We drove back to the main road and headed one mile north and then took another minimum maintenance road to the west about a half mile. We parked my pickup behind a hill and carefully walked down the road to the west to find a calling spot. My partner set up in on a rocky knoll and I set up downwind from him about 75 yards. He called for about 8 minutes using a Tally-Ho and then switched to the Bill Austin Howler. We never heard any answering howls, but we did have a group of three grouse that came from the west and sat no more that 15 yards from where my partner laid. They settled down and didn’t seem bothered by the howling.
After about 18 to 20 minutes we decided to hang it up and move out. I was slowly walking back toward the pickup when my partner signaled me that he spotted something. It was a coyote way out to the south of us coming our way from the area of the corral we had planned on calling from!!! Since the wind was from the NNE and the coyote was approaching from the SSW, it caught our scent cone long before it came within rifle range and ran off to the SW.
We got back on the road and headed north. There was a lot of snow on the country roads and many of them were plugged tight. We drove about 10 miles NE of where we had been and decided to make another stand. We walked in to the north and set up just over the crest of a snow-covered hill. My partner used the same calls on this stand and all we got was cold fingers. We decided to head for the same place we had seen 5 coyotes back on November 12 and we had each bagged one coyote there that time. We walked in about 700 yards off the road and set up pretty much the same way we had back on November 12. My partner was to the downwind side and I used my FX5 FOXPRO upwind from him about 150 yards. There was a hill between the two of us just like last time.
I started out with the Lightening Jack sound and after 10 minutes nothing had shown up. Here’s a time when we should have had the walkie-talkies so we could communicate as I’ll relate to you in a bit. Anyway, I switched to my Coyote Locator sound—lots of coyote voices babbling and then trailing off. It is a very good sound. I let it play one sound loop, which is about 40 seconds long and then muted the caller for about a minute or so. I started the caller again and stopped it after one 40 second loop. I thought I could hear coyotes howling and barking, but the sound was coming from way out to the south. I used my Bill Austin howler to make some wounded coyote sounds for about a minutes, threw in some more Lightening Jack sounds, and then I mixed in some female invitation howls. I could hear the barking sounds again, but very faintly. About 25 minutes into the stand, I spotted a red fox waaaay out to the south of where I was set up—maybe 3/4 of a mile away. It wasn’t coming in. It meandered off to the east of where I first spotted it. I called for a few more minutes and then signaled my partner that I was done calling. When we got together on our walk back, he told me that during the first 10 minutes of the stand a red fox came in towards us at a pretty rapid pace, but when I hit the howling sounds, it ran a couple hundred yards away, but stopped. When I started doing the wounded coyote sounds and Lightening Jack sounds, he said the fox started coming back in again and then when I howled, the fox started moving away. All of this is going on completely out of my line of sight (walkie-talkie time!!). He said the fox came to within about 100 yards of where he was set up, but he gave the fox a free pass. There aren’t many red fox left in this area since the coyotes moved in.
We walked back to the pickup and headed to the NE and found a nice spot on the road where we could sit and eat lunch and glass the surrounding area. I shouldn’t say “where WE could glass the surrounding area,” since I forgot my binoculars at home. My partner’s binoculars are almost a total disaster. You can’t get both lenses to focus at the same time!!! However, he was able to spot some coyotes using those worthless things!!! We talked about the "good old days" back in the 1970s and 1980s when you could sit on a good vantage point like we were at and maybe spot two or three red fox lying up out of the wind.
We finished lunch and discussed where we should head next. We headed several miles west and then north. There are very few inhabited farmsteads in this area and it was tough going on some of the roads. We had a snowstorm on Tuesday, February 17 and it blocked many of the roads up there. We stopped a ways away from one of the spots we were going to call at and as we stopped we spotted a coyote about 1/2 mile to the NW of us running away to the west. We watched it as it disappeared over the horizon to the west. When that coyote disappeared my partner glassed the big low area to the north and northwest. He saw a dark, round shape on the downwind side of a very tall mound, but with the poor quality binoculars he thought the snow had melted off of a dark rock. I took a look through his binoculars and I couldn’t tell what it was either. We both agreed it was a rock.
