We drove further north and while driving on a low maintenance road and my partner thought he spotted a coyote lying out in the stubble on the south side of a slough, but he wasn’t sure. I saw a dark shape out in the stubble but it was only a tumble weed. When I told my partner where I was looking he said I was looking too far north in the field. We just kept on driving another half mile and turned around and drove back by that area. The shape Dan saw was gone, so we surmised it was a coyote. Since the wind was out of the SSW, ideally, we needed to get to the north side of where we saw this coyote, but there weren’t any roads up north of the spot we saw the coyote. Since it is deer gun season it is illegal to drive anywhere except on established roads and trails. Since we could not find a way to get to the north of the coyote and the land to the east of where we saw the coyote was posted, we finally came at the area from the west and parked the pickup behind a hill west of where the coyote had been laying.
We spotted the coyote east about a half mile from where it had been earlier. It was out in the stubble mousing. We sneaked along the old trail and got set up to try to call the coyote and by the time we got close to where we were going to set up to call, we could no longer see the coyote out in the stubble field. The wind was not our friend on this stand because we thought the coyote might come to the call, but it would most likely circle around to the northwest to try to catch our scent. I said I would do the calling so my partner walked downwind from me out to the north a couple hundred yards and got into a place where he could see to the north. I could not see that area from my position. We were hoping that the coyote would come in and present Dan a chance to get a shot off before it got our scent. I used my old Tally Ho open reed call and in a few minutes my partner spotted the coyote coming in real nice, but it was quartering to the NW and still a couple hundred yards from my partner’s position. Before my partner could bark to get the coyote stopped, it must have caught our scent cone because he said it swapped ends and was headed back out to the NNE at a pretty fast pace. My partner didn’t fire a shot because he thought the coyote would stop and look back, but that didn’t happen. No shots were fired. We knew our setup wasn’t the best and the coyote won this time.
We headed further north and parked at an oil well site that was near a big Waterfowl Production Area and walked in to the east and my partner used his Tally-Ho for the first 15 minutes to do the calling. He managed to call in a nice hawk and some hunters scared up a little doe that ran by us too. No coyote came to his inviting dying rabbit sounds. At about the 15 minute mark, he used his Bill Austin howler a bit, but there were no answering howls. We left after 25 minutes on the stand. We did have lots of deer hunters shooting to the north of us. We both wore the bright hunter orange on our heads and I had my hunter orange vest on too.
It was about 12:30 p.m. when we got back to the pickup, so we drove until we found a spot where we could use our binoculars and glass the surrounding area while we ate lunch. We spotted some deer hunters out walking and saw lots of ATV tracks in the pastures and stubble fields. After lunch, we headed south to call in a couple spots we spotted on our drive north and both of us thought these areas might produce a coyote or two. We set up near another Waterfowl Production Area and I used the FOXPRO on this stand. Another dry stand.
We headed further south and parked the pickup behind a hill by a stack of little rectangular hay bales and walked in to the west. We could see a snowmobile out in the pasture about 3/4 mile SW of where we were. There were deer out in the pasture browsing but they didn’t appear to be afraid of the snowmobile. I got busy trying to get the FOXPRO fastened to a fence post. While I was doing that, my partner said he saw an ATV way out to the SW and some deer were running way out ahead of it. He said there was also a coyote running in front of the deer! The last time he saw the coyote it was about 500 yards to the SW of our position. I didn’t know about that until we finished this stand. Anyway, I got into position about 50 yards north of the FOXPRO and started playing the Lightening Jack sound.
