Coyote Hunting Gear Setup with A Texas Yote Slayer (2021)

There are more ways than one to drop coyotes. Some use lights, some use thermals, and some hunt coyotes in the daytime. Anthony Amantine is at the top of the coyote hunting game and he came to Gearbox Talk to explain the advantages of night hunting coyotes, baiting yotes, the best calls and sounds to bring them in, strategies to bag multiple dogs in one hunt, Anthony’s crazy thermal setup, and Anthony's review of his rifle setup.

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Gear Mentioned:
Lightforce Enforcer 170 100W Cig Plug Handheld Light
Pulsar Thermion Thermal Rifle Scope
Nvision halo lr50
Coyote Light (LED)
Lohman Coyote Smokin' Howler Call
6.5 creedmoor 122
Team Wendy helmet
Pro Ears Stalker Gold Headset
IRAY-MH25
2021 Can-am Defender
DEAD AIR ARMAMENT Nomad-L Multi-Caliber Silencer
Ruger American MPH-B 6.5 Creedmoor Tact 18-inch Green Magpul 5RDS
efr rail
Peq 15
Manners Mcs Stocks
American Defense Manufacturing Recon-S
VORTEX Razor HD Gen II 4.5-27x56 H59 Riflescope

Show Notes:
Anthony's Instagram
Anthony's YouTube Channel

Transcription

Brad: I find few animals in the woods as interesting as the coyote or as some of y'all say it the coyote whatever how you say it doesn't matter the show is called Gearbox Talk which is focus more on the gear than how you talk you guys can argue about the phonetics in the comments go ahead today I have coyote hunter Anthony Amantine  on the show this guy's been hunting for nearly two decades and is known for hammering the oats now don't you dare leave because we're about to cover some information from a guy who cable smith called a coyote hunting machine this show is going to highlight advantages of night hunting coyotes baiting yoats the best calls and sounds to bring them in strategies to bag multiple dogs on one hunt anthony's crazy thermal setup and we're going to talk about his rifle setup now make sure you don't miss out on other great shows we are talking about so many different things on Gearbox Talk hit subscribe hit the bell so you get the notifications about new shows all right let's talk some dogs this is Gearbox Talk with Anthony amatine Anthony amatine I'm excited to get you on the show to talk about some coyote hunting I know you also hit the hogs but today we're focusing just on the dogs man how's it going
Anthony: not a problem Brad everything's going good man
Brad: dude you've got a good story you're hunting a lot of acreage down in texas and you you've have specifically focused on coyotes and pigs so I you got a lot of a wealth of experience let's let's go first man let's talk a little bit about the night hunting aspect you know why why do people hunt coyotes at night and what gear is required to do that
Anthony: you know it's it's I'll be honest with you it's a difficult question to answer answer why at night there's a lot of people that hunt day and night and I know there's guys that prefer day the guys that prefer day don't have the equipment to hunt at night and I'm not making fun of them but there's a lot of successful night hunters out there with no thermal no night vision they're using the awesome lights and a lot of people always ask questions about different colors but just recently within the last three years I've been I've been hunting with chris robinson with night crew and he says you're about to get an experience like no other and he's using lights and I wasn't on the same page because I'm so used to when I jumped into it it was straight thermal and night vision you know and he was using lights and I was blown away by what I was seeing so if you you have you have an advantage with night vision at night but there's still guys doing it with lights but there is a huge advantage with thermal and night vision because now chris is using thermal and night vision at night but he's still using his lights he's still using his lights
Brad: how's that light set up compare in terms of pricing and the setup you walk us through real quick what the thermal setup is and then what that light setup is like and you know thermals we could go on a deep dive just do like a yeah yeah
Anthony: we could we could now you know with the with the lights your traditional lights white lights light force whoever there's so many different light companies out there you can easily get into a setup a night set up probably for right under a thousand dollars maybe a few hundred dollars you know it can get expensive it can get you can you can do it cheap I know some people are doing it with $50 likes they got from cabela's you know but when we get into the night vision you know you can go as cheap as digital night vision but I think you're better off with some type of night vision or thermal and we all know that we can get into the whole a couple of thousand dollars oh easy yeah yeah so I'm deep in it so I i don't like to spit out numbers but I get it there's thousands of dollars wrapped up in it
Brad: yeah man I get it what's your what's your thermal choice
Anthony: my thermal of choice right now is I have two that I go back and forth with but I have multiple thermals but right now I'm using the pulsar thermion xg50 and the envision halo lr50 that's what I'm using on my weapon okay
