Coyotehunter.net

A buddy and I headed out Saturday morning to see if we could find some yotes this weekend. We got to our destination at about 10:00 or so, and made our first stand around 10:30. My buddy is in to dogging coyotes, and I've never seen this done before 1st hand, so I was pretty excited for the hunt. We sat on stand for about 20-25 minutes and before we saw one slinking through some tall grass about 1/2 mile off. The wind was about 5 mph from the west/northwest and we were calling east, so the wind wasn't great, but that's just how we had to work the land. I was using my Ki-Yi doing some rabbit distress, but the coyote seemed to have gotten hung up in a dip about 500 yrds. out or so. While the coyote was in the dip, my hunting partner switched from shooting sticks to lying prone with a bipod. I switched to the PC2 and after awhile the coyote pops over a hill about 250 yards off. I knew my friend was all set up for the shot, so he took it. His first shot missed, just a little high we figure, but with 2 dogs crawling on your back playing, that'd be a tough shot for anyone! His second shot connected and the yote spun for a bit then layed down--dead. 35 min. and 1 dog down! She had some mange on her, so we left her there. She also had some sort of yellow-white fungus or warts on her lips and gums. Anyone else ever seen that?

On our second stand my hunting partner was calling upwind of me and I was on top of a hill watching our backside and a draw on each side of me. After about 15-20 min. of calling, my buddy gets up and starts walking toward me. Little did he know that for the past 5 min. or so I had been watching three coyotes coming in from about 3/4 mile out; so I signal him to sit back down and keep calling. After a few minutes I see two heads peaking around a soap-weed about 50 yards away from me. I get one in my sights and pull the trigger. CLICK. What's going on?! I swear I put a shell in the chamber I pull back the bolt thing (my first time shooting a Colt AR-15) and a shell pops out. SO, there WAS a shell in the chamber, maybe it was just a bad primer. In the mean time, the three coyotes actually came in CLOSER to me at an angle, stopping every so often to give me a shot. Turns out, the gun I borrowed from my friend was gummed up from the cold and wouldn't fire right. He doesn't oil his guns, so try to figure out how it gummed up Aw well, there were no shots fired, so we decided to try to chase them down on our next stand. The next stand didn't produce any of the coyotes he had seen a few minutes prior.

Two stands after that, we get set up looking over a huge tract of land. My hunting buddy howls a couple of times, and gets 3-4 in a pack to howl back. Nothing showed up for that stand, so off to the next stand we go! We take a quick break on the side of a hill to catch our breath, and my friend see's a coyote laying down with his/her head up 250-350 yards away. He tries to tell me where it's at, but I can't find it. I trade back guns with him so he has the working gun. He takes the shot and kills it. We go in for the un-armed retrieval, and we get there and the coyote is still breathing. Here we are with no gun and a coyote still kickin'. Standing on her chest worked out pretty well. This one had big hole in the top/back part of her neck from the shot and had mange, so we left her there. A couple fruitless stands later and we're back at a friend's house eating some homemade vegetable-hamburger soup. Good stuff!

The next mornin' we head out around 8:30. The first two stands produce nothing, but the third stand got really interesting. It had been about 20 minutes and we were about ready to pack out to our next stand. My buddy lip-squeaks me and motions head out. Just as I'm getting ready to stand up he lip-squeaks me again and says there's some waaay up on a hill across from us. We were almost at the bottom of a small creek-eroded valley and to the top of the hill where the coyotes were was 1000+ yards. I do my best at a cotton-tail distress on my howler and here come those FOUR coyotes RUNNING down the hill! They probably saw my friend's dogs after I got their attention with the rabbit call, so they were coming HARD. We sit and watch the coyotes run to withing 250-300 yards and then the dogs took off after them. The dogs only ran about 25 yards or so and stopped, and the coyotes took off up a slough. I've never hunted coyotes with dogs before, so I was bummed out that all the coyotes ran off. One of them booked it back up the hill we saw them run down moments before. A couple seconds later, I spy a coyote peaking it's head over a small hill. My friend had been lip-squeaking this whole time, trying to get the coyotes to come back and give us another look. I get this coyote in my cross-hairs and pull the trigger. BOOM! the AR-15 worked today, but I must have pulled the trigger instead of squeezing or been shaky or something. It's hard shooting a gun you haven't shot more than 7 rounds through. After I shot, my friend shot one that was headed back up the hill and dropped it. We got up to it and it was nice looking. About a 2 year old male. We found a fence post and skinned him out. I had a test today to study for, so we headed back to the pickup (which was stuck and took some effort to pull out ) and headed home. All together over about 24 hours we saw 9 coyotes and shot 3. What a weekend!

