Jackindistress
New member
Here are some coyote pictures, part of these were called in with the new Foxpro Spitfire. Please excuse the quality of these. A couple of mornings it was about -10 and my digital camera refused to work.
Here is a couple that I got the other morning when it was about 0*. It snowed overnight and was still snowing some when I went out just before daylight. I set up in one of my permanent blinds at the edge of a cow pasture. I waited until it got just barely light enough to shoot and started calling with the Johnny Stewart Grown Cottontail distress. After about 5 minutes I saw a coyote coming along the edge of the pasture about 300 yards away. He was taking his time getting to the call. There was a mineral feeder for the cattle that I had ranged at 200 yards. He looked like he was going to pass pretty close to it. The wind had picked up and it was snowing pretty heavy again so I decided if he made it to my 200 yard mark I would take him.
He worked his way up to the feeder, constantly checking the wind. I had my decoy set up next to the caller and he had his eye on it. He stopped right beside the feeder watching the decoy and I dropped him while I had the chance.
When I walked out to pick him up I saw another set of tracks that had to have been made within the last half hour or so because it had been snowing hard enough that if they were any older they would have been covered up. They were heading east so I packed up my gear and headed that direction. I went about a quarter mile to a big bean stubble field. I was just getting ready to set my caller out when I looked up and there was a coyote going across the end of the field about ½ mile to my east. That was probably the tracks I had followed to the field. I had to duck in the weeds fast before he saw me, so I just set my call and decoy right at the edge of the weeds along the field.
By now it was snowing so hard I could barely see ¼ mile and the wind had picked up more. The temp. was at zero or a little below. I clicked the Foxpro remote to the Lucky Bird and ran the volume all the way up to number 5. The coyote had moved off into the weeds by now and it was snowing so hard I couldn’t see that far most of the time anyway. However, I was sure he had not seen me set up.
The Spitfire screamed the Lucky Bird for about 7 minutes and all at once just shut off. I thought dang, I hate to take a chance on moving to see what happened to the call so I just sat tight for a minute. I scanned the field the best I could considering it was snowing sideways now. I decided to see what happened to the call so I crawled the 30 yards to it. The batteries had gotten too cold and it had just shut down.
I was just getting ready to start with a mouth call when I looked up and there came the coyote over a small rise in the field. I was kind of screwed because I was out in the open more than I liked and he was coming right towards me about 300 yards out. I just sat still and let him come and when he stopped to sniff something I dropped him.
I got them both loaded on the 4-wheeler and called it a morning. When I got to the house I put some 25000ma Kodak NiMH rechargeable batteries in the Spitfire and haven’t had any more problems with it shutting down in cold weather.
Here is a picture of the Male that I took after I got home. The female is laying on the snow with the Spitfire.
Below is a picture of one that I called in exactly one month earlier (from the same stand) as the big male above. He came in to “coyote pup howls”.
I have access to about 7, 000 acres from one farmer and a lot of it is in the river bottom. I had been wanting to get down there but the river had been out and it was really muddy there yet. The zero weather was just what I was needed so I could hunt the bottoms. I found a place to hide my Jeep from “coyote view” but had to make about a ¾ mile walk to get to where I wanted to call from so I started out before daylight.
I set up on top of a large dredge ditch overlooking a corn stubble field. There was a large tract of timber and some smaller bean stubble fields behind me. The wind was quartering across the corn stubble in front of me. If the coyotes came from the timber behind me they would have to move into the corn stubble where I could see them if they wanted to get down wind of me.
I started out with a couple of invitation howls on the Spitfire and waited several minutes but nothing showed. I switched to my favorite Johnny Stewart Grown Jackrabbit in Distress and started out on volume level 4. I called for 5 minutes on that setting and then bumped it up to number 5. Another 5 minutes and nothing had showed so I dropped the volume a little and paused the calling for a couple of minutes. As I scanned the stubble, something to my left caught my eye. There he was. He had slipped in from behind me and had traveled down the bottom of the frozen ditch an popped out into the stubble.
The caller was muted and he was looking for the dying rabbit. I quickly checked the range and he was less than 200 yards. He cautiously moved farther out into the field and at this point I decided it might be better to just shoot him other than taking a chance of starting the caller back up and take a chance on spooking him. I cranked my scope up to 12X and when he stopped broadside I centered the crosshairs behind his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. At the shot, he jumped about 3 feet straight in the air. When he hit the ground he spun about 3 times, bled all over everything within about a 6 foot circle, and died. I had hit him just a little low and got him right through the heart. The 50 grain ballistic tip caught his leg on the opposite side and opened up about a 4” diameter hole on exit. I ranged the distance back to where I had been sitting and it read 256 yards.
