Made a quick trip to Laredo this last weekend

Yellowhammer

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I got an invite to go to Laredo for the late doe/spike season and to hunt some varmints.

I usually have pretty good luck if it all works out.

After leaving the house about 5am Friday morning I meet my friend at his house 2 hours later near Houston and we headed to Laredo and got there about 2:30 pm. After unloading the truck, he dropped me off at a stand to hunt about 3:30.

Right off the bat, I set the foxpro out to try and call a coyote. Switch on the remote and find no sounds in the list. What the heck? Get down to reload sounds from caller to remote and get a garbled jumped up bunch of letters on the remote.

Dadgummit! I take both caller and remote back to stand and text Steve Dillon to see what might be the problem. Probably a memory chip, but he will get me back in business in a few days. I will have to go my calling with no remote.

While I this is going on, a couple of does show up and I drop one with the 25-06 to add to my meat supply.

After getting back to camp, deer skinned and in the ice chest. A few more guys had showed up and one of them wanted to go calling, along with my friend's 8 year old son. Wasn't sure how it was going to turn out, we headed out, while they cooked supper.

First stand we call a coyote at about the 4.5 minute mark and he is right on top of us when he breaks cover. I shot quick and coyote one is down. When I went to retrieve him, I find that he has a snare on his back foot and looks to have been starved down.

We head back to camp for supper, and after supper I head out withe the 20 something year old, and the youngun is headed for bed.

We call a few more spots with no luck, and then get set up near a tank with a pretty decent view. I am thinking cat since we are near a tank, and see lot of coyote tracks in the sand of the road, but after 20 minutes we have seen nothing.

Since the remote was not working, I had gone threw the sounds manually and picked 3 sounds I like to use and just remembered the numbers so I could run the caller to that number, turn up the volume and walk back to my sticks. I picked baybee cottontail, eastern cottontail and nutty nut hatch. This particular stand was nutty nuthatch and it was playing the whole 20 minutes since the remote was not working.

After 20 minutes nothing showed so I stepped out to pick up the caller that was about 10 yards in front of me. I always scan while moving to pick up the call, because several times I have seen something I could not see from my stand position. This time was one of those. 20 yards to my left was a bobcat sitting beside a prickly pear cactus just looking. I fumbled with my light and got my scope light one and free handed a shot. The cat jumped 6 foot straight up and hit the brush.

We walked over to try and find it, and had to go to the spot beside the cactus to look for blood. That resulted in seeing a pile of hair, gut and rodent parts. There was the head of a rat, and other parts. We trailed some blood a few feet into the brush and then found a bloody rat tail. As often happens when shooting close up with an AR I had hit low. We looked around but could not find it and decided to come back after the morning deer hunt. We make a couple of more stands with no luck and head back to camp.

The next morning we head to deer stands. I see a nice 10 point and couple of more small bucks, and some does but don't shoot anything. I hear a shot, so I know somebody probably got a doe.

I set out the caller and run back to stand knowing they will be back to get me soon, but nothing showed up.

On the way back to camp we stop to look for my bobcat from the night before. Sure enough, 3 Cara Caras fly up, and there he is not 10 yards from the last place we looked.

We get back to camp and eat a big late breakfast, and I took a couple of pictures.


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While a couple are napping or heading into town to haul water, I head out to do some calling. The heat was starting to rise as was the wind. But on the first stand I had coyote pop out about 10 yards from the caller. Unfortunately my gun was pointed the wrong way and he simply turned and left. This is when the remote would have been handy to switch to a pup distress, but he was gone. I called a couple more stands but by this time it was 93 degrees and I headed back to camp to get ready for the evening hunt. I really wanted to get another doe for the freezer.

I could not believe how hot it was since it had been cool the night before. It was so hot nothing was moving until almost dark and doe and fawn showed up and dropped the doe with neck shot from my AR.

After supper a couple of other guys wanted to go out for some calling. About 7pm the wind turned out of the north and started blowing hard so I was not to sure about our prospects.

Then when one of the guys wanting to go borrowed an AR and I mounted my spare red light on his scope and checked his ammo. I was some cheap Wolf fmj ammo and I was not too excited about that. I told him he better nail him between both shoulders and hope for the best.

The other guy was just going to watch. The first stand we saw nothing and the wind was really howling. The second stand was a spot I had scoped out earlier in the day and was on another tank dam. As I was setting out the caller, I heard some coyotes yipping close by. 3.5 minutes into Baybee cottontail I see eyes coming across the back of the pond and he stops right before going into the some thicker brush and I drop him.

We move to another spot with no luck, and then to an good looking spot I had called in years past with no luck. This was an oil well pad with some oil tanks and stuff around the edges. About the 3 minute mark I see eyes coming from the right. I know the other guy is really wanting to shot one, so I just watch and he stops perfect broad side at about 80 yards. I am looking threw my scope when I hear him misfire. The coyote heard it too, and wheeled and ran back the way he came, and I cart wheeled him. I look over to see what had happened. I was not sure if he didn't have a shell in the chamber, or what as they were working the action over and over. The primer was dented, so apparently that Wolf stuff wasn't that good after all.

We walked out find the coyote as he had made it about 20 yards into the brush.

The next stand, the wind started to lay and we were hearing a few coyotes in the distance. This might get pretty good. This stand I picked up eyes to my left almost immediately, but it was cirlcing downwind behind me. They were watching that direction and saw eyes cross the sendero but I couldn't see it.

Wind was almost completely laid down, now. Should be good. We get to the truck to drive to another spot and the "observer" says, "I think I can only make one for stand before I have to go back to camp or I am going to crap my pants."

Well, the next stand was a big nothing, and by the time we get back to camp it was 2pm. Since we were making the drive back in the morning I decided to just call it a night. Since my ice chest was full, I slept in until 7am, got up and helped clean up camp, and pack the gear and take a picture of the 2 nights take.

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Left about 9am and got back home at 5:30pm.


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