Will birds ruin your hunt?
Will ravens, crows and magpies keep coyotes from responding to your calling?
Like coyotes, ravens, crow, magpies and many birds of prey are scavengers and will respond to prey distress sounds.
Scavenger and predatory birds often to respond to prey distress sounds on a coyote hunting stand. Will their response mess up you stand? My experience indicates that the opposite is often the case.
It’s not uncommon to call in birds of prey. I frequently have hawks come in and pay special attention to my moving decoy. One time, I apparently set up under a tree with a sparrow hawk nest in it. the pair of kestrels dive bombed me relentlessly and I cut my stand short, leaving them to raise their brood.
On another stand I was playing a woodpecker distress sound when a woodpecker flew into the tree behind me. The bird mimicked every sound the call made and for the rest of the stand I had stereo woodpecker sounds. I didn’t call in a coyote on that stand, but it was still a fun experience.
There is a saying among coyote hunters that states “Not every bird has a coyote, but every coyote has a bird.” Although this is an over simplification, it’s not uncommon for scavenger birds to follow a coyote, presumably in hope of getting an easy meal from leftovers when a coyote makes a kill.
Ravens are the most common scavengers in my area and, on numerous occasions, I have had them fly into one of my stands just before a coyote shows up from the same direction. As a result, I always pay special attention to the direction from which ravens fly when they come to my call.
It’s interesting that Native American culture refers to both the coyote and the raven as a “trickster,” a catalyst of mayhem and mischief. These cultural beliefs are based on centuries of association with nature and I believe it is appropriate that these two critters receive the same recognition. These historical observations seem to have also placed the two together in their every day activities.
Many Native American cultures also believe that seeing a raven is a symbol of good luck, a sign that good things about to happen in your life, often when you are on the verge of giving up.
Whether you believe in these traditions or not, experience demonstrates that seeing a raven, crow or magpie flying toward you certainly warrants a little extra attention in that direction and a little more time on the stand.