Do you think the one coyote of those four that headed up the hill right away might have been a female?

good job guy's shooter, you need to get a gun and stick with it !!!!!

good job u 2 shooter what is up with u and the gun thing 30-06 7mm mag another mans gun u need me to buy u a gun or what lol

Holy hell you had a good weekend! How far do you have to drive outta town to get to good hunting land? You see a lot of yotes with mange?

tough break with the miss firing gun but sounds like you had fun and learned a few things

snareit wrote:good job u 2 shooter what is up with u and the gun thing 30-06 7mm mag another mans gun u need me to buy u a gun or what lol

Haha I know. The .30-06 is all I've got to work with that I own, unless I want to go down to a .22 lr semi-auto with open sights. The 7mm I just didn't know how bad it would be on fur (this same hunting buddy really likes shooting a 6mm so I thought they might be close to the same). You sure can buy me a gun if you're so inclined

yipyipyow wrote:Holy hell you had a good weekend! How far do you have to drive outta town to get to good hunting land? You see a lot of yotes with mange?

We had about a 2.5 hour drive. Definitely worth it though 2 out of the 3 that we shot had mange on the back of the neck. The hair on the scruff of the neck was only about 1/2" long on both of them.

shooter, forget the hides for now. you've been putting in alot of time and hard work for the few oppurtunitys you've had. shoot that 06 if you shoot it well and get some coyotes on the ground. just my .02

Good job. I agree with bucks and snareit on this one, get a gun and stick with it. I would leave the dogs at home right now. The coyote that ran off was probably a young dog that was intimidated by them. That is my un=professional opinion.

1 shooter what is your wish gun talk to me

I really think you should be leaving the dogs at home. Most guys I know who use dogs this time of year have no idea what the purpose of the dogs is even for and do not have trained dogs. They are for denning....................You will screw up more coyotes then you will get useing dogs this time of year. Great story, glad to see you are haveing some success calling them in. sounds like you have the bug bad. Pick a gun out and practice, practice, practice. You don't need dogs to kill coyotes............just a accurate gun you have confidence in. Keep up the good work.

I am new to this web site stuff. I don't understand how dogs can screw up coyotes when people are howling 24hrs a day, coyotes come in to investigate the howl, and there is nothing there. The coyotes expect to find other coyotes. I also don't understand if dogs ruin so many coyotes how come they don't allow any dogs in any tournaments? My understanding if dogs ruin the hunt it would be wise to allow them in the tournament because the guys that don't have dogs would do better. And it is also confusing with all these coyote decoys out there what is the difference between them and a dog? As far as you guys, telling this young guy that his buddy shouldn't use dogs, you have no idea how his dogs are so what message are you sending to novices hunters on this website? So you are just assuming and you know what that means. There are lots of videos out there using dogs at any time of the year! The dogs this guy was using are not pups anymore they are over a year old. They are breeding and looking for their den sites that means they are running out any intruder-dog or coyote. And what I get out his story, if his partner's gun was shooting well he should have picked up one or two coyotes out of that set. Also, out of the group of four, he could picked up one more that would have been 6 coyotes out of 9 with dogs. Not a bad day at all.

Holy crap I do not know where to even start........3rd post and you are going to get right into it............first off I do coyote control work for a living. So if I make a comment on dogs it is not without some knowledge on how it works. I say to not use dogs this time of year because it will cost you coyotes in the long run. I run dogs all year on my line..........not all year on calling stands. You don't use dogs in tournaments: that means coursing dogs and hounds mainly. Dogs on stand this time of year will scare off a lot of transient and young of the year coyotes. You may get a breeding pair to come in but with no den site they will usely get bored and or your dogs will blow them out of the the stand. It is to early for them to be putting up den locations, give it another month or so. As far as his dogs being a year old or so that has nothing to do with nothing. coyote decoys...............they are stationary.......and I would not use one before january 1st if I was to ever use one at all. Which I wouldn't.

Give up some of that popcorn Tbush. I totally agree with your little attachment. Just couldnt Quote it.