I start out with a “pup distress” on my old mouth call, 30 seconds of blowing my lungs out, and I quit. Now I wait for 3 minutes before I call again. I never did make the second series of calls before a yote came up the fence out of site, when Bert saw the yote at 15 yards out.

Now we have a race, the yote running for his life, and Bert trying his heart out to catch it. I spent the next 3 hours trying to find my dog, and never did kill the yote.

That was July of 1998, I was just out of college, and I had a bright idea of taking my yote calling to the “next level”. I had no shock collars or tracking collars, just a fair knowledge of yotes, and dogs.

Fast forward to today, I have a pen of 10 dogs, I breed and train coyote decoy dogs, and consistently kill 125 to 150 yotes a year.

One of the most common questions I get is “How did you get from one dog that was marginal, to a pen full that are great?”. Simple answer, stubbornness, and hard work.

Types of decoy dogs

A passive decoy dog will sit with you when calling, and his job is to be a “visual decoy”; the yote sees the dog, and keys in on it. The dog should sit behind you and not engage a yote.

Aggressive decoy dogs, will engage a yote that is “hung up”. The dog will go to the yote and pick a fight, as soon as the fight starts, the dog quits, and returns to the handler. I insist, and train my dogs to “go behind”. I don’t want a dog blocking my shot at a yote, or multiple yotes.

Why do decoy dogs work?

Decoy dogs work because the nature of a yote is to protect their territory, and fight to the death for it.

In my pack I have sight chasers, passive decoy dogs, and aggressive decoy dogs. This leads to the next question, and answer.

How do you train a “Decoy Dog”?

This is a bit of a loaded question. What type of dog fits your style? Most guys cannot do what I do, and have a few of each. The first thing any person new to decoy dogs needs to decide is “what type of dog do I want?" and then train accordingly.

The very first thing is “control”. I learned this lesson the hard way in the early days.

I start all my dogs on fresh yote hides at ten weeks, but I will not hunt them until they are solid on a “sic’em", and also a “come back”. Those two commands are not debatable, they must respond instantly. I use the very best electronic shock collars when training, and also when hunting any of my dogs - even my finished dogs.

I could write a book on the details of training different styles of decoy dogs, but for the purpose of this article, I will hit a few highlights.

Styles of Decoy Dogs

First of all, “Common Sense Wins”.

If you want an aggressive long range dog, you need to be dragging yote hides, and encouraging your dog to bite. If you are calling and the dog comes to you, he needs to be scolded or corrected, and he needs to learn what you expect.

The term “Decoy dog” means different things to different people. To me it’s a dog that helps me harvest more yotes, and I expect them to engage the coyotes, come back when told, and run any blood trail I set them on.

In my opinion a large part of what decoy dogs do is hold cripples. Let’s just be honest, guys make bad shots once in awhile, and I would rather have dogs that can find those cripples and hold them, opposed to having any wounded game get away.

Ole Bert

 It's 7 AM, and I’m hunting in a contest. I crawled into a spot in the rocks, over looking a huge sagebrush flat. My hunting partner is 50 yards down wind of me. “Ole Bert” is loose and moving around maybe 200 yards below us. John “lip squeaks” after a yote is spotted, I give him the “thumbs up”, shot fired, yote dead, Bert goes to the dead yote, and yote number two arrives. Bert picks the fight, and runs to me, I kill that yote at 10 yards. I send Bert back into the brush. Yotes 3, 4, and 5 arrive on the scene. They are building into Bert, and he is fighting his way loose and comes behind me. Yote number 3 killed by John at 15 yards. The other yotes pull the pin, and leave. The next day we went back to the same spot with Bert, and killed 2 yotes, are they the same two that got away? Who knows?

The date was Jan 16 2008.

Bert is still alive; he is “retired”, and will live out his life being my “Buddy”.

I make no promises that a “Decoy Dog” will increase your yote harvest, but I will promise if you do your part, calling coyotes with a dog, can be the most fun you can have.     

For more info about me, my dogs, or guide services that I offer, check out www.shooterservicesunlimited.com. 

                                Duane Freilino.

Q & A with Kirsch's Outdoor Products founder

Defined Outdoors: How did you get started in GIS?

Korey: I have been a "computer junkie" for years and also an avid outdoorsman. 10+ years ago, I began using GPS technologies and computers to help find fishing locations quickly and easily. As GIS was an emerging technology, I taught myself the basic things I needed to do in order to convert paper maps into GPS maps before there were any tools to really do this. This led to a product I sold for a number of years called Lake Trax. It started as a PC solution and in the product's final form began to be put on GPS memory cards. During this time, there were instances when I nearly stopped producing GPS maps. At one of these critical times, I received an email stating my product saved a person's life. A fisherman and his wife would have walked out on the ice into open water and drowned in the middle of the night but had used my map to mark a few danger spots. He had become disorientated and his GPS showed him he was near danger. He lifted up his lantern and saw water lapping up against the ice right in front of him. He would have walked right into it if the GPS hadn't shown him the danger. This experience plus many other wonderful customer service interactions kept me motivated to continue to create GPS maps as I knew I was making a difference. I continued to produce lake maps until last year when I created the all-around Sportsman Map.