Just to the east of us was some rolling hills with some nice sloughs interspersed in the cropland. We had never called this particular spot before, but had spotted coyotes in the area on several occasions. We parked the pickup and walked in to the east and spotted a rock pile that looked like a good place to set up. We were about 50 yards from the rock pile and trying to walk very quietly on the crusty snow when I spotted a coyote lying on a snow drift on the south side of a willow bush. I lip squeaked softly at my partner to let him know the coyote was there, but by that time he had spotted it and was signaling me to get down. The coyote’s head was facing away from us, but with the noise we were making in the crunchy snow we decided we didn’t have a chance of making it to the rock pile. I told my partner to get into prone position and take a shot at it. When he went prone, all he could see was the top of the coyote’s head. I was at a little higher elevation than my partner and I could see about half the coyote. It was facing our way now and I was sure it had us spotted. I slowly got to my knees and put my rifle on my shooting sticks trying to get steadied up for a shot, but the coyote decided to get out of there. It headed to the east at a pretty fast clip and got to about 400-500 yards away before we could bark it to a stop. I flung a shot at it, but missed. I couldn’t see where the bullet hit. There was about a 15 mph wind blowing at about a 30º left-to-right angle, but since I didn’t know the exact distance my shot was just a pray and shoot type shot. So, no fur on this walk.
We got back to the pickup and drove another half mile north to another farmstead, parked the pickup. My partner took another look at the dark lump on the tall mound and was convinced it was still a rock. We walked about 1/2 mile to the north along a two-track trail. There was some CRP on the west side of the road and a fence line on the east side. I hung the FX5 FOXPRO on a fence post about 50 yards north of where I set up with a fencepost for a backrest. My partner was up the hill about 50 yards to the south of me. I got my shooting sticks set up and started the caller on the Lightening Jack sound on about volume level 15. It didn’t sound very loud to me, so I hit the volume control and took it up to about 20. I scanned the area looking from the NE and continuing scanning around to the left until I was looking to the SW. I started tuning my head slowly to look to the NE, but when I got to the tall mound that had the black rock on it, THERE WAS NO BLACK ROCK THERE!!!! I squinted and finally spotted the black rock was a coyote and it was about 20 yards east of the base of that tall mound, headed our way at a pretty steady pace. I turned the volume level down to about 15 and then turned the caller off. The coyote kept coming and finally stopped about 400 yards away. I hit the mute button to turn the caller back on and the coyote immediately started coming in again. It almost looked like it was leaping for joy as it trotted merrily along towards us. I muted the caller again and got my eye up to the scope and began tracking the coyote in the scope. It stopped once at about 200 yards away, but soon started coming in again. I had some weeds between me and the coyote, but they wouldn’t be I the line of fire unless I let the coyote get too close. I had the scope cranked up to 8 power and continued to watch. It was now about 125 yards away. I figured the next time it stopped, I’d better be ready to take the shot or the weeds would get in the way of the bullet. The coyote stopped at about 100 yards away and appeared to be looking right at me. I gently squeezed the trigger on my .17 Tactical rifle and put a 30 gr. BTHP Gold bullet right between the two front shoulders. It crumpled up like a wet rag—DRT!!! I got my Bill Austin howler out and started doing my wounded coyote yelp (I glanced at my watch and only 5 minutes had elapsed since I started the e-caller). I kept up the yelping for several minutes, but couldn’t see anything else moving out there. I turned on the Lightening Jack sound again and called for another 7 or 8 minutes, but there were no more coyotes we could see.
I wanted to take a few photos, so I got my camera out and snapped one right from where I was sitting when I took the shot. The black arrow is pointing to the coyote:
My hunting partner walked over and got my FOXPRO off the fencepost and brought it to my calling spot. I got up off my duff and we decided to go out and check the condition of the coyote. My partner led the way, but when we got off the two-track and out into the CRP, he broke through the 3 or 4 inch crust and when his foot hit the ground we discovered that the depth of the ice and snow was about 15 to 18 inches deep. It was very tough going because you’d put one foot up on top of the snow and shift your weight to that foot and you’d break through the crust, sometimes losing your balance a bit. All I had to do was put my feet in my partner's tracks, so I had fairly easy going, but there were a couple places where he stayed on top of the ice crust, but when I followed behind, I fell through! We finally made it to the coyote. She had a very nice light colored belly and silky dark guard hairs on her back. She looked to be two or three years old and it top shape.
Here’s a photo of the coyote and my .17 Tactical rifle that was built on a Remington 700 ADL action and sits in an old H-S Precision tactical thumbhole stock with the aluminum bedding block. The barrel is a 25 inch 1 in 9 twist 4 groove SS Lilja varmint contour barrel. The black arrow is pointing to the tall mound where the dark rock turned into a coyote and came into my calling!!!
