A few of you may live the mountain man lifestyle with a focus firmly on fur, but for many of us, hunting a variety of species fills our busy schedules. That means you either have hunted on or manage a property for wildlife.

Managing ground for wildlife, particularly deer, is a multi-million-dollar industry. You may not always be able to justify your personal dollar for dollar investment, especially if you’re calculating it with a venison return, but you can get more entertainment out of a property other than its intended goal of deer hunting. Make sure to use it as a primary predator hunting location too. And if you know someone with a gorgeous wildlife property, offer your predator control expertise. 

Managed wildlife properties include a bevy of reasons on why they should be considered and utilized for predator hunting, particularly for coyotes. If your property or a friend’s, is sitting idle during the fur season, consider these reasons to open the gate for a predator adventure.

Management Helps Wildlife

Any properly managed wildlife area attracts not only the intended target like deer, but it also attracts most other game species. When you add food plots for wildlife nutrition, initiate proper timber management, set aside refuge for sanctuary zones and other property management strategies, you create a Disney World attraction for everything. When other game thrives it attracts coyotes, bobcats, fox, bears and mountain lions to utilize the bounty. With a balance of escape cover, food and overall habitat, most species can thrive in a balanced way.

Create Predator Opportunities

In addition to habitat care, hunting improvements also can help your later predator pursuits. Most hunting properties include a network of stands and blinds to be used in pursuit of deer, or turkeys. These same ambush sites also work for predators stalking the very game you stalked earlier.

Edge stands, interior treestands and ground blinds in openings all have potential as a hide while you try to call in a predator. After a late-season whitetail hunt I spent a few extra days on my buddy’s farm to coyote hunt. Several times I set the caller out in sight of a permanent blind, along with a dose of coyote urine and used the hide for a comfortable set protected from the weather. And yes, I Hornady-tipped over coyotes.

Seek More Intel

Whether you hunt a managed property or your friend hunts it, someone is going to have great intel on the predator patterns across the landscape. Often those patterns will mesh with the stand network on the property. Even if they don’t someone will be able to point you in the direction of where they hear the most dawn or dusk howling, where they see bobcat tracks routinely and the trail where a fox religiously darts across a road.

On one managed property my buddy pointed to a soybean field in the dark and said coyotes always were in, and around it. After five minutes of calling I shot a curious female and 15 minutes after that another blazed in to see what was dying. It did.

Predator Hunting Helps Other Species

Finally, any predator control you can do now may help save a fawn or batch of turkeys later. It’s nearly impossible to control predators without a year-round approach. Nevertheless, quality habitat paired with predator hunting can at least curb the influence that predators may have on a property. A coyote shot late in the winter right before denning likely saves several fawns later. Plus, the fun of calling in a coyote just adds to the reason to get the most bang for your buck on a wildlife property.