Editors Note: Gerald Stewart of Texas, has been calling predators for 40 years, and he helps design and develop many of Hunter’s Specialties’ predator calls.

There have been a number of coyotes over the years that I have to classify as tough. What makes most coyotes tough is that they’ve had a lot of hunting pressure, and they’re well educated. These coyotes may have lost a mate or seen a sibling taken by a hunter. They’ve learned that if they come to a prey sound there’s a good chance they may get shot.

To get these coyotes within gun range, you may have to use unusual sounds, or sounds the coyote never has heard before. If I know the area where a coyote is hanging out, I’ll try and call him a different way than anyone else has called him. Too, I’ll attempt to approach him from a different area where no one else has approached him before. Most of the coyotes I’ve been able to call that have been reluctant to come have come to some type of coyote vocalization rather than to an animal-in-distress call. These smart coyotes seem to prefer whines, yelps and pup-in-distress type calls.

One coyote in particular that was really tough to take spotted my hunting partner and me when we came in to hunt him, and he started barking right after I began using a rabbit distress call. He was barking from a ridge above a creek where we had set up. So, I sat very still and waited a long time. Then I used a hurt pup squeal and played a gray fox pup in distress call. Now the hurt pup squeal imitated a hurt coyote pup, and the gray fox pup in distress call was a call I knew he’d never heard before because there weren’t any gray foxes in this region.

I think I played on that coyote’s curiosity and his desire to protect his territory, and I think that’s what finally made him come in to me. I generally carry a shotgun, and my hunting partner usually takes a rifle. When that coyote came up to the edge of that creek my hunting partner was able to take him with his rifle. This coyote wouldn’t come to standard sounds that everybody uses to call coyotes, so the tactic we finally used to get him in was to use a sound he’d never heard before and prick his curiosity. This reason is why I believe it’s essential to use a caller where you have a wide variety of sounds that you can use to lure in a coyote.

Many times there’s one favorite call that you may like to use, but when you’re dealing with tough coyotes, oftentimes the sound you think he’s never heard before is just the call you need to use to get him. I like the Hunter’s Specialties’ Preymaster and the 612 Series Deluxe Professional because I can change calls so easily. Even with an open-reed call, I like to be able to change sounds. And this is the reason I’ll often have an electronic call as well as a mouth-blown call with me when I’m hunting. I feel that the more different sounds you have available to use, the better you can match your sounds to what’s required to call in a coyote. If you don’t have a wide selection and a large library of calls, you can get into a calling situation with a tough coyote and not have the sound you need to get that coyote to respond. I think more people are coyote hunting, and the need for more different prey species and coyote vocalization calls will continue to grow.