Keep a good knife with you . Show it a little respect by keeping it sharp lubed at the pivot if it's a folding blade and cleaned after each use . You never know when it might save your life or someone else's . To me knives and pistols have a lot in common and they need to fit your hand well , not be slick so you can get a good grip if your hands are wet or slick from something and have a good balance . I don't think that either one is designed to be a one size fits all with different sizes and designs for different uses . The cutting blade isn't supposed to be a screw driver or a prybar and the handle or pomelle isn't a hammer . As with the rest of out kit we take to the field with us a good knife might , should , be a part of it the same as our rifle ,ammo and calls just a thought .
Ramblings and Such From Hunting Coyote
- Thread starter DSheetz
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You are right about that. I carry a small diamond rod in my pocket. I keep my case shaving all the time. Tell u a stoies how my knife saved me. I was fishing on the river. It was knee deep. Dam wasnt running any water. I got hung up in the middle. I waded out to get my countdown out. It was pass my knees out there. There was some rocks with a rope somehow wrapped up in the rocks. The rocks was on the bottom. I went to get my countdown out. I got that countdown hooks in my hand and fingers. Nobody around i could see. About that time dam's horn went off. There turning water on. I was only a mile from the dam. It didnt take that long for the water to start coming up. My case knife was setting by my chair. I had been sharping it before i left. I tried pulling my fingers loose but it hurt too much. Water was cold trout water. Cold water i thought would take the feeling out of hand/fingers. I pulled again trying to free my hand. It hurt too bad. By this time water was up to my waist. My mind was racing wild. Then i remembered i had went back and got small pocket knife out of the tackle box. I had to lean over in water to cut the rope. It took 3 times to get the countdown cut out. Now its pass my waist. It felt like it took forever to reach the bank. I was beyond being scared. The current was getting swift. I made it to my truck and open tailgate. I set down and thought about just what took place. I set there 2 hrs or more cold wet fingers and hand hurting. Water had came up 2 ft by now. Finally got my thoughts together and drove to the hospital. And got the hooks removed. I never to my wife exactly what happened. Where i was fishing in the Middle. If the dam was running like normal. And all the generations was running. It would have been 8 or 9 ft deep. Thats why i make sure too have my pocket knife at all times. You never know what could happen. Sorry about talking alot. Rich
We are still getting in or very near the low 90's here every day , but it feels differently now then in the early summer the air and sun fell different now they feel like fall is getting here and it is getting closer every day . It won't be long and people will be getting that old familiar urge to get out and do some hunting , the age old pursuit of game to get us through the harder times of the winter months . For those of us that hunt the coyote and other predators for fur it's going to be a while yet before they prime up , as we know they prime due to the length of the daylight not the temperatures , and at different times depending on what species they are . Red fox before coyote and bobcats after the coyote . A lot of us live in areas where the pelts aren't worth much , monetarily , just as a feeling of being able to get out and hunt something even if it's just killing time and challenging ourselves to see what we can do . I got out in the garage and turned myself a call out of Brazilin Ebony last week , soaked it in the wood stabilizer and am now putting the finishing coats of polyurethane on it . Even though I put it under a vacuum in the wood hardener it still took 3 days for me to feel comfortable that it was fully soaked through the wood . I wait at least 24 hours between coats of the polyurethane and it will get 3 as a minimum . I started learning with open reed calls and so most of mine are open reed calls . Now that I no longer do it as a job I don't own an E-call any longer I gave the last one I had to a younger guy that was starting out when I quit working at it as a job . For me now it's about enjoying my time in the field and the feeling it gives me to call an animal with something that I built . I let the ranchers sons-in-laws do the control work and have been known to go out with them to give them a hand at it when asked to and do my best to stay out of their way and they give me an area they don't want to work for me to go out and enjoy myself in . I'm down to calling on 30,000 acers now and that's plenty for me . It's an area that if I want to just go out and kill nothing but time it doesn't make any difference it's okay . I showed the ranchers that I worked for respect and they did me , I took good care of their property when I was out and about and have needed to call them at times when I found problems such as fences or gates down with stock in areas they weren't supposed to be . So now they allow me the opportunity to still get out and enjoy their property and the things that I have loved and lived with all of my life , may we all be able to enjoy what God has provided us with and show it the respect that it deserves .