Brad: okay and then do you have a light setup you'd recommend for somebody on on the you know the entry level side
Anthony: you know there's there's a lot of great different lights and and and hold on give me one second I have one right here that I haven't even used yet it's the coyote light okay it's it's the coyote like and this is an led and you can you can switch colors on this one but this is one that was recommended to me and I have not yet I haven't have yet to use it but this is like the one everybody's telling me to go for on a weapon there's there's different headlamps that guys are using for scanning you know there's the handheld and there's also the tripod set up people are using on their on their high racks you know there's there's a lot of different options I can't just pinpoint one
Brad: no man that's cool so the coyotes aren't sensitive at all to the the lights like I don't understand that part of it because I haven't done it
Anthony: let me tell you my experience real quick okay so when chris took me out and he says we're gonna be using lights I got I got angry I was like we're not gonna see anything we're just gonna be flashing these dogs and these dogs are gonna run right that's what I would think we go out there and I wanna say he's using I can't remember the name of the brand but he's using a headlamp and he has his own tripod set up that he uses with his camera and everything he likes to get video and we're calling and we're scanning I i got a helmet set up here I'm running dual thermals on my helmet so I'm big I'm i'm picking up heat out to five six hundred yards with this setup so I think I can tell you if a coyote or a pig or anything like that is out there so I'm scanning with my helmet but chris is just scanning with his head with the lamp and it's real damn and I'm like what and next thing you know they spotted two coyotes way before I did no kidding yeah and I couldn't believe it I looked over and I was like wow there is two coyotes coming in right here they were able to they were able to catch the eyes they were able to catch the eyes of these dogs and then once the dogs come in everybody has a different technique of calling okay and using lights but when they got the dogs in they got the big lights fired up and then slowly started working these dogs these lights are camouflaged if if these animals have never been hit with light before they will come to it and it just doesn't even even experience it myself it still doesn't make sense because these are the ultimate predator at night right like they they night hunt coyotes they love to hunt at night and you're putting this light on them and if they don't run they don't spook from this light they're going to commit and they're coming right into this light and we got a coyote 15 20 yards in front of us just standing there even bobcats we've called in bobcats like this I have personally seen it with a pure white light and worse there's five four or five guys standing behind this light and the coyote has no idea
Brad: if if anybody like me I've deer hunted a bunch and I i see coyotes all the time and they're very spooked like they spook really easy right like what you're saying is not compute because I i have tried to shoot a number of coyotes from the stand and they're so aware that you would think anything like this would just send them running and it's like it seems very counter-intuitive props to whoever figured this out
Anthony: it's been going on for decades it's nothing new and the the old school guys are still doing it this way they might incorporate the thermals with it now but some of them are still using the lights and once you've mastered it and I don't think there's one guy better than the other but once you mastered it yourself you're going to continue to do it and it's and it's an addiction like no other I haven't mastered it and I'm not doing it but once I get used to doing it all the time I think I wouldn't I would not mind calling in coyote or predators at night with a light because I've seen it firsthand it's unbelievable
Brad: it is unbelievable man let's talk a little bit about the bait I don't know if you guys are baiting at all but what you know about like how how do you attract county with a bait what's the process what do you know
Anthony: we don't bait okay and I i do but the guys that that I predator hunt with they don't bake they just look at an area that is promising or they've seen dogs during the day or have even scouted and they'll go in there and just straight call now as far as baiting there's been plenty of times where on the ranch we've had some coyotes that just been eluding us you know we can't get them in range we can't get them to come into the call I'll shoot a pig and I'll shoot that pig I'll shoot a pig now I'll try to shoot a few of them and I'll pile the pigs up one pig you'll be you'll be lucky to get two day a two-night hunt out of one pig but if you pile up a few of them you can usually pick off a few coyotes in a week we did this recently and I killed I killed three coyotes in three nights on the same gut pile and it's the easiest way for me here I'm sure everybody else has a different way of doing it but the pigs are the easiest and the cheapest