As you can see in the picture above, it is along way between patches of brush down there. There was still a lot of broken ice in many places from where the river had been out so I decided not to take the chance on getting the 4-wheeler hung up 3 or 4 miles from the nearest road. It was a long walk but it was worth it. After taking the one above, I continued on down the bottom for another mile and at 10:03 am, heard one howling but he was across the river and I couldn’t get to him.
I have another place that is loaded with turkey and deer that is in a large creek bottom but it is a long walk to get into it unless the creeks are frozen over so I can travel them to get to it. I checked the ice the other morning and the dredge ditch was frozen almost to the bottom in most places. I scouted the area some while I was there and found a corn stubble field that was torn up with turkey sign and coyote tracks. I decided to make an evening stand there. I went in about 2:30 pm to get set up. As I got to the large corn stubble field there were about 50 or 60 turkeys feeding right where I was going to call from. I sort of hated to spook them from their feeding so I decided to continue on down the creek and call from the field across a large slough.
The creek and river had been out so the slough was flooded but it was frozen over so it made for some quite walking. I got almost to where I was headed and there he was! A dang coyote was already there in the stubble maybe 100 yards from me. I had been mostly hunting the open stubble fields so I had my 22-250 with a 6.5 – 20X scope. Not the best thing to be using in the timber. I dropped to the ground and quickly shed my pack. There wasn’t time to set up the Spitfire so I pulled my call lanyard out of my coat and lightly blew a rabbit distress.
The coyote responded immediately and was running directly at me. I dropped the call and got my rifle up. He came in so fast that I couldn’t get him to stop and he loped past me at 5 feet. I could have whacked him with my rifle barrel. When he realized I wasn’t dinner he bolted to his right and dropped off into the creek. I woofed and yipped at him but he wouldn’t stop. I didn’t want to take a chance at a running shot through the brush and spook him worse so I let him go. I thought, he will be easy to identify if I see him again because he was really silver colored on his front half and had some mange. I should have had the shotgun on that one!
I was going to wait a week or so before I came back to this location but the next day it started warming up and the creeks were thawing. I was going to loose my frozen access to this side of the creek so I headed back the next evening to try one last time before it thawed out.
I got back to the north side of the stubble field where I had originally started to call the evening before and the turkeys were all the way across the field. There was another big flock in the other field across the other creek. I was packing both a shotgun and the rifle this evening so I had left the electronic gear behind. I pulled out my Tweety call and did my best to sound like supper for a coyote. The turkeys started putting and I could see heads coming up all over the stubble but they didn’t run or fly. I called for 30 seconds and then paused. Called another 30 and paused for a minute. After about 4 sequences of this, all at once the turkeys scattered everywhere and flew.
I thought to myself, “something just ran through the turkey flock”. Ten seconds later here comes Mr. Coyote loping along the edge of the timber. I had my rifle up on the shooting sticks and it was already pointed his general direction so I got him in my scope and followed him. He came in at a trot and when he got to about 100 yards I “woofed” him and he stopped. At the sound of the 22-250 the rest of the turkeys flew but they had one less thing to worry about. Mr. Coyote lay dead in the snow.
When I walked out to pick him up I realized it was the same one that I had called in the day before. He had some mange and the weather had been really rough so he was likely pretty hungry.
My neighbor called me the other night and said that he had been down to the bottom to check on his cows and found one that had a stillborn calf. He said the coyotes had not found it yet, but I knew they soon would. I got up the next morning and made my way to within about 200 yards of where he had described the calf to be. I didn’t want to walk out into the pasture and scatter scent so I set just inside the timber at the edge of the pasture. About sunrise nothing had shown up but I was betting that there was a coyote nearby that knew the calf was out there. I turned on the Foxpro Spitfire and selected “female long howls”. I intended to make him think he had company at his breakfast table. It wasn’t but a minute or maybe less a male coyote came off the big ridge behind me. He was headed directly towards the dead calf, but he didn’t make it. The bark of the 22-250 interrupted his journey.
Sorry for the crappy cell phone picture, I didn’t have my good camera with me.
Someone dumped a small terrier mix pup out by my house over labor day weekend. I couldn’t find anyone to take her so I guess she has found a home here. She was gun shy at first but she soon found out that quite a bit of shooting goes on around here and decided she might as well put up with it. She is about 6 or 8 months old now and has learned what those “Buggers” are that she hears in the night. We have a lot of CRP ground so the Coyotes have plenty of places to hide. Here she is with a couple of CRP buggers.
She looks like she might have some bird dog in her but she doesn’t show any more interest in the quail than she does any of the other critters.
