Ramblings and Such From Hunting Coyote

Some of us are a little O C D but that's ok it pays to look at the details when you are hunting coyote . There ain't no end to doing good . We have all and will continue to make mistakes at times that's all part of the learning process . Not a one of us is perfect even if we have to tell others that we think we are . I for sure have when it comes to coyote and what I try to help others avoid . It's when the same thing is done over and over with bad results that it gets frustrating but you have to let people learn at their own pace heck I'm not a fast learner but I'm not a no learner either . That's how so many of the things that I remember about hunting coyote came about I made a mistake and they taught me a lesson about it , I learned and went forward with it . For years I spent as many waking hours as I could learning about hunting coyote it interested me that much and today still I don't always realize that every one isn't that interested in them .
 
One nice fall day I was up on the mountain hunting coyote , as was normal for me to be doing . As I was walking along to make a stand I looked up on a pile of rocks and standing there looking at me was a coyote about 50 feet from me . I just sat down leaned my back on a pine tree and got curled up in my setting position for the shot . It just stood there looking me over like it hadn't ever seen a person before . Every move I made was slow and steady no rushing , fast , jerky movements . It was above me so I adjusted my hold accordingly and shot him he tumbled off of the rock and landed on the ground just in front of me his last mistake had been made and I was there when he made it so I took advantage of it . He wasn't the young of the year but he was only a yearling and most likely hadn't seen a person walking around up there where he had called his home all summer long .
 
I was up on the mountain one cool winter morning in late November . We didn't have any snow to amount to much yet and I was pulling my sets on a 20 mile loop through the mountains and was ten miles from any homes . I pulled to a stop got out of my truck gathered my stuff to pull two sets down in a small draw . As I walked to my first set I saw a bob cat setting looking at me . This set was empty so I stepped on it to trip it then went to the next which held a nice coyote . I dispatched it took it out of the trap and pulled the set went back to the first set and pulled it then took every thing to the truck loaded it in the back . The cat was still setting there just watching me so I got my rifle out of the truck and shot it too . I walked down picked it up and hauled it back to the truck as I was loading it in the back . A voice yelled at me Dave how are they looking fur wise now . My fur buyer was a guide up on this ranch and had been up in the rocks horse back with a client hunting elk when he heard my first shot then my second one on the cat so wondered who was shooting and what they were shooting so they road my way to investigate and he had yelled to let me know they were coming in from behind me . He looked them over and said he would be by on December 10th to buy them . You can't ever be sure that you are alone any place but I have spent a lot of days never seeing another person .
 
22 or 23 years ago I was listening to the sounds on a Foxpro caller that a guy had . As I got to playing them I realized several of the coyote and fox sounds were sounds that I already had on casette tapes from Johnny Stewart and Bill Austin just in a different format and called another name . It doesn't much make any difference where the sounds come from , you can record sounds in Texas of the coyote there and call coyote with them in New Jersey or record coyote in Pa. and still Call coyote in Az. . I don't think that coyote or fox have different accents like people do from different areas of the country .
 
I wonder if the Tom Austin with the foxpro team is related to the Bill Austin from Wy . Bill has been gone for a lot of years now but he was one of the first people that talked of the coyote language and marketed a coyote howler . Actually he had two howlers a male and female at first then a pup howler latter on . I still have one of the male howlers he made and if I looked hard enough I probably can dig up his instructional tape where he talked of the different sounds coyote make why and how . Now that guy was a wealth of coyote knowledge as was Vern Dorn , Bill Nelson and others that have passed on . There are still others out there that are as well like Craig O-Gorman and a few others they are all getting up in years now and have taken far more coyote then me . I only averaged 216 coyote a year for 36 years some years more some years less my best day was 19 called and killed , but I have had a lot of no coyote days also . I never counted the pups as coyote taken nor did I include the ones shot from the chopper as they were counted by the pilot as his take , he got paid per coyote also . I did once take 4 dens in one day when I was locating for the Gov. plane that averaged 7 pups per den , that was a long day starting before day break and ending after sunset with a lot of miles on my truck and feet . I liked to use my hand held howler to locate as so many of the other guys used the siren or group howls from their Foxpro callers and often the local coyote didn't want to talk for them any more . I kept changing my methods for taking coyote but they still nearly always fell to the sounds that Bill Austin had taught me as well as the sounds that the coyote them selves taught me . Some of the best scents for trapping that I found over the years for trapping were wily red 500 from Hawbecker and set freshener #6 from O Gorman and not a lot of it per set a small drop on a cotton ball with a wire pushed through it so it could be held in place made a scent holder and sight attraction . I have on trap educated coyote used a small cow pie as both put near a small sage brush backing on the up wind side of a cow trail maybe up to 5 feet from the trail . I also have used just blood from another coyote as lure for trap shy coyote and at times the back end parts of a coyote as a small tuft of fur and scent after I had skinned them out , it seemed to work best if it was a coyote from that area as they knew it's smell . The size of your imagination is your limiting factor as well as your desire to study and learn from them when it comes to animals they know more about them selves and others of their own kind then any body else does .
 
Speaking of Randy Anderson. Does anyone know if he is still making videos. Or how he is doing? Really enjoyed is video's missing I think 2-3 videos unless he has more.
 
I don't know for sure but there were around 10 in total with the ones he did for Primos . Quite entertaining one of them was where I first saw Rick Pallit of lucky duck calls . Those calls kind of resemble the ones that Randy Anderson was helping work on with Primos . In one of his first videos he was in my part of the world and had Tal Lockwood of Tally-Ho calls with him he mentioned two brother that flew helicopters hunting coyote in that area I worked for those two brothers on the ground and gunning from the choppers for them .
 
I took the time and looked him up . He closed his web site but said he still hunts on his last ad . He said that there were 12 videos made for Primos ( tell the truth videos ) 3 videos called hunting all coyote and 2 made called the verminators with Rick Pallit . On his ad he also is starting to show his age .
 
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