Mehul, I lived for a time in St Charles, IL and I know you have yotes around there and elsewhere throughout IL. Flatland farm country yotes get pretty big, substantially bigger than the things we have here.

I'm no expert, as anymore I mostly kill them just for sport and the warm fuzzy feeling I get from knocking off a predator. But we do hunt them and I have shot them in Kentucky, Washington and here in Idaho.

Here's pretty much what I know:

Prime pelt season varies. Make sure to ask your furrier when he quits taking them. Of course, if you are giving him pelts for your own coat you can decide what quality/condition you will accept. Here for instance, we cannot sell any local yotes much after the end of December, sometimes they won't take them after mid December due to rubbing and hair damage caused by snow and brush rubbing. Our color pattern is undesireable to the buyers, also.

In open country where coyotes are plentiful and haven't been shot at much, they are amazingly easy to call in. Where there is much hunting pressure and in timber, they can be VERY hard to come in to a call or if they do come in they are very tough to see as they will not break cover.

Don't worry about using a smokepole. I use a shotgun from time to time and depending on the setup, your gun will not be a hindrance at all. In fact, a muzzleloading shotgun {double if legal} would be perfect, as blackpowder shotgun ballistics are no different than modern shotgun ballistics and a shotgun works quite well. Actually, can't you use a regular shotgun there?

Camoflage EVERYTHING. Your gun will stand out. Hand movement will give you away. If you are sitting on the ground, foot movement will blow the deal. Being of Norsk/Irish descent, my face sticks out like a beacon against bare ground, and I wear a mask. In snow conditions, wear white camo. I carry one of my homemade, light, bolo knives and I use that to make "blitz blinds" to call from, same as I do when timber-hunting deer.

WIND, WIND, WIND. Make sure you set up so the area you are calling is not also receiving your wind. Obviously you will have to judge which area is best likely to hold a yote.

Skinning: GO SLOW. Use the knife as little as possible and roll the skin in your fist as you take it off, or better yet, if you can, just bring the yote in to the furrier whole. That's what we do when we sell one, which isn't often anymore. Skin them as soon as you can, preferably in my opinion when they are warm as old yote is a pain in the butt to skin and they take a while.

When everything is right and you start calling {get a DVD for hints...it really isn't that hard...} you will be amazed when you see a coyote come RUNNING HARD into your call. I've hunted with guys who haven't done it before and they get totally flustered and blasted by an adrenaline rush seeing the thing come barreling in.

BUT, don't be too surprised if they outsmart you, too.

A few years ago I was calling in a logging site across the river from my place here, and I called for a time {I call and sit for at least 1/2 hour per spot} and when I got up...get up slowly and LOOK around you as you do as one might have snuck up on you and might be hanging in a tuft of grass or corn stubble}, I looked around and then took my normal circular walk around my spot. There, not 30 yards away was a logging slash pile, and there next to it, gleaming and steaming in the crisp morning air, was a pile of yote scat. The bugger slithered in, spotted me, left his calling card and split!! If that's not an "up yours" I don't know what is!!

Good luck!!

PS: I bet you'll want to mount the first one you kill, "just because".