The coyote vocalizations at night can be haunting to some, but to others like myself, it’s part of nature’s wonderful soundtrack.
To me this sound lets me know that coyotes are nearby and I know these are superb animals to photograph. So, to me, it’s inspiring.
Let’s find out all we can on coyotes so we, can take better photographs of them.
Before we go any further this animal’s name can be pronounced either Kai-oat-Tee the three-syllable version or it can be pronounced as the two-syllable version - kai Oat.
Some people even shorten it to be yote’s. As in “ I was out all day looken fir sum yotes”.
Since it’s a regional pronunciation thing, I may switch it up as we go. So I apologize upfront if I’m not saying it the way you are used to.
First, the coyote is from the Canidae (cani-die) family or the canine family, which includes wolves, foxes, and our own best friend, the domestic dog. These are carnivorous animals that feed mainly on rodents, rabbits, reptiles, amphibians and occasionally fruit, sometimes they will dine on something even as large as deer.
The evening vocalizations that we can sometimes hear out in the wild are usually generated by lone coyotes. Since this animal is socially family orientated, these individuals are looking for mates or letting others know this is their territory.
Otherwise, the coyote will be found in a pack with a mated pair leading the way. This mated pair, seldom part ways and are usually together in a “death do us part” sort of deal.
These animals can be found all over North America and increasingly, the coyote, rather than being pushed away when humans move into its territory is adapting to the urban landscape.
While coyotes have been known to cross paths with humans, they prefer open wooded areas where they can hide from humans, THEIR number one predator.
If you are driving in your car and see a coyote trotting in the woods, you might be cursing yourself for not having your camera ready. The way the light can highlight their fur coats can be stunning. However, not everyone likes this animal.
You will find outdoorsmen, hunters, and farmers all in the same camp that these animals need to be killed on site. Hunters can’t stand them because they might scare off a deer that was in their sites. Or that the coyote is the guiltiest for eating pheasant eggs or hens or other game birds. Ranch owners will tell you all kinds of stories of how a single coyote can decimate their sheep heard. Coyotes get blamed for all kinds of natural mayhem. Some of which is probably true but we do need to learn ways to co-exist with this animal.
The industry of hunting the coyote is huge. With sportsman shops like Bass Pro Shops boasting dozens of different products devoted to just hunting coyotes. From specialized calls to camouflage clothing to decoys to coyote scent concealers.
The fact that coyotes are hunted so aggressively by humans, these animals have learned to be clever and rely on all their senses in order to stay alive.
Let’s take the senses one at a time; The sense of smell:
The coyote has an amazing sense of smell. After all, they use their noses for hunting as well as for sensing danger and they do this, all day long.
Some hunters go to great lengths to hide their own human smell. Taking showers with scent eliminating soaps, washing their clothes in special detergent, keeping their hunting clothes in special scent-free bags, and even getting dressed outside their car so as not to drag the smells on their car seats into the field.
They also buy coyote urine, spray it on themselves, their surroundings, and their gear in the hopes of not being discovered. However, the most important thing you can do when out photographing coyotes is to remain downwind from your subject. That means once you are in the right location, and the light is right, choose to be where the wind is in your face. That way the coyote can’t smell you as easily as if the wind is coming across you and blowing your scent right to them.
This can be a challenge but it’s the simplest thing you can do when it comes to this type of photography.
Next up is the sense of sight. Do you really need to be covered in camo clothing to photograph coyotes? Not really, but it depends.
If you can use something to break up your face and eyes, sunglasses under a hat or a loose-fitting face mask should do the trick.
When it comes to clothing, just wear something drab and not patterned. Think, khaki pants and olive green shirt rather than blue jeans and a red plaid shirt. Keep in mind you might be out in a field a long time so dress for the weather and temperate first.
The big thing to keep in mind is movement. You need to be absolutely still. If you do need to make movements, move super slow. It’s the movement that will give you away not what you are wearing.
Lastly, we come to sound.
If you look at the face of a coyote you can see his ears pointing up and out. These are shaped in such a way that they can grab sounds from very far away. They are like little parabolic microphones gathering in sounds from all over.
To illustrate their hearing most of us have seen the clips of coyotes leaping into the air off a bed of snow and slamming their face deep into the snow to capture some unsuspecting rodent. That behavior is from coyotes “hearing” a little mouse moving around in the snow deep below where they stood. Not only did they hear the mouse, their hearing so good they can track their prey’s movement under the snow, that way they know exactly where to bury their face and make a kill.
There are countless stories that hunters will tell you about coyotes hearing something as soft as the safety of a gun being clicked off at hundreds of yards away can scare a coyote off.
Excellent hear is a big asset for the coyote. However, it is a tool, that we as photographers can use, to get fantastic photographs of the coyote.
