Hello everyone. I’m new to this forum and I thought I’d start out by posting about the first time I went calling for coyotes, which was just this last weekend. My 14 year old son had President’s day off from school so I took the day off from work and we used the long weekend to drive out to southeastern New Mexico to do some “screamin’ for yotes”.
We live in Fort Worth, TX, so it was about an 8 hour drive to get to where we wanted to hunt. On Saturday we hunted on BLM land about 20 miles south of Hope, NM, near where Box Canyon Road (County Road 400) and Armstrong Road (County Road 12) intersect, roughly 10 miles east of the northern end of the Guadalupe district of the Lincoln National Forest.
We got there at about 3AM and slept (or tried to) for about 3 hours in the back of the Expedition. It was a little after dawn when we made our first stand. The wind was out of the west-southwest, calm in the morning and building up to 5 to 10 mph by the afternoon. It was a clear, beautiful day with a high temperature in the mid 70s. As suggested in the book, Predator Calling with Gerry Blair, we tried to keep the sun mostly at our backs on all of our stands, stayed in the shadows, and we usually tried to sit roughly at 75 yards crosswind and 25 yards downwind from the caller.
We used a Foxpro Firestorm electronic caller. I mostly used the Lightening Jack and Distressed Cottontail calls, but also threw in some Distressed Calf, Distressed Antelope Fawn, Dying Crow, and finally a Female Coyote-in-Heat Yodel. Not all on the same stand, of course, but different calls on different stands throughout the day. I carried a Browning A-Bolt Stalker II in .270 and my son carried a Colt AR15 in .223/5.56.
We saw absolutely no coyotes. There were plenty of jackrabbits and cottontails, but no coyotes. We didn’t even see any sign of coyotes. No tracks, no scat. My son and I aren’t expert hunters so we could have easily missed seeing them. Maybe it was the combination of our lack of experience in hunting coyotes and it being so late in the season. After sundown we called it quits and went in to Roswell to stay for the night.
On Sunday we went out to BLM land about 30 miles east of Roswell just off of highway 380. We were on our first stand just after dawn. The wind grew to about 10 to 15 mph and was out of the northwest. It was another beautiful day much like Saturday. We saw some jackrabbits and cottontails along the roads, but no coyotes. We did, however, see one coyote dropping and plenty of coyote tracks. It’s very sandy at this location, so I couldn’t really tell how fresh the tracks were. Could have been a week old or even older for all I know.
The terrain at this location east of Roswell was pretty bad for coyote hunting in my opinion. I guess I’d describe it as generally flat, but pock marked with craters and humps averaging 5 to 10 feet deep or high. Natural craters, not bomb craters! And they are interconnected in such a way as to allow a coyote to sneak around without being seen, even if you’re sitting near the top of a hump.
By lunch time we were tired and a little discouraged so we decided to pack it in and head back to Fort Worth after some gratuitous shooting at cow pies. So much for our first attempt at calling for coyotes. Wile E. Coyote got the best of us, for now...
We live in Fort Worth, TX, so it was about an 8 hour drive to get to where we wanted to hunt. On Saturday we hunted on BLM land about 20 miles south of Hope, NM, near where Box Canyon Road (County Road 400) and Armstrong Road (County Road 12) intersect, roughly 10 miles east of the northern end of the Guadalupe district of the Lincoln National Forest.
We got there at about 3AM and slept (or tried to) for about 3 hours in the back of the Expedition. It was a little after dawn when we made our first stand. The wind was out of the west-southwest, calm in the morning and building up to 5 to 10 mph by the afternoon. It was a clear, beautiful day with a high temperature in the mid 70s. As suggested in the book, Predator Calling with Gerry Blair, we tried to keep the sun mostly at our backs on all of our stands, stayed in the shadows, and we usually tried to sit roughly at 75 yards crosswind and 25 yards downwind from the caller.
We used a Foxpro Firestorm electronic caller. I mostly used the Lightening Jack and Distressed Cottontail calls, but also threw in some Distressed Calf, Distressed Antelope Fawn, Dying Crow, and finally a Female Coyote-in-Heat Yodel. Not all on the same stand, of course, but different calls on different stands throughout the day. I carried a Browning A-Bolt Stalker II in .270 and my son carried a Colt AR15 in .223/5.56.
We saw absolutely no coyotes. There were plenty of jackrabbits and cottontails, but no coyotes. We didn’t even see any sign of coyotes. No tracks, no scat. My son and I aren’t expert hunters so we could have easily missed seeing them. Maybe it was the combination of our lack of experience in hunting coyotes and it being so late in the season. After sundown we called it quits and went in to Roswell to stay for the night.
On Sunday we went out to BLM land about 30 miles east of Roswell just off of highway 380. We were on our first stand just after dawn. The wind grew to about 10 to 15 mph and was out of the northwest. It was another beautiful day much like Saturday. We saw some jackrabbits and cottontails along the roads, but no coyotes. We did, however, see one coyote dropping and plenty of coyote tracks. It’s very sandy at this location, so I couldn’t really tell how fresh the tracks were. Could have been a week old or even older for all I know.
The terrain at this location east of Roswell was pretty bad for coyote hunting in my opinion. I guess I’d describe it as generally flat, but pock marked with craters and humps averaging 5 to 10 feet deep or high. Natural craters, not bomb craters! And they are interconnected in such a way as to allow a coyote to sneak around without being seen, even if you’re sitting near the top of a hump.
By lunch time we were tired and a little discouraged so we decided to pack it in and head back to Fort Worth after some gratuitous shooting at cow pies. So much for our first attempt at calling for coyotes. Wile E. Coyote got the best of us, for now...
