What’s the Best Time of Day to Coyote Hunt?

What’s your best time of day to coyote hunt? Find out by answering three questions.

1. What region will you hunt in?

2. Is your hunting spot in the suburbs, a rural area, or a state or national park?

3. During which coyote season will you be hunting?

What’s your best time of day to coyote hunt.

You have to personalize this question. The correct answer will put you on a stand at the exact moment the coyotes around you are most active.

For the moment, dump the usual “coyotes are nocturnal” and “coyotes only move at dusk and dawn” stuff. It’s not exactly wrong, but it’s only right like a broken clock.

And it isn’t precise enough for you.

Your region determines the best time of day to coyote hunt.

Your first step to determining the best time for you to coyote hunt is to select the region you will be hunting in.

For the sake of this article, we’ll create three coyote hunting regions: the Northeast, the Great Plains, and the Southwest.

The Northeast for this article means anywhere the Eastern Coyote lives. This includes New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and the eastern Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec, to name a few.

The Great Plains includes Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. The Great Plains also extend into Canada, and parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the Northwest Territories.

The Southwest includes California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah.

Got your region? Great, let’s answer the second question.

Will you coyote hunt in a park, a rural area, or in a suburb?

One of the most critical influences on coyote activity is the presence of humans. Humans do not drive out coyotes, and they do not limit coyote activity, but they do factor into when a coyote is most active.

In state and national parks, human presence is at its lowest. Here coyotes are most active during the day. The land provides all the cover a coyote needs to hunt its bedded-down prey safely.

Rural areas (farms and fields outside of towns and urban areas) have a limited human presence. Forty years ago coyotes, were equally active day or night in rural areas. But with their expansion into all 48 contiguous states and the passage of time, coyote activity even here has changed to primarily nocturnal.

The suburbs have lower human population numbers than urban areas (think single-family homes instead of apartment buildings). However, there is still a constant flow of human activity during the day. As a result, coyotes in the suburbs are forced to live close to humans. As a result, they are decidedly nocturnal, except for females during the breeding season.

Which type of area will you be hunting in? Got it? Good, let’s answer the last question.

During which season will you coyote hunt?

Coyotes have four primary seasons; mating, denning, pup rearing, and dispersal. In general, here’s what they are and the months they occur.

Mating season (Jan-Feb). Searching, courting, and coupling.

Denning season (Mar-May). Denning season sees many paired adults spending most of their time inside or nearby their dens protecting their litter.

Pup rearing season (June-Aug). Coyote parents are teaching their larger pups how to hunt; coyotes are out of their dens and quite active.

Dispersal season (Sep-Dec). This is when the now-adult members of the litter are kicked out of the house and forced to find new territories to call their own.

Have you identified the coyote season you’ll be coyote hunting in? Fantastic! Let’s tie it all together.

Related: How to call a coyote.

Determining your best time of day to coyote hunt.

The last step is easy! Select the region that matches your hunting area.

Best time of day to hunt coyotes in the Eastern region.

For state and national parks: Coyote activity will typically be during the day. The one time this won’t be true is during denning season. Eastern coyotes in state and national parks are much more active at night during the denning season.

For rural and suburban areas, coyote activity will be primarily nocturnal. The one exception? Females during the breeding season.

The best time of day to hunt eastern coyotes in the suburbs is always at night.

No matter the month or the season, hunting (suburban) eastern coyotes at night is best due to one factor: it’s when they are always most active.

Related: For a complete breakdown, see: Movement-and-Activity-Patterns-of-Eastern-Coyotes.

Best time of day to hunt eastern coyotes during mating season

First place: Nighttime (between 5 p.m. and 6 a.m.). Nearly 80% of eastern coyotes will be on the move during these 13 hours.
Second place: Dusk. 20% less activity than night.
Third place: Dawn. 30% less activity than night.

Last place: Daytime. 85% less activity during the day than during the night.

Here’s one taken during mating season at 3:30 in the morning. Note how unaffected the coyote was even after the first shot.

Best time of day to hunt eastern coyotes during denning season.

First place: Nighttime (between 7:30 p.m. and 0530 a.m.). 75% of eastern coyotes will be moving during these 12 hours.

Second place: Dusk. 20% less activity than night.
Third place: Dawn. 30% less activity than night.
Last place: Daytime. 75% less activity during the day than during the night.

Best time of day to hunt eastern coyotes during pup rearing season.

First place: A three-way tie between nighttime, dusk, and dawn.
Last place: Daytime. There’s 60% less coyote activity during the day than at any other time.

Best time of day to hunt eastern coyotes during dispersal season.

First place: Nighttime (between 6:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.). 80% of eastern coyotes are moving during these 12 hour hours.

Second place: Dusk. 40% less activity than at night.
Third place: Dawn: 50% less activity than at night.
Last place: Daytime. Nearly 90% less activity than during the day.

Related: How to Hunt Eastern Coyotes.

Best time of day to hunt coyotes in the Great Plains region.

The best studies of coyote activity in the Great Plains were done during combined seasons, resulting in two sets of data (mating/denning compared to pup rearing/ dispersal seasons).

The results, however, were nearly identical to those found studying eastern coyote activity.

Simply put, the best time of day to hunt coyotes in the Great Plains was at nighttime. Of course, dusk and dawn followed next, but daytime hunting (based on coyote activity) was, beyond a doubt, the worst time of the day to be coyote hunting.

Pro tip: In one study of coyote activities in the Great Plains, “Home Range, Activity, and Daily Movements of Coyotes,” there was a compelling note for those who might be offering predator control services to local farmers.

“Territorial behavior and seasonal changes in home range areas suggest that coyotes preying upon domestic poultry and livestock probably range closer to loss sites during gestation, nursing, and pup training periods when ranges are smaller…”

You can read that study here: Home_Range_Activity_and_Daily_Movements_of_Coyotes.

Best time of day to hunt coyotes in the Southwest.

Once again, in state and national parks, expect more daytime activity.

In rural and suburban areas, however, things look different in the Southwest. Studies here show coyote activity is split equally between day and night during the mating, denning, and pup dispersal seasons.

During pup rearing season, however, coyote activity was vastly greater during the nighttime.

Your best time of the day to hunt coyotes is the dead of the night.

Sure, coyotes can be successfully hunted at any time of the day, but your time is limited and valuable.

Adages like “ hunt at dawn” or “go out an hour before dusk” are just byproducts of when most people usually have time to hunt. But, if you want to increase your odds (by up to 800% for eastern coyotes in the fall), hunt at zero dark thirty. For you, that’s the best time of day to hunt coyotes.