wait for them to bring the coyote back around. Very Cool.
 
They are foxhounds. From what these Amish guys explained to me was that 20 some years ago they used to hunt fox. What they found out was that some of the dogs would break off a fox trail and jump on the scent of a coyote. They could have broke them of it but decided to let them go with it. Some of the dogs simply liked the scent of a coyote better than a fox. So they started separating the dogs that were true coyote dogs ad began breeding them with other dogs that preferred coyotes. Now they have some strong bloodlines in these foxhounds that run coyotes. They always run at least 2 dogs together because they've had instances where big male yotes have simply quit running and turned on the dogs to fight it out. They've never lost a dog but have had some pretty tore up.