The wind couldn’t have been blowing more than 5 mph out of the SE and the sun was shining brightly. There was a lot of oilfield noise even though I was over a mile from the highway. I parked the pickup at about 2:00 p.m. and as I was walking to where I wanted to call, I noticed someone else had walked the same path. I probably should have gone back to the pickup and moved to a different spot, but the tracks looked to be four or five days old and I thought it would be a good challenge to try to call a coyote where someone else might have called one in earlier. After nearly 30 minutes of calling, nothing had come in so I bagged it and got back to the pickup around 3:00.
I left that spot at 3:07 and drove back to the main road and then turned south towards the rancher’s place. There was a pipeline that had been laid this fall and I turned off on the right-of-way and drove east about a quarter mile in a stubble field and parked the pickup. I left the pickup at 3:19 p.m., walked in about a half mile and set up in the shadow of a hill with a nice little juniper bush as a back rest. There were some pieces of heavy equipment I could hear busily constructing a drilling pad over a mile to the south and it sure was noisy. I hung the FX5 on a fencepost overlooking a real nice long wooded draw that had several finger draws. Here’s a wide angle shot from where I was sitting and looking to the ESE.
Here’s a close-up of the FX5 e-caller hanging on the fence post.
Forty minutes of calling produced absolutely nothing. On my walk back out, I heard a coyote howling to the SSE that sounded like it was coming from east of the rancher’s yard.
I got back to the pickup at 4:20 p.m. and headed to the rancher’s yard. I drove east of his yard and parked near some farm machinery well out of view of where I planned to set up and call. I got out and started walking at about 4:32 p.m. As I was walking the heavy equipment to the south was really, really loud. I walked in about 3/4 of a mile to the ENE and used jackrabbit distress, group howling, female invitations sounds, etc. for about 35 minutes. I did manage to call in two magpies, but nothing else.
I got back to the pickup at 5:34, started driving back home at 5:39 and was parked in the garage by 5:56 p.m.When I got into the house I found out that my wife had made supper consisting of fried potatoes and roasted pork ribs, whole wheat bread, and we also had beet pickles and fresh baby carrots. I was hungry after all the hiking I did and the fresh air I got to breathe in. Life is good even though all I called in was two lousy magpies!!!