We couldn’t even see the entrance wound and there was no exit wound. Her left front shoulder appeared to have been broken though and swung freely. I am going to have to check the point of impact on a paper target one of these days!!! The next photo was taken from behind the coyote and looking back up to the fencepost I was sitting in front of. Both my partner and I were pretty well sky lined, but fortunately the coyote didn’t seem to be alarmed. When we looked at how dark the coyote's back fur was, we could see why it looked like a black rock when we saw it out on the side of that tall dirt mound covered with snow.
We walked back to the pickup and drove to the east to the highway and then headed south to the next road heading back west for about 3 miles. We have spot there on the north side of the road where we can get up on top of a rock pile and call out to the north where there are several sloughs that are surrounded by willows that provide excellent cover and shelter for coyotes to lie up in and rest during the day. The wind was blowing a bit harder now and the temperature had dropped from 0º down to 2º below zero even though the sun had come out. Mighty cold weather, especially when you are facing right into the wind. There were no coyotes that showed up here.
We have another spot where we have called in maybe a dozen or more coyote over the years, so we headed for that area. We walked in to the east off the road about 300 yards and I called with my Tally-Ho. After about 8 minutes on the Tally-Ho I decided to get out my Bill Austin howler and do some howling. To my dismay, I could not find my howler. I must have lost it at the site where I shot the coyote. That was my last Bill Austin Howler and old Bill has passed away and I don’t think they make the Bill Austin Howler exactly the way old Bill did. These howlers I had were purchased right from Bill Austin. I ordered a new one online from some other company, so I’ll see if they are the same or not. Anyway, I took out another howler I carry along and did some howling. After about 15 minutes I signaled my partner that nothing was coming and he didn’t answer, so I kept on calling. About 18 minutes into the stand, he came creeping over the hill towards me and signaled there was a critter coming in. I kept calling with the Talley-Ho. Then I spotted what I thought might be a coyote on the downwind side of us and on the other side of the road. I watched it disappear to the south and heading away from us. I put the scope on it and it was another red fox.
We did some more driving trying to find a good place to call and ran into more roads that were plugged with snow. Finally, my partner spotted two coyotes lying up on a snow drift on the south side of some thick bushes. One of them got up and headed away to the north, but the other one stayed put. We drove around to the east side of where they were and had to bust through some long, deep snow drifts to get to where we were going. I think we probably disturbed the remaining coyote enough so that one headed away from the area too. We couldn’t find a place to call from on the east side of where we saw them, so we drove back around to the west and found a stack of hay bales we could lay up in and call from. This was about 3/4 of a mile to west of where those coyotes were first spotted. My partner started out with the Talley-Ho and at about 5 minutes into the stand I spotted movement off to the ESE of me. I signaled my partner we had one coming in and when I looked back at the critter, it was another red fox!!! My partner did the rodent sound by sucking on the back of his hand and before too long the red fox was about 40 yards from where I was. It stopped and looked and then started circling a little more to the south and west. When it finally hit our scent cone it spun left about 100º and ran to the SSE at Mach 4. We both got our howlers out and tried to get those coyotes to come in, but nothing showed up.
This was our last stand of the day. We walked back to the pickup and started driving away and my partner looked out to the west and spotted another coyote about 1/2 mile out moving out fairly fast, so we forgot about trying to call that one. It was now 5º below zero!!! We headed back towards the highway and when we drove by the spot where we had set up in a rock pile and called into some sloughs surrounded by willows we spotted a coyote running to the north right alongside the rock pile we had been calling from a couple hours earlier!!! While it was miserably cold and windy day, we still had a good time. We had called in two coyotes, but only one of those came in close enough to shoot. We had also called in 3 fox and possibly spotted one other one. We scared up one coyote that I took a 400-500 yard shot at and spotted 5 other coyotes. So for the day we saw 8 coyotes and 3 or 4 fox. It was one of those days where we were often on the wrong side of the coyotes and there was no way to get around to the downwind side because of the lack of roads or because the roads were plugged with snow. I guess this contrary luck is just part of coyote hunting and while it is somewhat discouraging, it never wipes out our entusiasm for getting back out and trying to call coyotes the next time. I apologize for not including the usual “hero photo”—maybe next time!!
It still sounds like a bunch of work--editing the stories, trying to find a publisher, etc., etc. I did write textbooks that were published and sold, but I don't know about this predator hunting story business. I'll have to sleep on it for awhile.