But I digress. My guess was that the noise from the fact that the power steering fluid was a bit low. I had filled it up and it quit making the noise, but at the same time the temperatures had warmed up to way above zero so I didn’t know if putting fluid in it solved the problem or the warmer weather solved it. Anyway, the service technician told me there was nothing wrong with the power steering pump and it should be good to go. I got back home around 1:30, changed into my hunting clothes, and was headed out of town by 1:54 p.m.
The wind was blowing out of the SW at about 12 mph and the sun was shining brightly. The spot I was going to set up at was impossible to approach without being exposed to the northeast facing hills where I wanted to call to. I sneaked in as best I could and got to a little rise where I could see pretty good to the south, west and northwest. I decided to use mouth calls because I didn’t want to roam around and expose myself to any furry critters anymore than I already had when I walked in. I started out with the Crit’r Call Standard at low volume and did a series of about 10 plaintive wails. I looked out to the west and out about 500 yards I could see something moving in the tall grass. I moved my rifle so I could look at it in the scope and it was a coyote!! No, it wasn’t one coyote, it was two coyotes. They were looking my way, but not moving toward me. I gave them a few more mournful cries on the Crit’r Call, but they weren’t interested. I checked on them with the scope again and now I saw a third coyote about 50 yards west of the first two and it was walking my way. However, when it got to where the first two were at it stopped. I got out one of my high pitched howlers and gave them a couple female invitation howls. They weren’t interested and they started to walk away heading to the northwest. I kept calling and did some pup distress sounds, but that didn’t work either. They walked about 400 yards from where I first spotted them and two of them laid down on the downwind side of a little ridge. The third one laid down so it could see where I was calling from and was out in the wind a bit. The temperature was about 40º, so I’m sure the coyote was comfortable even with a little breeze blowing.
I figured at least one of those coyotes spotted me as I was walking to my calling spot. I was pretty disgusted that I couldn’t find a way to sneak into this area without being seen. I contemplated going back to my pickup, driving all the way back out to the south to the main road and then circling way around to the north and heading back east and then south to try to get back so I was to the northeast of them, but decided against it. I usually don’t have good luck calling coyotes in once I have disturbed them so I’ll come back to this area again and try to call them from the north. As I was walking back to the pickup, the sky clouded up and completely covered up the sun.
I drove east of where I had been calling and walked into an area that has some pretty deep draws. I had heard coyotes howling around here a couple weeks ago and thought I'd take a chance that some of them might be laying up out of the wind in the area. I used an antelope fawn distress sound for about 3 minutes, then I did some female invitation howls with my open reed call, and then mixed in some high-pitched cottontail sounds from Tony Tebbe. I called for 30 minutes and didn’t get any takers.
I had one more spot in this area that I wanted to call. It is a spot that has a real nice stock dam at the bottom of a very deep draw. The draw opens up into a hayfield that has a nice little creek running through it. I set up the FOXPRO at this spot and used a couple of the Tony Tebbe sounds he made available for free. I also mixed in the Randy Anderson coyote locator howling and used my open reed hand call to mix in some of my howling. I stayed on stand for over 30 minutes. The sun was setting and I didn’t think any customers were coming in for lead inoculations from my .17 Tactical so I picked up my FOXPRO and when I saw the sunset again, I decided to snap a couple of photos.
I zoomed in a little bit and snapped this next photo.
I put my camera away and decided to see what was over the ridge on the west side of the fence line you can see in the photos. There were a whole bunch of cattle grazing about 3/4 of a mile to the west and I could see the rib cage of a cow carcass down below me about 200 yards. I decided to try calling for a few minutes. I used my Crit’r Call Standard again, but this time I bit down on the reed way out near the tip and did some very high pitched distress sounds. I threw in some female invitation howls and stayed on stand for about 10 minutes. I got no answering howls and it was getting to the point where I couldn’t see any longer so I quit calling and walked back to the pickup and drove home.
My wife was attending a basketball game so I had to fix supper for myself. I had a bowl of Cheerios and a slice of toast. Not quite as good a meal as my wife had fixed for me last Monday.