When it comes to photographing coyotes, there are a few things that we can successfully do that will help us get some great shots of these magnificent animals. First and foremost is finding them. If you have heard the coyote howl in your area, then you know they are around. But let’s say you head out to some open spaces to try to get photographs of them in less urban surroundings. The things to look for are, scat and tracks.
For scat, Coyotes will deposit a rope-like material that is filled with bones and hair. These are about the same size as your good-sized neighborhood dog will leave on your lawn, but the materials inside are quite different, and that is due to diet. While our dogs feast on mostly store-bought dog food, the coyote’s diet is vast to include rodents, rabbits, and other small animals. So, if the scat you are looking at is full of hair and bones, very likely a coyote has been through there.
Next are the tracks to look for. While this can be more difficult since the domestic dog has a similar paw print, the telltale sign is the gate. While a dog of about the same size as a full-grown coyote is about 40 lbs, the stride will normally be quite different. Likely a dog will make a footprint every 16 to 25 inches, the coyote will make a track every 28 to 48 inches. Also, the domestic dog will make tracks in a zigzag pattern where a coyote will travel in a straight line whenever the terrain will allow.
The best way to photograph the elusive coyote is to use its amazing hearing to your advantage and call them right to you.
Back to a place like Bass Pro Shops you can find several different calls that you can use.
If you are ambitious and don’t want to spend too much money there are manual hand calls that you just use your own lungs to produce the appropriate sounds.
The first of which is a diaphragm call. With these items, that are about the size of a half of a half-dollar coin, you place them in your mouth and blow against the small latex flapper and change the pitch and rhythm with your own voice.
These can make a variety of calls to attract coyotes to where you are set up.
This variety can be everything from pups yelping to females in heat to young coyotes announcing that this is their territory.
Some diaphragms can make multiple sounds but in many cases, you will have two or three different diaphragms to choose from.
The manual hand calls have a couple of downsides. First, is that there is a learning curve to using them. They take some practice to get the sounds right. You also may need an amplifier tube to get a little more volume of sound.
One problem that these tools present are that as you are sitting there calling in coyotes, you are not ready to take photographs. Coyotes can come running pretty fast so dropping your call and getting your face down behind the camera to photograph, is a movement that can be seen from quite a ways away for the cautious coyote. So, this is best done with a buddy system. Where one person does the calling while the other does the photographing.
Next up are the reed callers. These are built with a mouthpiece that you bite down on and blow into kind of like you would a clarinet, only producing music that only coyotes love.
There is a whole range of these devices in this category and you can even go online and learn how to make some of these reed callers yourself.
Lastly on the topic of calling coyotes are the electronic callers. These are pretty fancy devices.
Essentially, the best electronic callers have a handheld remote and a separate set of remote speakers. This allows you to place the speakers in a bush and call your coyotes to that location. This makes the animal check out the spot where the speakers are as opposed to where YOU are.
These systems can output quite a high volume of sound to help in calling coyotes in the wind or if you need to reach out and bring your subject in from far away.
Also with two speakers, you can “move” the call from the left speaker to the right to simulate that a sound is moving. Kind of like it would be out in the wild.
The best part about this device is not that they have just a few coyote calls, but they offer hundreds of calls! You not only have the calls that make a coyote come running but you also have included with the unit, calls for gray fox, red fox, mountain lions, elk, and moose.
The most sophisticated units come with sounds of wounded animals like the sound a jackrabbit makes when he’s injured. Or a cottontail in distress and many, others.
All of these sounds make these digital calls quite versatile for calling in many different animals.
All of this versatility a good thing and possibly a bad thing.
When you start using predator calls and select from the large variety of wounded animals, you might get something attracted that you didn’t expect.
Keep in mind that when you are calling predators, you can’t be certain they will be coming in from where you would expect them to be. Possibly they may come up from behind you, so be ready.
A good friend of mine told me an interesting story about one of his calling adventures.
One early morning he was set up near the top of a canyon, with his coyote call, working the valley just below him. For this instance, he was using a rabbit in distress sound hoping to get some shots of coyotes coming up the canyon.
After a while and no coyotes in sight, he had this weird tingly feeling of being watched. We have all experienced something like this feeling before, so he slowly turned around to check his surroundings.
There, on the ledge right behind him was a full-grown bobcat. The cat was just casually watching him. Obviously brought in by the sound of a possible free meal.
After a short stare off, the bobcat sauntered away.
After that, my photographer friend now had a new location to call in a different subject, for his camera.
Now that you have an understanding of the crafty coyote and how to stalk and lure them closer to you for some great photography, you need to know how to photograph these animals.
First, let’s talk about the best times to go and photograph coyotes.
For the animal to look his best, fall, winter and early spring are good times since the coyote is going to be well dressed for your photographs.
In the fall, the coyotes start getting their winter coats and most of them have filled out, storing up fat for the leaner winter months. That makes fall and winter are the best times to photograph them when they are looking their best.