More to come later. I have to start up the other computer and get more pictures off of it.
Here is a couple that I got the other morning when it was about 0*. It snowed overnight and was still snowing some when I went out just before daylight. I set up in one of my permanent blinds at the edge of a cow pasture. I waited until it got just barely light enough to shoot and started calling with the Johnny Stewart Grown Cottontail distress. After about 5 minutes I saw a coyote coming along the edge of the pasture about 300 yards away. He was taking his time getting to the call. There was a mineral feeder for the cattle that I had ranged at 200 yards. He looked like he was going to pass pretty close to it. The wind had picked up and it was snowing pretty heavy again so I decided if he made it to my 200 yard mark I would take him.
He worked his way up to the feeder, constantly checking the wind. I had my decoy set up next to the caller and he had his eye on it. He stopped right beside the feeder watching the decoy and I dropped him while I had the chance.
When I walked out to pick him up I saw another set of tracks that had to have been made within the last half hour or so because it had been snowing hard enough that if they were any older they would have been covered up. They were heading east so I packed up my gear and headed that direction. I went about a quarter mile to a big bean stubble field. I was just getting ready to set my caller out when I looked up and there was a coyote going across the end of the field about ½ mile to my east. That was probably the tracks I had followed to the field. I had to duck in the weeds fast before he saw me, so I just set my call and decoy right at the edge of the weeds along the field.
By now it was snowing so hard I could barely see ¼ mile and the wind had picked up more. The temp. was at zero or a little below. I clicked the Foxpro remote to the Lucky Bird and ran the volume all the way up to number 5. The coyote had moved off into the weeds by now and it was snowing so hard I couldn’t see that far most of the time anyway. However, I was sure he had not seen me set up.
The Spitfire screamed the Lucky Bird for about 7 minutes and all at once just shut off. I thought dang, I hate to take a chance on moving to see what happened to the call so I just sat tight for a minute. I scanned the field the best I could considering it was snowing sideways now. I decided to see what happened to the call so I crawled the 30 yards to it. The batteries had gotten too cold and it had just shut down.
I was just getting ready to start with a mouth call when I looked up and there came the coyote over a small rise in the field. I was kind of screwed because I was out in the open more than I liked and he was coming right towards me about 300 yards out. I just sat still and let him come and when he stopped to sniff something I dropped him.
I got them both loaded on the 4-wheeler and called it a morning. When I got to the house I put some 25000ma Kodak NiMH rechargeable batteries in the Spitfire and haven’t had any more problems with it shutting down in cold weather.
Here is a picture of the Male that I took after I got home. The female is laying on the snow with the Spitfire.
Below is a picture of one that I called in exactly one month earlier (from the same stand) as the big male above. He came in to “coyote pup howls”.
I have access to about 7, 000 acres from one farmer and a lot of it is in the river bottom. I had been wanting to get down there but the river had been out and it was really muddy there yet. The zero weather was just what I was needed so I could hunt the bottoms. I found a place to hide my Jeep from “coyote view” but had to make about a ¾ mile walk to get to where I wanted to call from so I started out before daylight.
I set up on top of a large dredge ditch overlooking a corn stubble field. There was a large tract of timber and some smaller bean stubble fields behind me. The wind was quartering across the corn stubble in front of me. If the coyotes came from the timber behind me they would have to move into the corn stubble where I could see them if they wanted to get down wind of me.
I started out with a couple of invitation howls on the Spitfire and waited several minutes but nothing showed. I switched to my favorite Johnny Stewart Grown Jackrabbit in Distress and started out on volume level 4. I called for 5 minutes on that setting and then bumped it up to number 5. Another 5 minutes and nothing had showed so I dropped the volume a little and paused the calling for a couple of minutes. As I scanned the stubble, something to my left caught my eye. There he was. He had slipped in from behind me and had traveled down the bottom of the frozen ditch an popped out into the stubble.
The caller was muted and he was looking for the dying rabbit. I quickly checked the range and he was less than 200 yards. He cautiously moved farther out into the field and at this point I decided it might be better to just shoot him other than taking a chance of starting the caller back up and take a chance on spooking him. I cranked my scope up to 12X and when he stopped broadside I centered the crosshairs behind his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. At the shot, he jumped about 3 feet straight in the air. When he hit the ground he spun about 3 times, bled all over everything within about a 6 foot circle, and died. I had hit him just a little low and got him right through the heart. The 50 grain ballistic tip caught his leg on the opposite side and opened up about a 4” diameter hole on exit. I ranged the distance back to where I had been sitting and it read 256 yards.
