I'm going to feed the beast 257.


I didn't read everything between my last post but the answer to your question is that coyotes in the setting you are describing predominately feed upon rodents. If I were to pull up at your deer lease my experience is that I'm going to catch more off a mice based bait than anything else. 100% of the time every time. Because that is their primary diet. There are higher populations of rodents along the roadways than there are spread out in the interior woods. There are of course some rodents that live in the pine thicket but you would probably have better luck finding those near rocks or a bush pile, etc. Not necessarily scattered across the forest floor. They will pick off something dead but are hoping for a rabbit and we know a rabbit likes grass. They don't catch squirrels or chipmunks but I can promise they will eat either. Chipmunks are some of my favorite bait.

Rodents, in particular voles we call field mice make their nests in grasses. Those grasses in a woodland are present in clearings and openings. The connecting roads have grasses on them typically. There is a connection of all the grassy areas (a.k.a. food plots, small fields, etc.) in a road system.

In areas where there are few openings (no food plots or small plots) my opinion is they hit the roads systems that much harder and they travel a lot further each night.. Always seem to be fewer coyotes around. The roadways in a woodland are dual use they are for hunting and traveling between better hunting areas. No fields in close proximity means more miles on the roads. To a degree. They will travel through the woods but they are going somewhere maybe a cow pasture 1/2 a mile away. So these are some big generalizations I am making here. Let's be fair about it.

So to answer you question given the diet of rodents I believe that a property with no roads and no food plots would typically have less coyotes hanging around it. Less rodents. They might eat acorns but I don't think I'm going to bait my trap with any.

That's my best attempt at explaining something that I consider common sense.