Brad: yeah you guys got an abundance of those
Anthony: yeah we got plenty of pigs
Brad: dude one thing we wanted to ask you about I think I told you that our team kind of looks at what people are looking for and a lot of people are researching hunting without a call for coyotes it sounds like you guys are pretty much always calling but that can get tricky right because I know coyotes are really they're really perceptive and they can pick up on that quickly right to the two-part question do you ever hunt without a call and then let's kind of lead into how you're calling too
Anthony: okay so the only reason I don't use a call is because of the night gear so I would be honest with you half the coyotes that I killed this year if not more than half were spotted with thermal with night vision and I will spot them they're busy doing something they might be laying down just the the double that I came up on recently were playing in the middle of a pasture they would just chasing tail you know just playing with each other and I was able to get within 100 yards of them and smoke one of them so that's the only way I'm getting away with it is with the gear that I have
Brad: so you're not calling because they're not aware but you're close enough to where you can get a shot
Anthony: I'm close enough yeah every I play the wind I play the wind I see them they're busy they're not going anywhere I get within range shut up and boom I take my shot
Brad: nice when you do call what's your call system and what's your go-to call
Anthony: you know there is a I want to say this guy does strictly duck calls I think he's out of colorado but it's called the crack predator call and it is hands down one of my favorite little hand wood calls I carry it everywhere there are some other ones that I have a mini blaster I do anything cotton tail related we are covered up in cottontails here and I try to stick with what's in in my area you see what I'm saying like the natural the natural prey in the area right and it's cotton tail
Brad: that's a pretty versatile one though you and I are you know ken talking about how this is gonna vary region to region but I feel like that's one that is going to be I mean obviously yeah yeah it's yeah it's a pretty good one too I've called them in with that I i am not an experienced coyote hunter but but I've called them in I with a cottontail call as well I mean I'm in kentucky I feel like that throughout the southeast like that's going to be a pretty pretty stable go-to you've kind of talked about taking doubles what's your strategy on on taking multiples because again they are really perceptive like what happens when you shoot that first one what's that like how do you how do you double stack
Anthony: it's patience that's all I can tell you and it's patience so many people are like oh you got to have an ar or you gotta hurry up and get that next shot off no it's patience it's it rarely happens for me but it's not easy you know we we make it look easy sometimes but that first shot so let's just say for we'll use this as an example so we got two coyotes one is 80 yards away from me and another one is 150 yards I'm going for 150 first I'm going for the furthest dog away first that way my odds are going to be a little bit better with the dog that's closest to me and then you got to track him while he's running because more than likely he's not going to stop after that first shot so you got to get that running shot or just be patient and hope you can almost tell with their body language when they're running off they're fixing a stopping look back and that's going to be their biggest mistake and that's when you're going to get that dog
Brad: yeah when they kind of slow down
Anthony: yeah usually they slow down and look back try to figure out what happened to their buddy you know or they're just they're just gonna keep on running you just gotta hope you can just pull off that perfect shot on the run nice it's tough what
Brad: what's your let's talk a little bit about your hunting rig and your rifle set up I mean you're taking some long shots you're you're working at night wow what's your go-to gun
Anthony: you know I I'm a little different you know there's a lot of predator hunters out there that have specific calibers you know 243 22-250 some guys are still using the 223 on dogs and cats I got to go a little bit bigger because majority of my hunting is pig hunting and so the my go-to caliber with my bolt action especially is six five creedmoor it's six five three more and I'm i'm throwing 122 so I'm not throwing anything really heavy I'm throwing 122's
Brad: okay and then what's your let's talk about your glass set up a little bit and i'd like to hear how this varies if you're doing any day hunting in too so if you've got a night set up we'll go back through this again one more time let's i'd like to hear a little bit more about how you're using your helmet too can we walk through the combination of your hunting
