The good looking furry one is the Coyote!
It all started when I was surfing the web and found the site
predatormaster.com . That’s when I noticed a hunter by the name of Dan Mead who lived in Laramie, just over the pass from me in Cheyenne. I emailed him and he was nice enough to invite me to go Coyote hunting with him.
We went out on Tuesday (December 7th) morning before daylight. Dan took me to a stand (Pole Mountain, approximately 8000 feet) that he had previously taken Coyotes before. Trying to walk through the deep snow with 40+ mile per hour winds and 20 degree temp (without the wind chill factor) had me seriously wondering about my sanity, say nothing about my IQ.
We hiked in about 500 yards or so and setup near the top of a ravine looking down with the wind in our face. After getting setup Dan commenced calling with his mouth call. Not 5 minutes into his calling I noticed movement coming from the bottom of the ravine about a hundred yards where the sage brush ended. No sooner had I noticed him than he was on top of us, running full bore past me, straight at Dan. He was running so fast that he completely took me by surprise. If Dan hadn’t barked the Coyote would have literally ran him over. (We measured and the Coyote had stopped less than a foot from Dan!).
I don’t know who was more surprised, us or the Coyote. Dan’s 22 rifle jammed so he couldn’t get a shot off (I thought he was showing off to see how close he could get the Coyote in!). The Coyote than ran sideways up the side of the hill looking back at us wondering what had just happened. Just as he got to the top of the hill Dan called again and the Coyote stopped at about 40 yds. Mistake! I sent a 140 gr. Barnes XLC from my XP-100, 7mm IHMSA and rolled him, literally.
After congratulating each other, Dan for his excellent calling and me for shooting the Coyote, he asked me why I didn't shoot sooner? I told him I thought he was going to, but was going to wait and shoot him from his lap. He said "I like them close, but not that close!".
I was definitely hooked on calling in Coyotes, wind or no wind.
Funny, it wasn’t that cold either.