As you can see in the picture above, it is along way between patches of brush down there. There was still a lot of broken ice in many places from where the river had been out so I decided not to take the chance on getting the 4-wheeler hung up 3 or 4 miles from the nearest road. It was a long walk but it was worth it. After taking the one above, I continued on down the bottom for another mile and at 10:03 am, heard one howling but he was across the river and I couldn’t get to him.
I have another place that is loaded with turkey and deer that is in a large creek bottom but it is a long walk to get into it unless the creeks are frozen over so I can travel them to get to it. I checked the ice the other morning and the dredge ditch was frozen almost to the bottom in most places. I scouted the area some while I was there and found a corn stubble field that was torn up with turkey sign and coyote tracks. I decided to make an evening stand there. I went in about 2:30 pm to get set up. As I got to the large corn stubble field there were about 50 or 60 turkeys feeding right where I was going to call from. I sort of hated to spook them from their feeding so I decided to continue on down the creek and call from the field across a large slough.
The creek and river had been out so the slough was flooded but it was frozen over so it made for some quite walking. I got almost to where I was headed and there he was! A dang coyote was already there in the stubble maybe 100 yards from me. I had been mostly hunting the open stubble fields so I had my 22-250 with a 6.5 – 20X scope. Not the best thing to be using in the timber. I dropped to the ground and quickly shed my pack. There wasn’t time to set up the Spitfire so I pulled my call lanyard out of my coat and lightly blew a rabbit distress.
The coyote responded immediately and was running directly at me. I dropped the call and got my rifle up. He came in so fast that I couldn’t get him to stop and he loped past me at 5 feet. I could have whacked him with my rifle barrel. When he realized I wasn’t dinner he bolted to his right and dropped off into the creek. I woofed and yipped at him but he wouldn’t stop. I didn’t want to take a chance at a running shot through the brush and spook him worse so I let him go. I thought, he will be easy to identify if I see him again because he was really silver colored on his front half and had some mange. I should have had the shotgun on that one!
I was going to wait a week or so before I came back to this location but the next day it started warming up and the creeks were thawing. I was going to loose my frozen access to this side of the creek so I headed back the next evening to try one last time before it thawed out.
I got back to the north side of the stubble field where I had originally started to call the evening before and the turkeys were all the way across the field. There was another big flock in the other field across the other creek. I was packing both a shotgun and the rifle this evening so I had left the electronic gear behind. I pulled out my Tweety call and did my best to sound like supper for a coyote. The turkeys started putting and I could see heads coming up all over the stubble but they didn’t run or fly. I called for 30 seconds and then paused. Called another 30 and paused for a minute. After about 4 sequences of this, all at once the turkeys scattered everywhere and flew.
I thought to myself, “something just ran through the turkey flock”. Ten seconds later here comes Mr. Coyote loping along the edge of the timber. I had my rifle up on the shooting sticks and it was already pointed his general direction so I got him in my scope and followed him. He came in at a trot and when he got to about 100 yards I “woofed” him and he stopped. At the sound of the 22-250 the rest of the turkeys flew but they had one less thing to worry about. Mr. Coyote lay dead in the snow.
When I walked out to pick him up I realized it was the same one that I had called in the day before. He had some mange and the weather had been really rough so he was likely pretty hungry.
My neighbor called me the other night and said that he had been down to the bottom to check on his cows and found one that had a stillborn calf. He said the coyotes had not found it yet, but I knew they soon would. I got up the next morning and made my way to within about 200 yards of where he had described the calf to be. I didn’t want to walk out into the pasture and scatter scent so I set just inside the timber at the edge of the pasture. About sunrise nothing had shown up but I was betting that there was a coyote nearby that knew the calf was out there. I turned on the Foxpro Spitfire and selected “female long howls”. I intended to make him think he had company at his breakfast table. It wasn’t but a minute or maybe less a male coyote came off the big ridge behind me. He was headed directly towards the dead calf, but he didn’t make it. The bark of the 22-250 interrupted his journey.
Sorry for the crappy cell phone picture, I didn’t have my good camera with me.
Someone dumped a small terrier mix pup out by my house over labor day weekend. I couldn’t find anyone to take her so I guess she has found a home here. She was gun shy at first but she soon found out that quite a bit of shooting goes on around here and decided she might as well put up with it. She is about 6 or 8 months old now and has learned what those “Buggers” are that she hears in the night. We have a lot of CRP ground so the Coyotes have plenty of places to hide. Here she is with a couple of CRP buggers.
She looks like she might have some bird dog in her but she doesn’t show any more interest in the quail than she does any of the other critters.
More to come later. I have to start up the other computer and get more pictures off of it.
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