Hunting predators is a great way to shake up your favorite hobby, but they tend to come out at night. When the sun goes down, hunting gets a lot more difficult. From daylight scouting to using predator lights, here are some tips and tricks for hunting predators at night.
Safety First
Predators can see better than you in the dark, so you need to have safety on your mind when you head out into the night. Start by hunting in places you’re familiar with so that you know various routes to and from the site. Additionally, practice the strictest gun safety—handling lethal weapons in the dark is nothing to mess with.
Scout in Daylight
Use daylight to your advantage. Either show up to the hunt site a few hours before the sun sets or scout the area a few days beforehand. No matter what, make sure you know what the location looks like when it’s light out before trying your hand at night navigation. Keep an eye out for transition areas and clearings, thinking like a predator to figure out where they’re most likely to be.
Use Calls
Daytime and nighttime calls work very similarly. You can kick things off with rabbit-in-distress calls and move on to more aggressive calls as the night goes on. We recommend picking up a lightweight mouth-blown call—this will work well day or night and won’t run out of batteries.
You’ll need to spend a little time figuring out how to get the best calls out of them, but you won’t regret the purchase once you’ve mastered the skill.
Light ‘Em Up
The toughest part of night hunting is the darkness. Thankfully, there are tons of excellent options to light up the night and spot your prey. Your best bet isn’t to look for the outline of a coyote but rather to scan the area for their reflecting eyes. Eyeshine is easy to spot and hard for an animal to hide—plus, you can see eyeshine from greater distances than the outline of your prey.
Now that you know these tips and tricks for hunting predators at night, get ready for a successful trip, no matter how dark it is.