I like to start out with the volume down fairly low, like at about 12 to 15 on the scale that goes from 0 on up to 40. I ran it there for about 2 minutes on low volume, and then muted it. After about a minute I cranked the volume up to 20 for a couple minutes and muted it. A minute of silence and then I turned the volume up to 25 for a couple minutes and muted the caller again. I cranked the volume up to 35 and started the caller and as I scanned the horizon to the south and kept turning my head to the west, I spotted a coyote standing on the hillside to the west of me about 300 yards away. I immediately muted the caller and hit my preset for the Goldfinch distress sound. The coyote listened for a bit and then headed down the hill towards my stand. My rifle barrel was pointed to the SSW, so I slowly moved my rifle barrel over to the west and got my eye to the scope and the coyote in the crosshairs. The coyote was about 130 yards away when it stopped and presented a nice frontal shot. I pondered whether I should let the coyote come on in closer and risk not being able to stop it for a stationery shot or hammer it where it was. I got the crosshairs lined up on the middle of her chest and squeezed the trigger. The 30 gr. BTHP Kindler Gold bullet hit the coyote and down it went. I was surprised when it got up! I began making wounded coyote sounds with my Bill Austin howler while the coyote did about four or five death spins and fell down only to get back up spin a couple more times and then she started to walk slowly up the hill going away from me. My hunting partner thought the coyote was going to get away, so he fired a shot with a 52 gr. BTHP Sierra out of his M77 Ruger in .22-250 and hit the coyote. It went down, but was able to keep its head up and was looking our way. I put my coyote howler down, cranked my scope up to 18 power and put the finishing shot into the coyote. My first shot hit a bit right of where I intended to hit her and hit the inside of her left shoulder bone, deflected a bit to the right and exited behind the left front elbow. Not an immediate killing shot like I prefer to make.
We walked over to the coyote and discovered it was a female. It was probably born in the spring of 2009. It had a nice coat and wasn’t shot up too bad.
The rifle I was using is my .17 Tactical. It is built on a blueprinted Remington 700 BDL action and sits in an H-S Precision thumbhole stock that I camo painted myself. It has a stainless steel Lilja Remington Varmint Contour barrel with a 1 in 9 twist and 4 grooves. I have a Sightron II 6.5-20x50mm side focus scope on this rifle with the fine duplex reticle.
Here’s the hero photo with me on the left and my hunting partner on the right.
It was close to 4:00 p.m. so we started heading back towards Williston. There was a nice little side road heading out to the east of the main road that we decided to check out, but when we turned to go on the road, there were NO HUNTING signs on both sides of the road. Just then we looked off to the stubble field to the SE and there was a coyote running away through the stubble. Since it was posted, we decided to give that coyote a pass. We continued our journey south.
We got to some land that is posted NO HUNTING, but we have permission to hunt there so we set up with my partner setting up on a little knoll to the west of me watching to the north, west and south and I set up so I could watch to the south, east and north sides. My partner was doing the calling with his Tally-Ho to start the stand and after about 10 minutes into the stand we could hear some coyotes howling and at the 12 minute mark he started using his Bill Austin howler. There were coyotes howling all around us, but nothing seemed to be coming in. About 22 minutes into the stand I started using my Bill Austin howler. At about the 25 minute mark, I heard my partner shoot. I cranked my neck around to see if I could see anything and I spotted a coyote running south away and heading straight south. I got my rifle turned around and got the scope on it and put my Bill Austin howler in my mouth and started my imitation of a wounded coyote to see if I could get it to stop. The coyote stopped and my partner shot again. I could see the coyote jump about three feet in the air and heard the bullet hit the coyote. The coyote stumbled a bit, but did not go down; it kept running and I finally flung a shot at it and missed as it disappeared into a little slough.
My partner took off after the coyote as the sun was setting to see if it was mortally wounded. He did find blood sign, but never caught up to the coyote. This coyote had come in from the WSW, but hung up about 250 yards away. My partner figured it wasn’t coming any closer so he took a shot and missed only to hit it when it stopped about 300 to 325 yards away to look back.
We walked back to the pickup and started for home. When we got off the muddy trail and onto the main gravel road, a coyote tried to cross the road in front of us, but decided to turn and go back down into the ditch it came out of. I’m sure this was one of the many coyotes we had heard howling on our previous calling stand. Like I mentioned, we heard lots of coyotes howling in this area, so we’ll probably go back there again when deer gun season is over. The temperature never got much above 30 degrees and the wind probably hit 5 mph once in awhile. There were some wispy clouds, but all-in-all, it was a very pleasant day to be out hunting. We saw a total of 5 coyotes today; called at 6 different spots; called in 3 coyotes, took shots at two of them, and only laid one on the ground. Not real productive, but we had a lot of fun!!