Defined Outdoors: What made you interested in developing TRAX software?

Korey: Last year a series of events took place. The first was I did a custom map for a friend of mine who was going on an elk hunt in Wyoming. When he came back, he showed some of his buddies and they asked me to do a grasslands maps for Western ND. The Grasslands of North Dakota contains BLM, PLOTS and other lands both inside and right outside of the perimeter area. Due to some previous work I had done which used ND Game and Fish data, I was aware they had lots of different land GIS information. During the last 10 + years of using GPS devices, one of the thing that always bothered me was having to buy different maps for different purposes and usually had to buy a new map every year. After thinking about this, I realized there were road maps, and there were fishing maps, but no one made a sportsman map for hunting, fishing, hiking, biking, and traveling.  I had the experience with lake data already and knew how the ND Game and Fish stored their data, so I created NDTRAX and tested the concept of the all-around Sportsman's map at the Fargo Sportsman Show. The response was very positive. After completing NDTRAX, I found that I was able to create maps for other states as well and the rest is history. One year later, NDTRAX has added many new features and I have Montana, Minnesota, Wyoming, and New Mexico completed with more states coming. I also released the Google Earth version as described earlier. 

 

What started out as way to help me personally find fish quicker, many years later turned into a custom map for a buddy in Wyoming, and now has become the basic concept of what are TRAX maps. It is a great job as I get to help sportsmen fulfill their dreams every day.

Defined Outdoors: How did TRAX PC get started?

Korey: The most common requested feature for the TRAX maps was the ability to see the maps on a computer before or after going on their outdoor adventures. As GPS maps and PC maps are very different technology, I decided to integrate to Google Earth as this was the tool most sportsmen were already familiar with for scouting purposes.  It is the perfect combination with TRAX PC helping you plan or analyze your outdoor adventure and TRAX guiding the sportsman once their adventure has begun

Kirsch's Outdoor Products timeline

2001 - 2006: LAKETRAX NW 15, Devils Lake and ND Master: PC solution with integration to GPS via waypoint and track transfer

2006 - 2009: LAKETRAX PRO: GPS Memory Card version 

March 2009: NDTRAX and MNTRAX Released - 1st Sportsman maps 

April 2009: MTTRAX Released

November 2009: WYTRAX Released

December 2009: NMTRAX Released

February 2010: 2010 versions for NDTRAX, MNTRAX, WYTRAX, NMTRAX, and MTTRAX Released

February 2010: TRAXPC (Google Earth version) Released

TRAX PC

 TRAX PC directly integrates with  Google Earth to show you the location of Waterfowl Production Areas (WPA), Wildlife Management Areas (WMA), National Wildlife Refuges (NWR), National and State Parks, State Forests, State Lands, PLOTS lands, Streams and Rivers, Lake Contours for supported states, Boat Ramps, Hiking Trails, Major Roads, and Campgrounds. This makes TRAX PC an excellent resource for hunters, fishermen, hikers, boaters, and campers. 

 If you don't understand the importance of this software yet, just try to gather half of what is available through their product on your own. You will probably spend hours looking through countless websites, maps, atlases, and platt books.

 TRAX PC is the perfect compliment to the TRAX series products for GPS receivers, allowing hunters to conduct their scouting on their PC prior to setting out. As Korey put it, try scouting on your 2" or 3" GPS screen and you'll quickly see what we mean.

TRAX PC has already been released for North Dakota, Wyoming, and New Mexico, but being from Minnesota we're  most excited about the upcoming edition for our native state. Stay tuned to our website or twitter feed, we'll post an  update once the TRAX PC software for Minnesota has been released.

With the advent of the Internet, and the numerous free tools and services available from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and state and federal agencies, anyone with a computer and and broadband connection can find almost all the information they need to plan their hunt or scout for new hunting locations. In this article we will discuss some of our favorite tools, how you can use them, and some of the pros and cons of each service or site we've come across.

The Internet

Google Earth

Google Maps

Other online mapping tools

Internet Forums

GPS

The Global Positioning System, or GPS, was designed in the late 1960s by the Aerospace Corporation for the U.S. Navy to provide the military with the ability for a space-based satellite system that would offer reliable positioning, navigation, and accurate timing services. The GPS satellite system was opened up for civilian use and is accurate outside of war times to 20m or better. Handheld GPS receivers are the choice models for hunters and some fishermen, especially on the ice. Handheld receivers can be used in the woods to help track a wounded animal, either plotting your location while you track so you know how to get back out of the woods, or once you find it so you can mark it to come back later. You can also use it to bookmark off places you'd like to investigate further, or save the coordinates and load them into Google Earth.

GPS chips