Moon phases and coyote hunting

Does a full moon make coyote calling harder?

  There has been a lot of talk about moon phases and how they effect wildlife activity. Many people will tell you that when the moon is full coyotes will be out hunting all night, taking advantage of the additional light. Their consensus is that hunting during the day following a night of bright moonlight will not be as good as otherwise.

            Is this theory true, or just an old wives’ tale? 

            To answer this question I will call upon my own experience as a wildlife biologist and reference data from the FoxPro Fox Data pages.

            My job with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources consisted mainly of wildlife damage assessment and mitigation. One of my responsibilities was nightly deer and elk counts on fields where these animals came out to eat crops.

            Several years of record keeping gave me a pretty good idea of what effect different weather conditions and moon phases had on wildlife numbers. My conclusion was that the only outside influence that had a significant impact on deer and elk numbers was human activity.

            There were some conditions that resulted in fewer animals actually seen, but follow up investigation where I checked tracks into and back out of the fields actually shower similar usage. My conclusion was that severe weather, snow and rain storms, made it more difficult to see the animals, but in reality, they were still there.

            The same could be said for counts on nights with full moons and those that were darker. I used a powerful spotlight in my counts and, although at first I saw more deer and elk on full moon nights, further inspection with the spotlight showed that actual numbers were not affected by moon light, it just made it easier for me to see them.

            What does Fox Data reveal?

            According to records submitted by successful predator hunters, there were actually more successful hunts on days following a full moon than on days following a new moon. In fact, more than 50% of predator harvest occurred during the three brightest moon phases. Here is the breakdown of hunter success based on moon phase.

            MOON PHASE PERCENTAGE OF HARVEST

New Moon                          5.77%

            Waxing Crescent            19.16%

            First Quarter                      4.63%

            Waxing Gibbous            16.37%

            Full Moon                        13.59%

            Waning Gibbous            20.49%

            Third Quarter                     3.81%

Although there may be a margin of error in these numbers because some of the hunts may have occurred at night with special equipment, time of day statistics indicate that night hunting only made up about 20% of the hunts submitted for data.

Bottom line

            Based on personal experience and collected data, a full moon really doesn’t seem to reduce hunting success. Don’t use a full moon as an excuse to stay home on the couch. Statistics prove that you will call and kill more coyotes in the filed than you will staying home whining about poor hunting conditions.