fratri
Active member
Today I went coyote hunting about 2.5hrs north of my place to try and get rid of a few coyotes from my buddy’s deer hunting property before the deer drop their fawns. The owner/farmer wants as many of the coyotes gone as possible so in keeping in the good books with his farmer friend we went up to give it a try. We got there really early about 5:50am and to our surprise there was snow and a lot of it in many places, neither one of use brought any white camo… The snow was hard and crusty; it made a loud noise with every step we took. We walked along a trail for a good 700 yds or so, before coming to our first field…. We setup and waited for legal light to arrive. As we were waiting, a few coyotes in the distance lit up the morning sky making the hunting experience surreal. There was some great anticipation with this first stand but after 30 mins of calling nothing showed… We move on to our 2nd set only 300 yds away and basically the same thing, nothing showed… Our third set turned out to be the best one of the day as it produced our only coyote. We setup looking across a big field watching some cedar and hardwood bush. My buddy was watching the south end and I was watching the north end. I setup the decoy/caller about 40 yds out and in the center of us. As I am walking back to the fence line to begin the set I notice a couple of deer out by the cedars (350yds away). I glass them and they look in great shape, nice and healthy. Since we had good visibility and no wind I thought I try my hand calls before playing sounds out of my e-caller. I started off with an open reed rabbit distress, played it for a minute really loud and watched…. those two deer were just staring in my direction… I waited another minute grabbed another open reed call and blasted that one (dying rabbit) for another good minute. As I am blasting my reed call those two deer start running across the field and head into the hardwoods. Either my calling scared them off or a coyote did?.... I keep my eyes peeled along the fence line in hopes a coyote is coming……within seconds I see a head stick out through the wooden fence. It’s a coyote less than 15yds away staring at my decoy, I slowly move my gun put the scope on him and all I see is fur and a bunch of bush/braches…I lift my head off the scope to look for an opening, he sees me move I get back on the scope and fire quickly before he has a chance to run. The only shot was a JFK (head shot)….. He dropped in his tracks not moving a muscle. Being on stand less than 5 mins I started up my e-caller and tried pup-distress for a few more minutes and some more distress calls with no luck... We went on to do two more sets but by this time the wind really picked up plus we were pressed for time and had to leave…. The terrain/landscape of this location is very different than the type of farms I hunt in my area. These properties up north are huge, 300 acres properties are the norm…. We did 5 sets a ton of walking and didn’t even see a farm house
