Last weekend included the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday, making for a three day weekend. As is becoming our tradition, my dad and I decided to use those three days wisely. Last year we traveled to western New Mexico for the weekend, but this year we opted to day-hunt from my house, so the folks made a road trip down to sunny southern New Mexico.
On the first day, we opted to explore some new country that neither of us had seen or hunted before. We looked over and called some pretty country, but only made seven stands. Most looked like this.
Beautiful, but we just couldn't kick anything loose, except a few deer.
Later in the afternoon though, we did stumble onto a covey of Gambel's quail and my dad got to break in his new-to-him Citori.
The next day my son got to tag along, and we headed down to the same area in which we hunted deer and coyotes in November. It was another pretty tough day. I three everything at them early in the day, but it wasn't until the sixth stand, using a hand call, that I managed to get a response. Unfortunately, a fast-running coyote back-doored Erik and me, catching us completely off-guard. Although I tried a shot as it skipped through the creosote, it lived to eat another rabbit.
On the very next stand, I spotted a coyote just seconds after starting the bird distress sound on the Shockwave. It must have been laying in the brush listening to us set up and just stoop up at 153 yards (ranged afterwards) to see what was going on. I whispered to Dad and pointed, but he couldn't get his eye on it. I didn't have a clear/safe shot past Dad, but started to shift into position in case it cut left. Nope, it turned and went straight away to nearly 300 yards. Then it cut hard left and started making tracks. For reasons known only to him, he stopped in a clear shooting lane for me (safe now). I was turned in my chair so I could use the back as an armrest, and with the rifle on the Trigger Sticks, I was rock steady. I had never shot at a coyote this far away, but I felt confident, and when the crisp trigger of my
Predator Technology Group AR-15 broke, I was rewarded with the "you just shot a watermelon" sound of a solid hit. I watched as the coyote disappeared into the thick creosote. I marked the location and returned to calling. We had another coyote ghost by at about 400 yards, but neither of us had a good shot. Stand over, I headed to to look for the coyote. I found him about 35 yards from where he stood at the shot.
I ranged back to my dad and discovered the coyote had been 332 yards from me, the farthest shot I have ever taken on an animal in all my years hunting. We sneaked in one more stand while looking around for javelina for the kid, but we found neither predators nor peccaries.
For day three, it was just Dad and me again. We chose a spot closer to home to so we could get back early on a night before school and work. One minute into the first stand we had company coming in from Dad's side. It popped into view at about 300 yards, looked our way, and wandered back into the brush, never to be seen again. We assume it must have seen the truck. We also assumed things were looking up. It's not often we call one on the first stand, and after two pretty tough days we were ready for some action. But you know what they say about "assume"...
Over the next six stands I tried a variety of typically productive FoxPro sounds, all to no avail. By late afternoon, I knew we needed to mix it up. So, I broke out my
brand new acrylic hand calls from catwhacker and got ready to put them to use. I should have done that much sooner, because on the very next stand, I killed this pretty coyote with the Affinity at 31 yards when she came in hard at four minutes.
On the next stand, I just stuck with that call, and at seven minutes we had a hard charger on Dad's side. He was armed with the rifle though, and in the tight dunes and brush he wasn't able to get a good shot. Drat! As the sun set on our third and last day, we had time for a final stand. This time we called in very thick creosote, so Dad brought his shotgun as well. We found a small dune that afforded us a few shooting lanes of up to 40 yards and started wailing away on the catwhacker closed reed. We were about out of light when, 13 minutes after I started calling, I spotted a pale coyote. She rounded a creosote bush, made a couple high jumps to catch sight of the rabbit, spotted us instead, and turned to make a fast getaway. There was just enough time for me to make a quick shot through the brush, rolling her up in a dusty ball before she was out of sight. If you look real hard, you can just see her in the small clearing below the hill just right of center, 39 yards from our sandy perch.
Here's a better shot.