Also, keep in mind that January and February is the time of year that coyotes mate up so there are more calls that will attract them to your spot to photograph them during these months of the year.
Whew. That is about all you can stand learning about coyotes. Let’s get into the actual photography part to make sure your photographs come out the best they can.
Let’s go over equipment to make sure you have everything you need to make quality captures.
As far as camera’s go, you likely have already made that decision as to which brand you use, but if not here’s a little food for thought:
While I use traditional DSLR equipment, Nikon in fact, there is a good case for high-end mirrorless cameras for photographing coyotes. Here’s why: If you remember earlier when we talked about the amazing hearing capability of the coyote, the sound of the snapping shutter may not be your friend.
Typical set up for calling Coyotes. Two tripods, one with a 600mm and one with a 300mm. Both fitted on Wimberley WH-200 Gimbal Head. The Gimbal head makes switching between focal lengths quick and easy. Zeiss Conquest 10 x 42 Binoculars for scanning the distance for subject movement.
I like to use a Gimbal head on my tripod for this kind of work. The gimbal head I use is a Wimberley WH-200 Wimberley head Version 2. This head screws on to the tripod where you would normally thread on your head but the base has a tall arch connected to it. On this arch, a moving platform it attached and it’s on this platform that you attach your lens foot of your telephoto lens. This head is not made for shorter lenses without a lens foot. Once you are attached, you can loosen the lock knob and gently slide the lens and camera back and forth until you get your whole rig balanced. Once its balanced, you now can move your camera in any direction, left or right or up and down, when you find the perfect spot, just leave it. If you have your rig balanced, it won’t move.
This is perfect for setting your sites on an area in the distance and when you start to follow your wildlife its fluid and easy to follow with the Wimberley Gimbal head. I can’t imagine going back to a regular tripod head for shooting something like coyotes or just about any wildlife for that matter.
I’ll put links in the show notes and on my website or you can just go to www.tripodhead.comand order your own.
Lastly, let’s talk about f/stop or aperture. Normally I would say the rule of thumb for shooting wildlife is I almost always shoot at wide open and focus on the eyes. However, with animal-like this that has an elongated snout, I like to try to get a somewhat wider depth of field.
To experiment with this, let’s go get our model so some practicing.
Most of us have easy access to the perfect model for learning how to photograph coyotes.
That’s right, mans’ best friend, our domestic dog.
The reason I recommend practice on photographing dogs is that most of them have an elongated snout, can move erratically, and are readily available to work with.
You are going to want to get your techniques down, like second nature BEFORE you go out looking for coyotes. You don’t want to go the trouble of setting up your equipment, doing your calls, and then find when a coyote does appear, your autofocus was on his tail and he’s completely out of focus.
Practice with a dog. The best subject would be a small German Shepard as they are about the right size around 40 lbs. They have a longer snout than say a French bulldog so they will present the same challenge of the depth of field for the animal’s face.
I’m working with my beagle, Tucker, out here at an open field dog park and simply just letting him run around.
As I shoot, I’ve got my camera on continuous focus, so as long as I hold the focus button down, the camera and lens will keep adjusting to keep the dog’s eyes in focus. Following the focus and tracking the animal. Nikon refers to this function as continuous focus while the canon brands call it AI Servo.
To make this easy, I have my tripod set up, my Wimberley Gimbal head in place, my 300mm 2.8 lens hooked up to my Nikon D5.
I’m having my wife call the dog while I track and photograph him.
My dog loves it and I’m getting great practice at photographing moving subjects. My wife not all that into it, but two out of three’s not bad.
While I was out there shooting, I varied my f/stop. That way I could get the best depth of field for photographing coyotes. Here is what I discovered.
I needed to stop down to about f/7.1 or f/8 to get enough depth of field to keep the eyes and the nose in focus on the full-face shot.
This aperture, of course, depends on how close my dog was. I would not likely be photographing a coyote near as close since they wouldn’t let me and I’m not sure I want a wild coyote that close to me.
As the animal was farther out, I could default to my standard wildlife setting of wide open, in this case, f/2.8, as the depth of field was not an issue and even if it was, I was focused on the animal’s eyes. If you keep the eyes sharp almost all else is forgiven.
Since you are all set and ready to go, the last thing we need to talk about is the time of day you want to go.
Most wild animals are active during the early morning and late afternoon. And that is also true with the coyote. However, during the late spring when pups are in the den, the coyote will be out feeding much more often and many times right in the middle of the day.
Since this animal is has adapted to the human world so well, they can be found in city parks and on sidewalks, seeing one during daylight hours doesn’t mean that the coyote is rabid or sick in some other way. I often mean it just out looking for food.
If you see them in your urban world, give them a wide birth, and enjoy watching them. As dog-like as they may appear, never approach one, try to pet it or anything like that, respect that it’s a wild animal and one that is quite a challenge to get good photographs of.