It's always been interesting to me how hard that coyotes will work to decoy you away from their dens. With the country that I'm in being so open I have often gone out set up and did my interrogation howls during denning season knowing that I wasn't going to get them to howl back at me, just so that I could glass and see them setting on a hill or rise looking at me and then back at the den. Not really wanting them to come into me till they told me where their den was. I have at times known where the den was pretty much but gotten a little too close then howled just to have them bolt from the den and get out away from me in an open area to bark really shrill and do some high-pitched short howls and yodels doing kickbacks and just raising all kinds of a fuss trying to get me to follow them away from the pups. I can't count the number of coyotes that have given their lives to me trying to decoy me away from their pups, with or without the use of decoy dogs. Reading the sign and tracking then knowing what to say to them with a howler when you are close but not too close to the den, is about as good a day as you will ever have if you are talking about an adrenalin rush. The only rush better than that is having one jump off of a cut bank or a bolder and landing beside you.
Ramblings and Such From Hunting Coyote
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I went up to my uncle's ranch in Montana one time to take him and his son calling. I got set up in the edge of some pines on a large flat rock overlooking some rough draws, coming out of a flat pasture. I let out a few howls then waited, a coyote started running our way from out in the flat, got on a trail across a small draw and stopped just looking my way. I let go with a low howl and heard a shot from my uncle that was about six feet to my left and watched the coyote on the trail turn on the after burners and clear out. My uncle said I'm not so sure that I like this s608. I asked him why and he said well when you howled the last time a coyote jumped upon the rock in front of me, I think I got him but I'm not sure as all I could see was fur in the scope. Laying just over the edge of the rock was a dead coyote that I hadn't seen. It's been more then forty years ago that it happened, and my uncle is long gone but I still have good memories of those three days of hunting coyote with him in Montana.
trapper1954
Well-Known Member
Ya know back in 99 maybe 2000, the first time I went to the Mescalero calling contest they wouldn't let me hunt alone so they paired me with a young Indian who was their dude wrangler. Nice young man with a big hat, big feather and tall high top lace ups, strong sloping heal boots and big did I say big jingle bob spurs. I said man your gonna have to do somethin with those spurs for sure, ya know some of the serious cowboys never take their spurs off their boots ever. I introduced myself and he did also and from then on I shortened his name to Jr. Next mornin I had to go find him as he'd been out all night [young man ya know] and when he came out the house he was toten a Stevens bolt action 30-30 with a 4 power Bushnell scope, it was highly decorated if it had one brass tack in it it had 100. We went first to the south part of the res they called it the cattle raisers and dead man well, there he was showing me his great grandfathers abode so I decided we should try our first stand there and to go up on the hillside and give a locator howl. He hadn't ever seen a howler and this one was 6 or 8" long and made from a tipped corriente horn, so I explained the language as best I knew of it, told him I was going to say bad things about the answering coyotes family and see what happens and so I gave it a howl and went straight into a challenge. I got seven responses from seven directions and I told Jr lets spit up by 100 yards you watch the backdoor go down wind and stay high. We never saw a single coyote, they were aggressive enough that we should have killed something, probably winded us so we drifted off across the valley which was 1 mile of open grass and into the forest and onto a pack trail for the elk hunters. I was beginning to think that landscape ain't gonna work due to the underbrush but I found a spot in the tall pines about the size on an infield suitable and decided to make a stand. I had an open reed, small call I had made from an angora goat horn and I warmed it up gave in about a 10 second squeal and was getting my rifle situated a little closer to my leg when all of a sudden a coyote came in full bore jumping small pine saplings bearing down on us fast and Jr froze up on me, Mr. 4X scope absolutely couldn't move and I popped him at 16'. Jr apologized and said it was just too fast. Those contests were a ton of fun. After the Jr deal I decided to take my excellent shooter wife who had several coyotes under her belt and we did well out there, in the money more than once but let me tell all yall , if a woman is involved in something on that res and beats out the chief/braves,, your done, you will be bird dogged and find somebody will target practice no matter where you go on that 500,000 acres. Now I would like to touch on the howler I started with it came originally from a trapper in Wyoming I think and were pvc open reed and were 2 a male and female with red reeds and a cassette tutorial, most important. I jotted the sequences down on paper illustrated it like Morris code. Folks everything the coyote says means something and I think the same of the crow/raven language but the coyote might be the only one that knows what the crow said. Speakin of those things I need a new good crow call my good on fell out in the woods some years back I replaced it but it aint right. Anybody have experience with this type mouth call.
Bill Austins call of the wild, trapper 1954 . I visited with him when he lived in Rawlins, it's only a couple of hours away. He died of liver cancer several years back. The last crow calls I knew were any good were from Murry Burnham, at Burnham Brothers calls, but it has changed hands, so I don't know now. You might look at Premos and see what they offer, I don't make any of them.
Austin's calls were made out of sch 40 pvc pipe, the reeds were made out of plastic note book covers and held on with a lastorator band ( castrating band ) The tone board was 2" long on the female call and 2 1/8 " long on the male call the sound chamber was an inch long. he did make a puppy call as well out of smaller pvc pipe, but I liked the critter call standard better as a puppy call. I would drill a 3/16" hole in the sound chamber so that it was on the bottom of the call when in use so that I could push a loop from my lanyard through it and loop it back over the call to put my calls on the lanyard. I make my own lanyards from things I have around the house. A boot lace and double ferrels for making 3/32 " snares. When I was going through Rawlins one time, I stopped at a gas station looked his phone number up and called him he said sure come on over to the house and visit. We visited for a while as he made a couple of calls and ran a copy of his instructional tape for me. I don't remember what he charged for it all, but the visit was well worth the price of the calls and his tape, by itself. I still have them put up in my collection the bands have degraded as they were meant to but that's okay.
What a trap line dog can do for you. Walt is marking where a coyote had marked. A lot of the people that have been doing coyote work for a while will recognize the type of place, he is marking but people new to the job might not think about it as being a place that coyotes will mark. Notice that it's a small sage brush standing out of the rest behind it, It's also on the downwind side of a slight trail in the grass. Just up wind is a fence line that is woven wire with two strands of barbed wire on top of it and a dig under it. The coyotes have dug under it here and use it to cross from one pasture to the other. An ideal place for whatever you decide to use. Traps set at the backing bush they are marking, an M-44 set on that side of the trail nearby or a snare in the hole under the fence, all three even. If you look at the picture closely you can see the slight trail by the grass being gone and clear snow where Walts left feet are just inside of the trail.
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windypants
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I had an interesting experience this morning. I took a friend to a new ranch coyote hunting. We were just doing spot and stalk ridge-running when I saw a couple of coyotes napping in a little draw out of the wind. He isn't a long range shooter, so we moved up to a point about 150 yards from them. I could only see one after we got there and were too close to move around much, so I told him to take the shot and I would try to call the second one up with the coyote fight call afterwords. He looked and said it was gone. Dang! I knew we couldn't have spooked them and after looking for a bit, I decided to try the fight call to see if I could get them to pop up on the ridge across from us. He was watching over the top of a low rim rock and I was set up looking around the end of it. After a few seconds he voice barked and I turned to see a coyote coming at a dead run with its mouth open and teeth bared, in full attack mode! I yelled SH#$! and he swung his rifle and pulled the trigger at literally five feet! I saw fur fly as the turned and ran down the ridge as fast as it came, apparently only grazed. I guess I won't have the caller right beside me from now on.
We didn't get any coyotes this morning but had a blast!
We didn't get any coyotes this morning but had a blast!
Trapper1954, years ago I picked up a crow call while af the big Harrisburg PA sport show. It was made by Butskis game calls. I have no idea if they are still in business but it's the most realistic sounding crow call I've ever heard or used.
It's a blast isn't it. Perhaps a little less aggressive sounds in similar situations, something like mouse squeaks or cotton tail rabbit with lower volume at first when you know that you are that close. At a couple hundred yards lip squeaks would work but it is for sure an adrenalin rush when they do that to you, gotta love it a lot!!!!!!
I guessing that's the same one. I've had that call.for probably 25yrs or so. I was working a booth there and listened to him blow that call for several days just a couple aisles over and everytime swore there was one flying around the expo lol. Knew that was worth the purchase.
trapper1954
Well-Known Member
Thanks got it going in ebay
A Bill Austin female howler with a critter call standard on one of my homegrown lanyards. This is my standard set of calls when Denning. The howler does several different sounds when you have the time to play with it not just howls deer blats antelope blats rabbit squalls, injured coyote yelps, barks, ect. . The critter call standard is a versatile call as well, this one is probably 40 or more years old. It was a gift from an older den hunter that I was learning from. I put the reed that I liked the sound of that came with it as it had three reeds and two reed blocks, and the reed hasn't been changed since. When I'm denning, I might be out for most of the day and cover several miles walking so for me personally, I like to travel lite not carrying more than the essentials. But if you look at my truck it appears to be a real mess with a lot of things even a zip-lock bag with TP in it but everything has a use and a place.
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trapper1954
Well-Known Member
I was at at bi annual rendezvous in Uvalde once and had the honor of visiting with Gerald Stewart, Johnny Stewart's son. We sat out to ourselves under a mesquite tree and shared calling thoughts/show and tell. He asked me to demonstrate my junk and I did from my box of homemade horn/antler calls. He asked about my reeds and I said well this one is Dr. Pepper bottle, that ones water bottle and this ones milk jug and not ever side of a milk jug sounds the same either. He asked me to be a part of his demonstration later and I declined, some of those trappers may trap too close to me making my job harder. Me and a mentor named John Hamilton was asked by the Chamber to do a booth on predator control at a hunters extravaganza once and we wound up demonstrating the coyote howler technique on woai radio before the night was over. Back to Gerald, he later sent me a sheet of reed material which I use exclusively now with much success. I can call elk on my steer horn howler btw. these are calls.