25 years or so ago I was out working a pair of coyote with a den . It was early enough in the spring that they were still going to be in the hole . Buckwheat and I got the pair decoyed in and taken care of . They had come in from nearly 3/4 of a mile away . We moved in a little closer to the pups and I ran my siren they answered back and so I had a good location on them . They were on the neighbor's property but I had permission to be on him as well ( I had worked for him and his father - in - law when I was younger on their ranch) . So we went down crossed the fence and started walking the draw I figured them to be in . As we walked I saw a bunch of adult tracks going both up and down the draw . After awhile down the draw there was a lot of puppy tracks in the dry dirt in the draw and up on the south facing side of the draw a hole with well worn dirt and mashed down grass on the flat top of the draw as well as puppy scat scattered around . I covered the hole with my jacket then went back to my truck to get my things to take the puppies from the den hole , heavy leather gloves , 15 feet of barbed wire and some trap steaks as well as my tile spade . I already had my gun belt on as I seldom den hunted without it We got a drink of water and headed back to the den hole . I straightened the wire out laid it out and put three trap steaks on alternating sides of it to keep it from walking to the side as I twisted it clockwise ( you twist it clockwise so that it doesn't unwrap the lay of it ) made my crank by bending the wire with a Z one leg for each hand put a loop in the end of it and pushed it in the hole as far as I could then started cranking it and working it into the hole . soon it got hard to turn and I heard a puppy squeaking telling me I had a puppy tangled in my wire by the barbs . I pulled seven pups from that hole but the problem was they were all females very odd . I stood up and looked at the surrounding area and in the grass on top of the flat above the draw was a faint trail mashed down in the grass no more then three inch's wide . I followed it to the next draw and there on the southern face of the draw was a hole with mashed down grass on the top of the draw puppy tracks and scat around it . I moved my stuff over to this hole and took 6 puppies from that hole they were all males . I had seen before where the adults had the pups split up and in different holes but never had seen them separated by the sex of the pups before . I was visiting with the land owner the other night when he said you remember the split den you took on us years back , I do , well the boys took a den down those draws this spring where the pups were in three different holes we remembered you taking that den and looked at more then just one hole as we knew there was more then just a couple of pups that were in the first hole .
That is very interesting n I had never heard of that happening n it makes a person ponder why they do something like that
I have seen it several times and have thought about it over the years . When I have found larger litters I thought that maybe it might be because of the den being crowded and the hardship of nursing that many pups . With some of the dens only having 2 to 4 pups per hole I considered perhaps it was a survival instinct , if one den hole is taken maybe the remainder won't be found kind of thing . I have also found dens with 13 pups in the same hole having two distinct age groups . Then when the adults were taken there were two females one being older then the other and an adult male . Several times I have seen where an older pair would have a pup from last years litter help raise the new years litter and some times it will get bred . But then I have seen , seldom , where there would be two males and one female raising the years litter . In the area where I was working this den site there had been a guy in there a couple of years before that took a den with 12 pups in it and he had left 2 female pups and didn't try to take the older pair . He said that he figured that they might have larger litters due to genetics . When word got out as to what he had done I got called and he was released to find another job . So I don't know if that may have played a part in them being that way when I found that den . In my area in 1972 Nixon banned the use of poisoned baits to do predator control and the coyote are just in the last few years beginning to come to bait piles where people put them out to hunt over . I feel that they are taught by the adults to be cautious . They may not know why but they know not to from past generations . Coyote are an intelligent animal and show some interesting traits and abilities to learn . All in all it's an interesting occurrence and all I can do is make a guess as to why it is done .
