I figured sharing the stories of our first coyotes/bobcats called in would help others learn from our experiences, and possibly some humor might be revealed!
Well my first coyote called in happened when I was about 19 years old. I had my girlfriend with me, we went for a drive out in the woods W. of Olympia, and was in an old clearcut that had maybe 10 year old reprod in it, but really spaced out and kind of swampy ground, with lots of grass. My girlfriend was back in my truck, and I decided I needed to head out into the reprod and give it a shot. I walked about 200 yards from the truck, stood up on a stump and blew on my dad's old lyman rabbit in distress. I had a M600 308 with me, loaded and ready to go.
I really didn't expect anything to happen, as I had called a bunch earlier that morning, and had spent a full day doing the same in prior years. As I'm standing on this large stump, all of a sudden, not one, two, three, no, SEVEN coyotes come running to within 20 yards of me, they must have been within 200 yards of me in the reprod. I leveled on the first one and wham, my first coyote that I called in! I was so proud, shocked, confused with what to do since I had a girlfriend that probably would freak out. I could see the truck from where I was. I decided to skin out the pelt right there (had to have some bragging rights for my dad). When I got back to the truck, she said she was watching me the whole time through the binocs, and would turn away when she saw the muscles of the yote. Kind of funny. I finally married that gal and she's got a hunting license now!
That area has a ton of coyotes, but I've never been as fortunate to have an experience with that many coyotes so close to me. I've had one other time where I called in 14 coyotes in about 5 hours, one of the stands I had 7, but they were so spaced out and this was E. WA and I did not hit a single coyote that day. I'll blame it on the scope being off, even though that was not the case!
