Genre: Opinion/Argumentation

November 5, 2012 Losing My Mind The day after I was out for my annual Landowner Day I stacked up some optics to give them a good cleaning. Except for an inability to locate my laser rangefinder, the job went smoothly. A thorough search of my man-cave and the truck turned up only a half-eaten granola bar. That made the rangefinder officially missing and necessitated searching my memory banks next. I'd had it out on Landowner Day and recalled the exact location of the last use. I figured there was a good bet it was on the ground right where I'd been sitting. But it was already too dark to drive out for a look, so I relegated that trip to a Sunday afternoon chore; right after my son-in-law's birthday party. He came along and since there's no point in driving out to coyote country without a gun, we took two. Our first stop was to look for the rangefinder. It was there alright, a little wet but fully functional and waiting patiently to go back into a warm pocket. I'd used it, set it on the ground for handy re-use and then eventually walked away from it. Careless...dumb...etc. However, with little effort or time expended in looking for lost gear, we had enough time to go look for a coyote. Since it was evening and the wind was right, the dead cow I'd learned of the other day became a prime candidate. After parking in the feedlot, we maneuvered into position at the end of a bale stack. The cow was in a pit however, and therefore we still couldn't see it directly. Nothing but birds were visible in the area, so I did some coyote pup distress on a open reed call. It took about 15 minutes but eventually one showed himself briefly in the distance. He was headed our way but had good cover that would lead him right to the cow, so we had no more visual confirmation of what he was doing. When another 15 minutes had passed and he still hadn't shown, I suspected he may have been sidetracked by the fresh beef. I sent the son-in-law to creep in closer to get a direct look at the cow, while I covered the back door from the hay stack. A few minutes later he opened up with the AR-180B and put the coyote on the ground. Turns out the coyote had gone to the dead cow but then carried on and was headed our way to check out the pup-distress cries. This was a runt of a coyote and likely unsure about getting into the physical confrontation I was suggesting in my calling. We were lucky to get him and should have been more patient and waited longer. ? While that was a good lesson for the day, I think the most important one was to look around your set-up every time you leave a calling site...just to make sure you aren't leaving anything behind. So far, I've lost a knife, an AR magazine and a tripod while coyote hunting. I'm lucky the rangefinder didn't get added to the list. By now I know better than to leave stuff behind, so this wasn't a case of a losing a piece of gear....it was much more like losing my mind. No comments: Post a Comment About This Blog Welcome to Coyote School. This is a blog about the art, science and philosophy of hunting coyotes. I invite you to join me in a journey that matches wits and skills with the most adaptable predator on the planet. Here you'll find tales of the hunt, practical instruction, product reviews and the occasional deep thought from someone who's been chasing coyotes for thirty-plus years. During that time I've met many hunters who know far more about coyote hunting than I do; but I've never met anyone who has more fun doing it. I intend to share that excitement with you. You see, I enjoy writing almost as much as hunting, thus making this blog a natural outlet. After all, hunters have to hunt, writers need to write and I must do both. Along the way we'll take the odd detour into related topics but we won't stray too far from the trail. So, come on in, school has started.......Al Voth