Thought I'd share my latest adventure (coyote hunting).
Now that it's off season, I thought I'd try out coyote hunting. I figured my 6.8 was enough smack.
I looked at electronic game calls and I was like holy crap, $700 for a top of the line Fox Pro. Way more that I wanted to spend. I found an ICOtec unit for $59 and a Mojo Decoy for $29, both on Amazon. Yeah, I know, made in China crap. With my Prime account from work, 2 day shipping was free and 1 day shipping was ~$6. I went with the 1 day shipping. Yep, I'm a cheap azz.
I received them both last Friday afternoon. That evening (night) I took a little walk down to a nearby river and across to the golf course. I had brought the family pets. One old fat black lab and another old mongrel.
I set the call on cottontail in distress. Not more that 45 seconds later the mongrel dog is doing a low growl and looking Eastward. There was a Coyote running in towards the call. The thing was running close to the ground real stealthily. When it was about 30 feet from the call it realized it was punked and it did a U-turn. It ran back towards the tree line and lurked there for a few minutes. I hit it with the flash light and saw two pairs of eyes. Apparently there was a second one that wasn't as brave. They finally disappeared after a few minutes.
I packed up and headed North a quarter of a mile or so and repeated. This time several coyotes rushed the call! They did their U-turn as the other had and disappeared into the trees.
Again, another quarter mile North, I set the call out and turned it on. Less than a minute later there was a pack howling and yapping away behind me. Then another 30 seconds in a pair of coyotes approached from the North and one from the Southwest. By this time the mongrel dog had enough and was all out barking, hair on the back of her coat standing up...
This is all semi-rural, so I left all firearms at home. Hell, I was just checking the call out for the first time...I was like this is going to be cool...
Saturday AM, I packed up and drove to Eastern Washington. My family has cabin over in sagebrush country. Around noon'ish and about 5 miles from the cabin my buddy and I got out and proceeded to check the zero on our rifles. All was good. When we go to the cabin, it needed some serious cleaning. There was years of dust and mice turds.
After a couple hours of cleaning we packed up the rifles, the call and mojo, and some water and snacks and headed toward a likely looking area. We walked about a mile and a half from the cabin and set up the call. The nearest other cabin/farm/road is at least 5 miles away. Anyway, we heard some coyotes howling (I assume in response to the call). We made several other sets, and heard coyotes, but they never came in. On the walk back, we walked adjecnt to a cliffy area and we spotted a mini heard of Mule Deer. There were nine animals of mixed gender.
When we got back to the cabin, we cooked some steaks and had some salad. We had a bunch of beers and watched the moon come up over the hills to the East. Awesome night.
On Sunday morning I woke to the smell of coffee. When I finally rolled out of bed and went out side there were Deer just outside of the fence. There were 13 animals. When they saw us moving around, they broke into two groups, one of nine and one of four. We assume the group of nine was from the night before.
We had breakfast and packed everything and were heading out just before 8AM. We figured we'd stop at a couple of places on the way out and call for a while. We went to this one place where there was a watering water tanks and trough of some cattle operation. We had parked about a mile away and walked that last mile. We set the call and sat about 75 yards up slope. We sat there for maybe 1 hour and 15. Nothing, no action. We moved half a mile to the West where several gullies merged. Set the call up and waited. After ~45 minutes of nothing we packed it in and headed off to some springs that I knew of about five miles away.
When we got to the place that I envisioned, we'd park and went set up near the springs. There were several groups of dirt bike riders in the area. A little group of 5 mule deer busted and ran over the ridge. We figured there wouldn't be any coyotes hanging around after that.
We ended up going back towards some cliff areas that we passed earlier. We ended up sitting up above a ravine with some old dried out scrub trees and cliff bands above and below. It looked as good as any other place. We sat there for a good hour calling and nothing.
At that point we called it a day. It was disappointing that we didn't get much if any action in Eastern Washington (where I assumed it would be better) but it was way cool having all the action Friday evening closer to home.
I'm going to try again next weekend closer to home.
Pictures:
Sighting in Rifles:
The Cabin:
Some Coyote Country:
First Stand:
Sunset to the West:
Moon Set to the West before Sunrise to the East:
Mule Deer before Sunrise:
Sunrise the Next AM:
A little Gun Porn:
A Sketchy Road:
