Ramblings and Such From Hunting Coyote
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If you get a chance let me know how much quieter it is with the cover on.
Yes I set up the barrel in the lathe and dial in the section where the throat is , drill out most of the chamber, under sized, bore the end of the chamber at the same angle as the cartridge.
I'm still learning.
Hal
Yes I set up the barrel in the lathe and dial in the section where the throat is , drill out most of the chamber, under sized, bore the end of the chamber at the same angle as the cartridge.
I'm still learning.
Hal
Between 8500 and 9000 feet, the temperature was in the mid 50's, the clouds were low with some at around 10,000. It doesn't matter who you are or how you do it coyote hunting up there is hard work. The last picture shows a fire with the smoke rising. The fire was at 6000 feet but I have hunted that country before too and it's pretty rough with a lot of buck brush and creosote brush, both having some major thorns. The sage brush in that part of the world is the short sage brush running around a foot tall but really thick if it has been over grazed, with a couple of different types of cactuses and a ton of rattle snakes. I never saw one rabbit the whole day, a few deer and antelope. There are a couple of lakes up there that they used to process arsenic from just before World War two, aptly named poison lake. A person really should have their well water tested in this state! A lot of people have high levels of arsenic, uranium and other heavy metals in this area. This was July 6th, 2023.
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Here nearly all of the coyote pups are out of the den holes and camping in the sage brush with the adults at this time of year. They are at least 3/4 grown now and are learning some of the hunting techniques that they will need later in the fall as they start to disperse and live on their own while looking for a territory of their own. I have watched them learning to mouse and hunt grasshoppers it's pretty interesting. They are still awkward and kind of clumsy at this point in their lives. To watch them as they turn their heads to one side then the other as they learn to pinpoint their intended target then gather up and pounce on it. Windypants have you been able to watch your litters of pups moving around with the parents and doing their playful hunting? In the mornings and evenings, you should now be hearing their group howls. Bill Austin had a cassette tape of them he called sunrise serenade. Fox Pro had one that was identical to it they called a group howl. This is the time of year that when you have killing being done you can listen for them in the mornings and then slip in to where they are and find the adults and pups. It's also the time when I was starting to place snares for the killers get the adults killed and call the pups in their camping areas. Two short half-length howls and two quick sharp barks, sounding like mom looking for the kids after a night out, hay you guys I'm over here where are you, or honey I'm home. I have listened to the female doing this every few minutes for an hour after I took her male and the pups. Then imitate him or a pup and get her to come into me. I let her get kind of excited and wanting somebody to answer her, so she responded better. Especially important if you have killed one or both of the adults, if you got the male try to sound like him if you killed the female try to sound like her, so the other adult wants to join the pups also. I like to sound like a female coyote at this time and not be overly aggressive so that they will want to show themselves and come to me. When you have taken the female and are needing to take the pups for me it was necessary to know how many pups I was looking for, so looking at her uterus she will still have some small purplish lumps each lump telling you there was a pup born. It's not as much about hunting for fun at this time of year as it is about stopping killing of livestock for me but if I didn't enjoy the job, I wouldn't have done it for so many years, it's a challenge now as always and you need to change how you are doing things to meet the ways they are acting at this time. Don't burn them out on what you will be wanting to use at a later time. I change with the seasons as they do. For instance, when I need to use M-44's at this time of year I know that it's mostly pups I'm trying for and that they will be eating grasshoppers a lot. So I get my net out drive through the yellow clover, put them in a blinder, add a little lanolin or glycerin so they don't dry out and use them on my tops for the pups. The coyotes evolve as we should. Watch them and evolve with them, they change with the seasons and their age or exposure to things, don't be the guy setting there going my coyotes are wise to this or that and not changing your ways, I have been as guilty as anyone of becoming stagnated.
windypants
Well-Known Member
I haven't seen these pups leave the den area with the parents yet. They are spending a lot of time in the mornings and evenings playing and wrestling with each other. I don't know if they are being cautious or if I'm not close enough, but I haven't heard any vocalizations from the den sights. The only thing I've heard is some alarm howls and barks from a patch of brush the other day, but not near a known den. I haven't been at the den I can get near when one of the adults has returned to hear the greeting. I'm swathing hay for my brother right now, so I don't have a lot of time to spend coyote watching for another week or so. I really hope I can hear them talking soon.
When you talk of sagebrush camping, does that mean little excursions from the den and back, or have they left permanently? Or are they just sleeping outside and not in the den?
When you talk of sagebrush camping, does that mean little excursions from the den and back, or have they left permanently? Or are they just sleeping outside and not in the den?
Sagebrush camping is when they have left the den and are traveling with the parents, they are done with the den. In my area they move closer to the food source if it's lambs. Many times, when the parents are picking a denning area, it isn't in the same pasture as the sheep, but then the sheep are moved from pasture-to-pasture according to the amount of available grass. Ranchers here tend to use the same pastures for lambing year after year. then move to the same pasture, close to the lambing pasture, when they dock that they used in the past. Here lambing is generally started around May 12th. Docking is started the first week in June, docking is like ringing the dinner bell, a lot of sheep and lambs bawling to find each other and pair up, the smell of blood from cutting the tails off and castrating the male lambs.
windypants
Well-Known Member
I checked the other den this morning. No sign of them so they must have gone camping. They are a little older than the ones I see from the house.
It's been kind of busy the last couple of weeks, I finally got my brass prepped and loaded. I should get my barrel tuner threaded tomorrow. Then if it's not in the 80's and 90's maybe I can get out to do some testing with it, otherwise I will wait till the next day. It's a good thing that I'm not rushing around anymore and can take my time to do things. If I were to make a guess, I would say that the younger ones were from a younger female as that is what I have noticed in the past that the older females cycle earlier then the younger ones do.
I visited with one of the ranchers that I used to work for today. The predator control guy he has working for him now has taken 18 coyotes this summer on him, 14 of which were males, 4 were females and not one of them were bred. He was telling me he hasn't seen any rabbits but has a lot of Richards ground squirrels. The bear numbers are up as are the mountain lion numbers. He has not had very many elk, deer or antelope up at his place on the mountain at 9000 feet as they are all staying down low on their winter range this year with herds of up to 200 still down around 5500 to 6000 feet. It has been a very odd year weather wise, and the wildlife are reacting to it in different ways than normal.
Okay there was no point of impact change with the sound redirection tube. There was a noticeable reduction of noise especially to the side or if you were shooting near a cut bank, the berm, or had other things to your side and for people near you. We had wind gusts of 20 mph so I will try it again for testing the barrel tuner. Still a little under 3/4 of an inch today at 100 yards, the temp was in the low to mid 80's by 9:00 A.M., with bright sunshine and 70 percent humidity.
Several years ago I was out with the new guy on a call where they had lambs being killed. he had used his siren to try to locate the offenders, and had flown but hadn't gotten them, so he called me to see if I could come over and give him a hand. We got to the area, parked my truck behind a ridge then walked to the back side of it sat down and I told him we would just set and listen for a while. After around 20 minutes the pups started to howl and do their kiyi's. They were down a draw and around a bend where a finger of a low ridge ran down to the draw, the bottom of the draw was all course sand but was good for tracking. I answered their howls and had an old male reply. He showed up on the low ridge talked a little then got quiet. I talked at him and saw him come down the ridge toward us. I never said another word to him and watched as he ran toward us, at around 100 yards he stopped the new guy dropped him. I got my 4-wheeler off the truck and we went down the bottom of the draw around the bend, up the sandy bottom there in the sand was a lot of puppy tracks and a well-worn bank with the den hole near the top of the bank on the sunny south side of it. Out of the bottom was a flat place with some tall sage brush around 3 feet tall. I got my stuff off of the 4-wheeler to take the den when the new guy yelled at me there in the brush get your shot gun for me. I unstrapped the shotgun, and he grabbed it then took off with my 4-wheeler and shotgun, she ran a way then he stopped and shot her, wounding her but did run her down and finish her. We got 6 pups from that den; they were only about 10 inches tall at the shoulder and were just starting to turn tan.
Windypants; have you finished making hay? I always enjoyed swathing, watching for the fawns, rabbit nests and bird nests in the first few pass's. The opening cut near any trees presented the most problems hidden limbs that had fallen in the hay, or the fawns hidden in the shade of them. It's been a lot of years since I've mowed hay or swathed it. Slower life back then, we didn't have cabs or air-conditioning. Hot and sunny in the summer then cold, windy and snowy in the winter during the feeding season. Here at this time the coyote pups are growing and learning becoming the hunters they are going to be. With our hot weather they are laying up during the day in the shade and close to some water, digging to find some cool moist soil to lay in. I had been called to see if I could get a coyote that had been killing lambs near an interstate highway several years ago. I went out and found a few kills and found that the tracks of an older male. I tracked him back to where he was going under the interstate in a large culvert, It was about 2 miles traveling to get on the other side of the interstate highway and into the pasture he was going to and from. The culvert came out in some pretty rough country that had a high voltage power transmission line with a road running through it. I had used this road several times to get through the badlands from one pasture to the next two pastures hunting and trapping coyote. I then knew that there was only one watering hole with a spring in the area where he had headed to. I drove down this road till I was about an 1/8 of a mile from the watering hole parked my truck got my calls and rifle out then slipped along the road, down a hill with a cut bank that was close to ten feet high to my left side the same side that the watering hole was on. Near the bottom of the hill, I started to round the cut bank following a cow trail where I intended to make a stand in the shade of the cut bank with the sun to my back. As I slipped around the corner and was getting ready to make my setup, there laying in the shade of a willow tree in the edge of the watering hole lay the old coyote cooling off. Sometimes it's really nice to be lucky!!!! The dogs in our lives act a lot like coyotes do after all they are cousins and have similar personalities. How many time I have been out in the summer came to a watering hole and had my dog lay in the edge of it to get a drink and cool off.
