king' s outdoor world - Index

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

four coyotes leave the area faster
than they had come in and I chastised
myself over and over and apologized
to D just as much. We went from
having one “sure bet” coyote down
and me being “right,” to us having
zero coyotes on that stand and me
being very humble. To this day I
still kick myself for being greedy.
Now, what did I learn
from this hunt? Well, let me tell
you and see if you agree. I won’t
argue whether climbing the tower
was dumb, it probably was, but I do
dumb things all the time, just ask
my wife. So, we’ll leave the actual
climbing idea out of it.
That said, a hunter does
need to gain whatever vantage point
that they can. If the terrain is dead
fl at with no hills, then what do you
do? Where do you hide? I hide
in plain sight. Coyotes are not tall
animals, so they are going to be low
in the brush too. You might not see
them very well, but they won’t see
you either. If the wind is right, and
you call the fl ats from your knees or
a stool, you’ll have coyotes in your
lap or staring you in the face just
above sage level. The shots will be
fast, but I promise you will do more
shooting and calling than driving
around in the truck “looking” for
that perfect spot.
What are some other things we
can learn from this hunt? When hiding
your vehicle, use whatever you can to
break it up. We have used the military
surplus netting to hide our trucks when
there is no natural blind. If there is
farm equipment (old or new) then park
by it, a fence, hay bales whatever, use
it and be happy, it beats wasting time
looking.
I also learned a valuable
old lesson; “A bird in the hand beats
two in the bush.” If I hadn’t gotten
greedy, we would have came away
with a much more memorable
stand. Instead of me saying, “I
told you we could call in coyotes
from that tower.” We would have
been saying, “Remember when we
climbed that tower and called in
those four coyotes and D shot that
one? That was awesome. Cory you
are the greatest!” …Or something
along those lines. The bottom line
is that no matter how many coyotes
are coming into a call, take the
shots you can make. Sure, we all
want the double and triples, but if
a single is all we are going to get,
get the single and be happy. I sure
would have been.
One more lesson that D,
K and I took away from this stand
was that we need to try new things.
All too often we get locked into our
comfort zones. We have a method
that works most of the time, but what
about when it is not working? What
if we had kept driving around for
another hour looking for a “great”
spot? We would have missed out on
the tower experience, no matter how
it turned out. Both D and K admitted
that they would be more open to
different approaches from now on. If
there are coyotes in an area, you can
call them - you just need to fi gure out
the best way to do it.
Special “K” with a nice double after trying a new tactic
December/January 59