Congrats to Cliff on his coyote, we had a very quiet night of hunting both prior and post of the one that didn't quite get away(almost tho) but thanks to Cliff's lightening quick reflexes of shooting at a 'yote that I could no longer see due to a hill between my line of sight and it, we put one in the truck.
I have had a great time hunting with Cliff,aka, Abolt and Mike aka Foxfx numerous times in the past several years and both of them have always showed me a great time hunting with them on their hard earned spots,so I guess kinda as a thank you and also a bit of chomping at the bit to get out calling once again,I invited them out to my area to try our hand at some coyote calling.Last year we did the same thing a week later in the year minus the PPHA D4 groundhog hunt( Thanks Ben, for organizing that,I'm sure it's safe to say we all enjoyed it) and, our luck was down,we won't go to say how far it was down,but it was pretty daggone low............however we had fun and decided this past weekend would be a prime time to do it again with the 'hog hunt going on also,so, Friday night,Mike and Cliff packed their gear and came west to my house with high hopes,along with my high hopes.
Around ten o'clock Friday we started hunting and I think we hunted four spots back to back then around midnight on the fourth set, we finally had an answer to our coyote locator calls, finally, something a little more to work towards other than a barren quiet field for twenty minutes, as luck would have it,the howls were on up the road a mile or so on another property I have permission at so we packed our stuff up and moved in a little closer to where it sounded like they had answered us from.
When we arrived there,we walked in off the road a few hundred yards to the top of a bench in the lay of the land, with an alfalfa field surrounding us with corn fields bordering both in front and to our rear fifty yards distant, we could see to our left and right probably about two hundred yards, I started with a pup howl on the call knowing we were already in the area of known coyotes,left that play for approx. thirty seconds then waited silently with no answer for approx. three minutes then switched to pup distress,I possibly played that for thirty seconds then waited approx. three minutes,silent again, then played a different pup distress for about the same amount of time again.
We first saw the coyotes, a pair, at approx. 150 yards,with basically no shot opportunity as they started coming in ,using the lower side of the bench as a shield,from 150 to 40 yards there was no shot opportunity for Cliff (22-250) or Mike (12 guage with something bad*** in it,I'm not sure what it was,)as they only had their ears and eyes showing above the bench,even between all of us barking and stuff at them, they never slowed below a very fast trot,headed toward our downwind side,at one point,the one disappeared but the other kept coming in so our attention focused solely on him,he actually crossed our trail where we walked in without scenting us, ran another 100yards ,looking at us with one eye the whole time till he got dead downwind and got our scent, then he looked straight in front of him and started gettin' it out of Dodge right quick,just as I lost him behind the hill,Cliff sent a bullet downrange,(I thought,wow,he's really pissed about that thing getting away and just venting some fury since I could no longer see it and I was standing right beside him) however, I heard the bullet smack into flesh,somehow Cliff curved the bullet around the hill and whacked him,very dead, in the back of the head. A thirty three lb. male, one paw chewed off and missing over half its teeth.
From then on till around six Saturday morning when we decided to hang it up, it was very quiet again. We then grabbed some breakfast and a quick nap,some of us not as quick as others, then went looking for some groundhog action. Mike's suberb shooting got him three 'hogs,the farthest one being well over 450 yards with his .223 and Cliff also shot two 'hogs with his 22-250,I however, couldn't hit sh** this weekend, I'm blaming it on welders flash after tryinging to spot weld some stuff without a helmet........
All in all, a great time with friends, a fun time at checkin,thanks again to all involved in setting that up, and just an awesome weekend out calling once again
