Went out the past 5 days hoping to find some of the sheds of the bucks I've been photographing this winter. No luck in the shed department, as most of the boys I'm excited about are still packing, so my boyfriend and I switched to coyotes instead... We made 3 setups and called in 3 dogs, not to mention the 5 others we spotted and tried to sneak on.
A few days ago, we were working a large canyon looking for sheds.. I was glassing the other side and noticed two yotes, so my boyfriend made about a mile-long sneak through the canyon across the terrain to get a shot. Must have whistled it right between his ears because it hit a rock above it and the coyote ran right back at him: he tried to get another shot but as he looked through his scope all he saw was intermittant hair filling his scope and then brush as the thing jetted by. In his defense, the wind was howling and he was probably a little tired from beating feet so quickly to the other side.
We also found one mid-day on a frozen pond (what the obsession with frozen bodies of water and coyotes is perhaps I will never understand). He was almost too stupid to kill... have to let those genes live on.
Yesterday, we spotted 3 working a sage flat and worked down a finger ridge out of sight and set up with the wind in our favor... never saw the other two but took one that came around up high on the slope trying to wind us. Later in the day we found another great spot to call and went to work. Not a minute into the first sequence a nice big male runs onto our bench. Jarred lip squeaks and the thing starts running right at us. He tried to stop it with a bark but that thing was on a mission. Dropped it at 69 yards. Tried to continue calling for about 20 minutes but with no luck. We dropped into a deep canyon and up the other side, only to look back and see another coyote mousing in the sage about 300 yards below where we had set up. We ranged the edge of the draw at 380 yards and tried to coax it to the edge for a long shot (we were losing daylight and still had another 4 or so miles back to the car) with no luck. Got it to about 425 and decided maybe that dog should live another day.
These last photos are how it layed... approaching it from the back side we certainly poked it. Looked too picture perfect!