I'm a firm believer in keeping a log on my hunting , calling and trapping . I have found over the years that it has helped me a bunch I can go back and find similar situations and see what I did to resolve them . I also then knew what was used at what location , at what time of the year as well as what the weather was like at the time . I have noticed that just the act of writing it down helps me with my recall . By doing this I have made some interesting observations . Like when the coyote numbers are higher they have fewer pups , we all know this but why is it happening . By looking at all of the things written down I noticed that there was less food base for each coyote they were compressed into smaller areas and they didn't have the layers of fat stored up like in the years where the numbers were lower . The health of the female wasn't as good thus I figured they didn't have larger litters . I also noticed that in years when the coyote numbers were lower but the prey base was lower they didn't have large litters . The coyote didn't have the stored layers of fat , they weren't as healthy either so I figured that they weren't as healthy and weren't able to have or keep larger litters of pups . This all applied to the other animals , bobcats , fox and even the rabbit populations . Maybe a thought that will be of use to someone else and that has been the goal of this post and I hope to continue to be able to help others in their quest of the predators . 
How many times a year does the average coyote hunter get out and hunt coyote ? Do they hunt during fur season mostly or throughout the year ? How much time is spent studying the intended animals we plan on hunting ? These are just a few questions I have been wondering about and think it would be interesting to hear some of you reply to . It's not a bad thing if you only get out once a year or just a few times because we all have our lives and families and the need to organize our lives accordingly and for the vast majority of people it's done as a way to relax and get a few minutes or hours to just enjoy it I think and that is for most what it is all about , like fishing or any other hunting we do .
Terry Lightle
Well-Known Member
2 to 3 times a week,starting mid Oct or so
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Brother Buckwheat
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- Jan 9, 2014
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At least once a month as time allows.
Straight Shooter
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Dave, I grew up in northeastern Montana. -25 with no wind made for a great day of calling. When I was growing up we didn't have coyotes but had a ton of fox. I was like you and grew up with a gun in my hand roaming the prairie. I hunted every weekend with my dad since I was nine years old until I left home at 18 and only saw one coyote. The 1080 really kept them down and as a kid I didn't know that was the reason. When they stop the 1080, two years later when I came home to hunt deer at Thanksgiving there were coyotes all over the place. I asked my dad what had happened and he just said he didn't know but the coyotes were all over the place. I was probably the first person to use a hand call in that county. In my old age, I like you, feel there is nothing better than going out sitting in the sage at the top of a large drainage and calling as the sun comes up and sit and listen to the geese and pheasants and coyotes and watch them and the deer as they go about their business. If nothing comes to my calling and the sun gets warm enough I just might fall asleep in the sage and take a nice nap. Life doesn't get any better than that.
DMP25-06
Well-Known Member
Straight Shooter ,
When my Dad and Brothers and I would go to New Mexico and Colorado , from 1973 - 2011 , the things that I enjoyed the most were sharing those trips with them , and the mornings that I sat on the mountainsides before dawn with the sky still dark . I would lay on my back looking into the sky , looking for the Orion Constellation (Orion was a Hunter , as witnessed by his arrow quiver which contains the Orion Nebula), and I would sit there quietly , listening to the sounds of Nature awakening , and just try to absorb the Beauty of the world around me .
That was my escape from the hectic strife of every-day life in the big city .
I was a Hunter , and yes , I hunted hard , but the most important things to me were sharing these outings with my Dad and Brothers .
The only thing that could have made those memories better would have been if my twin Sons could have been on those hunts with us , but they did not graduate college until 1998 , and then they got jobs , got married and started families of their own .
My sons finally got to hunt with my Brothers and me in a 2017 Wyoming Antelope hunt , but unfortunately my Dad had passed-away in 2009 .
My Sons did go with us on Pheasant hunts from 1983-2009 , and got the opportunity to hunt with their Grandfather for those years , but never had the opportunity to share a tent , and mountain hunt with Dad .