Anthony: yeah I got I got the rifle here in the helmet yeah let's see it man yeah whatever you want to do let's let's see it okay so I got I got two different options this is a team wendy helmet and I got ear pro on it I have a battery pack here in the rear there's a battery pack that goes into this pocket here that battery pack powers my thermals these are ira mh25s and I'll fold them down real quick they're spread out but these these are thermal so you know it there's only a handful of us running these in the united states there's not many guys doing this but
Brad: that looks hardcore
Anthony: it's unbelievable it's unbelievable but you'd be amazed at how this is gaining popularity right now but so I drive and I scan with these and as soon as I see pigs and coyotes it's game over I mean I've already spotted them on the fly there's no stopping and looking around there's no driving around making like literally I am catching everything as I go so yeah this this is my helmet set up what are you doing
Brad: what are you moving around on you said you're driving
Anthony: side by side are you yeah I'm i'm scouting all the properties with a side by side I'll tow it to whatever ranch I'm hunting I'll unload the side by side it's a can-am defender hd10 and no windshield because the thermal doesn't go through glass so when I'm driving around there's no doors no glass and we're just scanning 360 degrees
Brad: that's funny man I asked tim kennedy about this he was on the show a few weeks ago and we were talking about hog hunting and he he said he likes to go out on a golf cart because it's totally silent and I was like about that but that's smart yeah
Anthony: yeah it's quiet the only downside is if you're hog hunting you ain't hauling nothing with that golf cart no no you're not hauling out with that golf cart
Brad: and I don't imagine you're doing too much elevation climb which I guess a lot of them
Anthony: which way to go and I'm glad I went with a side by side
Brad: yeah what so on your back to your firearm real quick if you're in the daytime what's your what's your scope set up yeah what do you got there tell us a little bit more about this
Anthony: all right so this rifle this is an 18-inch 6.5 creedmoor and we got a dead air ti suppressor here and it's got a hearty carbon barrel 18 inch we got a badger efr rail here on the front with the pec 15. and I'll talk about why I have that on here we got a manners mcs stock mini chassis short action 6'5 creedmoor we got an adm recon mount with a vortex razor this is a four and a half to twenty seven usually I run the three to eighteen but I've been I've been wanting to go for some long shots at night so I was like I'll put a bigger scope on it so we got a four and a half to 27 razor on here right now with the trimmer trimmer three reticle
Brad: what was that what did you say you wanted to circle back to in a second
Anthony: I can't remember what I was talking about oh back to the pec 15. yeah so okay you know some people are like I know the folks that follow me on social media they see me go back and forth with this rig and usually I have a thermal mounted on this bolt gun but the downside to running just your main thermal as a main rig is it's dedicated strictly for night and I really like shooting this rifle so it was just strictly a night rig and I wasn't happy with that so I went back over to a day optic and then whenever I do want to hunt with it at night I can spot with my helmet and clip on pvs 26 or pvs 30 night vision right in front of my day optic right in front of my day optic it's a lot it's a lot harder to go long range with thermal at nighttime okay it's hard okay it's it's it seems like everything's crystal clear and nice because we got these animals 50 to 100 yards in front of us but once you start getting around that 250 to 300 yard mark it's really hard to pinpoint where you want your reticle you see what I'm saying yeah and with the day optic I'm able to do any type of turret adjustments if I have to go up for elevation and the clarity is a little bit better with your day optic
Brad: also interesting to me that you're choosing to hunt with the bolt action are you doing that across the dogs and and the pigs it sounds like
Anthony: oh yeah yeah yeah religiously
Brad: talk about the choice to do that because some guys feel like they need you know to opt for you know a larger larger more shots basically I think is where a lot of the rationale is
Anthony: they feel yeah they feel like they have to have that semi-automatic I got a ton of ars yeah hey every if you follow me on social media you know I love ars but they're I get sloppy when I get on an ar and
Brad: because you know because you know that you can take that shot
Anthony: you know you've got 20 or 30 rounds to go that's advice that you can apply to anything you hunt whether it's doves or whatever yeah that's why anything same thing with waterfowl duck hunting yeah a pump and a semi-automatic it's just two totally different animals totally man and I and I respect anybody if you don't want to hunt with the bolt I don't care you know if you want to shoot with a semi-automatic that's fine I more power to you but I've already proven I already showed the videos and I'm way more efficient with the boat gun I've came up I've come up on five and I smoked all five pigs with the bolton I come up on that same five with the semi-automatic and I might get two or three right it is it's it's it's hard to even I don't even know how to
