king' s outdoor world - Index

king' s outdoor world - Hunting Illustrated Magazine Dec/Jan 2008 - Coyote Crazy! - Index

BY CORY LUNDBERG
58
We had been driving for what
seemed like an eternity
down two-track after twotrack,
the sage fl ats seemed to go on
forever. We knew there were coyotes
out there and plenty of them. None
of us wanted to be driving when
we could be hunting, but a vantage
point never seemed to present itself.
Finally, I spotted something and we
headed for it. It was a water tower
with a security rail around the top.
Now, I won’t admit to telling anyone
to do this, nor am I encouraging
anyone to do anything dangerous by
any means, but we had permission to
hunt anywhere on this ranch and by
dang that meant anywhere.
Now when I presented my
idea to my two friends (both wish
to remain nameless, so I’ll call them
“D” and “K”), I dare say that neither
one of them was all too excited about
the idea. One was ok with it, the
other not so much. Well, we climbed
up the ladder and situated ourselves
around the top of the tower and we
could see forever! Now if only our
HUNTING ILLUSTRATED.com
YOU HAVE GOT TO
SEE IT TO BELIEVE IT!
Foxpro FX3 would cut through the wind
that was blowing quite hard from right
to left (south to north). We turned on
the good ole’ tune of “Help, I’m a little
rabbit and I am in some serious pain…
help, help” as loud as the volume would
let us. We settled in for what two of us
thought was a waste of time and one of
us hoped would allow us to at least see
something that resembled a coyote, fox
or badger.
About fi ve minutes into the
stand, D squeaked his squeaker and
the three of us turned our heads to see
four coyotes come screaming over the
nearest hill about a half-mile away. I
have never seen coyotes cover ground
so fast. They were in what looked to be
a life and death race to that poor little
rabbit. Our truck was tucked right up
against the tower so it didn’t stand out,
but the coyotes were coming straight
downwind.
I can’t begin to explain how
proud I was of myself. Here I had these
two doubters and look what I had come
up with, four coyotes in the fl ats in late
November.
The coyotes were nearing
400 yards and the one in the front
kept coming, the last three ran
smack dab into our scent trail but
couldn’t fi gure out exactly where we
were. The fi rst one was now at 100
yards. I told D to hold on and let
the others come a little closer. Just
as I was getting my crosshairs
on the second dog, he made
a hard left and stopped
with the third behind a
big sagebrush as he hit
our wind. Then the
closest one winded us
and turned to go. “On
the count of three,
… o n e … . t w o … .
three - BAM…
BAM……”.
Well, let’s say that
I went from being
very proud of myself
to wanting to jump
off of that stupid
tower! I watched all