More Highlights From The Boddicker, Graves Coyote Study of 1987

In the first part and second part of this series, I broke out some important points from the coyote study done in 1982-1985 by Major L. Boddicker and George E. Graves.  The study, called  “Field Evaluation of Olfactory Attractants and Strategies Used To Capture Depredating Coyotes” can be found in this link in its entirety.

But What Does It All Mean?

Once you look past the science, percents, abbreviations, ratios and all the other academics, you can draw some common man conclusions from this study:

• Carman’s Canine Call is a very effective lure.  Thankfully it is still made and sold today.
• It is effective as a trap attractant (I assume dirt holes and flat sets).  It is also effective as an M-44 lure.  However, most of us do not have access to those (nor should we).  I interpret those results to be similar to a flat set.
• It is also effective as a snare attractant.
• There are other lures and baits still made today that were used in the study, such as O’Gorman’s Powder River Bait and LDC lure.  These were not picked at random.  Major Boddicker knew what he was doing.
• The study quotes “Predator control techniques are most effective with lures which elicit either sniffing (lure smelled) or licking, biting and/or chewing response, and least effective with lures that elicit the rolling and/or shoulder rub (Scrivner et al. 1987). ”  — what this means to us trappers is to find the lures they used which most commonly caused sniffing, licking, biting or chewing.  Winners in these categories are Carman’s Canine Call and Stokers Bounty.
• The catch rate of Canine Distance Call Lure peaked at 11-12 days of lure age.  This is hard for some people to believe, especially if you think a set needs to be re-lured every couple days.
• The study found that lunar phase and barometric pressure have little affect on lure effectiveness for coyotes.
• However, with the above being said, a trend in capture rates was apparent during rising and falling barometric readings, more so than periods of barometric stability.

I encourage you to read the study.  I learned quite a bit from it just from writing these blog posts.  There are lots more nuggets of information contained in it, such as lure age effectiveness and rub/roll/bite, etc responses.