Brad: that's where I was going with this that's kind of where I figured you were going to go and I hoped you were going to go with it because dove hunting I'm the same way I you know I like I got a benelli pump and I do better with that knowing that you know it feels like my shots count more you know I'm just yeah otherwise I'm just going to go through shells like crazy yeah you're
Anthony: just gonna dump it you're just gonna dump it yeah
Brad: I'm not for some guys it works like I've got a buddy shoots a semi-auto and he's amazing and it just it's not my thing though I i like that you know I'm kind of with you on it anything any of you parts of your gear that I didn't ask you about that you're like man this is critical to my setup is there anything we didn't mention it for for coyote hunting
Anthony: you know I this is this is new to me right now I've had experience with them in the past but it's this piece right here

this is a game changer guys this is a game changer you know shooting unsuppressed versus suppress these I there was a night I had an issue I had a technical issue with my thermal one night and I lost everything zero was completely wiped out everything was wiped out I didn't know so this happened I shot at a coyote four times he had no idea what was going on yeah because because it he can only hear it landing near him right and he was looking back at him the coyote was looking back like what was that and he look over and then finally I was like all right something's something's wrong right and I said you take him and he we ended up killing that coyote but one shot without a suppressor that dog would have been gone for sure that dog would have been gone and what's nice is that the there's no pressure in that area you see what I'm saying so I i shot surprise that coyotes down we could go back probably the next day right and the next pasture are over and probably call another one
Brad: yeah dude this is this is something that the the anti-hunting community does not understand they're so anti-suppressors in general for firearms and they don't understand why this to me it's more ethical in a lot of ways too you know once you spook an animal if you try again you know it's moving it's more alert it just the whole thing changes and to me having a suppressor make for so many reasons I mean you're hearing so many there's a lot of reasons to do it did you you may have said this which suppressor are you using
Anthony: this right here is the dead air nomad ti it's wrapped but this is the titanium it's a lot lighter but this is the dead air ti awesome lots of choices out there with suppressors
Brad: yeah plenty man this is awesome I i learned a lot from you in this quick quick interview here I appreciate you coming on to talk about it today dude where can people find you because I know you do create a lot of content and and you know there's more to be learned from you where can people find you on social media
Anthony: you can find me at A.Amateen it's A m a n t I n e or just type in t x killer and you will see me on instagram or on youtube that's usually where I put all my content
Brad: alright we'll put links to that in the show notes too Anthony man thanks for coming on dude this was great
Anthony: anytime Brad I appreciate you man all right you guys take it easy see you later
Brad: thank you Anthony for taking the time to talk about some of your gear I really appreciate you coming on the show man all the gear that Anthony talked about is linked to in the show notes if you buy any of that gear we likely make money if we make money we donate a portion of our proceeds into a camp that teaches kids to hunt fish hike camp shoot all that good stuff that camp is raise em outdoors you can check it out it's awesome I am a firm believer in raise em outdoors mission I'm involved in this camp go wild is a huge supporter and you can be a supporter too by shopping through the links in the show notes please make sure you subscribe we have some awesome content coming out you guys may think we've hit some big names lately there are so many more coming I have so many great shows some of these shows are going to blow your mind like next weeks I invite you to log this show on GoWild if you're not a member on GoWild it is an awesome community to talk about whatever you're into in the outdoors you can log this show by hitting the plus sign hit log time outdoor podcast Gearbox Talk will be right there up top you can pick the show that you listen to and you can tag me tell me what you thought of the show maybe hated the show which is kind of interesting that you'd still be here listening to every word if you hated it but you can tell me what you thought about it you can tell me about other guests that you would like to have on we love that you can also drop those comments in the youtube channel I really like hearing back from you all I read through all the comments on youtube I read through all the comments that you log on GoWild I search for that show every now and then give it a good look make sure I'm not missing anything tag me on GoWild when you log time that's it for me today though I'm out