Airedale56
Well-Known Member
You said "Whales", Dave.
I couldn't help myself.
Do not say "Airedales".
Ramblings and Such From Hunting Coyote
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You said "Whales", Dave.
I couldn't help myself.
Do not say "Airedales".
Airedale56
Well-Known Member
Today the wind isn't blowing at this time, it was earlier when it was only 80 degrees but since it reached 100 it stopped blowing. I saw a couple of antelope fawns today standing by the road where their mom was laying hit by a vehicle, they were a little drawn but eating grass if they don't get hit, they should make it. So much of the grass is cured now except where it is close to water, and where there is shade or out of the wind. Calling is still not very easy here with the wind and heat, we have even been windy at night. Getting in the rough country and where the animals are going are your best chances. knowing where the water sources are and where the shade and cooler places will be are very important at this time as well. Early mornings here when it is still cool and light enough to see well before the sun gets very high helps your chances getting closer to where they seem to want to be is even more to your advantage at this time, keeping yourself out of the bright sunshine and in shade or shadows is important now more than at other times but is always important. Watching the other animals to see what, when and where they are plays a huge roll now in finding where you will want to make your sets for calling or any of the other methods we use in our quest of predators. It's the time of year that when you are snaring or trapping the animals will die pretty quickly and start to smell bad in just a couple of hours. I've checked my stuff one day and gotten called and chewed on the next day by a guy that thought I wasn't checking often enough. You couldn't have that coyote is all swelled up and stinking! Let me see now it's 100 F it's in the sun, it was hot from jumping around and over the fence. If you shot one this morning it would be swelling up and smelling before noon, wouldn't it? I knew the guy and that he always jumped to conclusions before he thought it through very well, he calmed down thought about it and said well maybe, about as close as he would ever get to admitting that he might be mistaken about anything. I love spell check even when it changes my words to some other word for me when I'm texting my sister, or I choose the wrong spelling it offers me. Out of five sisters and two brothers I only talk to my youngest sister very often, she was the one that helped me with Mom when she got sick. She hadn't known me before very well as I had left home soon after she was born and didn't go back very often.
The forecast for the next few days is 100 F and windy. They are predicting wind gusts of 25 mph and some higher. In a few days they say we are to return to average temperatures. With the temperatures being hot and dry this is a hard time for anyone and any of the animals will be stressed as well. It's a hard time for the control guys to get their target problem animals but it can and does get done adapt like the animals we are pursuing, drink plenty of water and work when it's cooler like the animals do is my preferred way. The moon is going to rise this afternoon around 1:00 P.M. here, and our hottest part of the day will be after 2:00 P.M... Being higher in altitude and with drier air we will cool off starting after sunset most days. I have been seeing the animals grouped up and fighting the flies for most of the day finding them close to water and shade where they can find it. Several years ago, I was looking for an old male that was crossing an interstate highway, to kill lambs then he would go back across it into some badlands, there was only one place in them that I knew there was water, a small spring that seeped into a gumbo draw and had a few small pools. I knew there was an old rough power line road that ran close to the spring, so I made my way along it hid my truck and slipped along the road got to the edge of the draw and had a large cut bank with a cow trail leading down to the spring. It was late in the morning and was already near 90 as I slipped close and looked around a corner of the tall cut bank and down the draw to the spring and a water hole. there laying in some water and the shade of a willow tree was the old male at around 75 yards he never knew that I was there. Tracking, knowing my area, luck and being quiet made for a successful job that day. For me so many times in the heat of summer knowing where the water is has made my life easier doing some foot work, tracking and figuring the animal out the ambushing them while they were completely unaware of my presence, like windypants does, only I stalked into closer ranges, mainly because I was using an older Winchester model 70 chambered in 223, running 55 grain Sierra BTHP's running 2900 feet per second MV. I bought it on sale for 225.00 bedded it with pillars and put a Timney trigger set at 2.5 pounds. Mounted a good 3x9 scope with Redfield two-part rings properly aligned. The scope and rings cost more than the rifle did. I studied that rifle and rounds paired and decided that the barrel was a little long for it and that twenty inches would be the length I would cut it to and crown it with a recessed flat crown. It still today will hold a half inch group at 100 yards from a sitting position the way I was taught to shoot in the field. We all hope that each and every one of us takes the precautions that we need to in this hot weather stay safe and healthy all!!!!
338jedaw
Active Member
Awesome stories
Thank You, I actually did them while doing control work for sheep producers. When you work at it almost every day of the year you get a lot of exposure to things that the average coyote hunter doesn't mainly because you get a lifetime of the average hunter's time in the field in a couple of years or less. the ranchers can't afford for you not to produce results so if you don't, they will find someone else that will. I took it seriously and took maybe 15 days a year off from hunting coyotes for over 25 years. I am still given a quarter or half a beef every year from one of the ranches that I worked for, for over 35 years. Grass fed no hormones beef that you can tell just by the smell that it is going to taste like no other beef you could buy. Yes, I and my wife are spoiled by good beef!!!
This morning it is cooler and not much of a breeze, 5 mph with gusts to 10 mph. It's pretty smokie a person can smell it as well as see it in the air. I have seen herds of animals roaming on this type of day trying to keep ahead of the fire even though it's not even close to us. Smoke just makes them more edgy, and on alert, especially the predators it seems. We are to be about 10 degrees cooler today and for the rest of the week with highs near 90 degrees. That doesn't seem like much but when it's been 100 it sure feels like a lot the same as when it's cold 10 degrees one way or the other can feel like a lot at 20 degrees it means the difference between melting and really cold. In the cold the animals will be on the south facing hillsides but when it's hot, like it has been they will be on the north facing hillsides and in the deep draws with scrub trees and brush out of the sun and wind. Even if you aren't looking to kill predators at this time tracking them, spotting for them and observing them will teach you a lot about them. I have found in some draws where they will dig at the bottom of cut banks for damp cooler soil to keep cooled off in the shade of the cut banks and have seen even the older coyotes go underground in a hole during the long hot days. The people that told me older coyotes don't go in holes were maybe mistaken as I have seen it being done in this type of weather. They are like us in that they don't like being overly hot or cold. Here in the winter, it can stay below freezing but you can find snow melting on the south facing hill sides in the sun out of the wind and the animals know that. in the hot summer weather, you can find shade and cooler damp ground on the north facing hill sides and some springs seeping in the bottoms of some of the draws and the animals will know of these places and you will do well by yourself to as well. Here you can set on a higher hill and glass the area and find the green places even down in the deeper draws you will be able to see them as well you will see the animal trails going to them. Here it cools off most nights and the humidity goes up, not much by comparison to other places we were at 42 percent humidity this morning and will be in the teens by afternoon. Even if it doesn't cool off a lot just being out of the sun helps you keep cooler, and the animals take advantage of it as well as lower light for seeing but we all know this as they do and take advantage of it also by having our traps and snares set if we have predator problems to take care of. We can't be out there as much as they are but our well placed and maintained equipment can be and that is why we use it to our advantage. Well placed and well maintained is the key to it, we can't allow ourselves to be lax at keeping our equipment up no matter if it's hot or if it's cold!! That is one of the ways we keep a good profile of ourselves or one of the ways we can give our way of life a black eye and cause us to lose even more of our tools that we use for predator control. As the old saying goes one bad apple will spoil the whole barrel. Take a little time to think about what happens if I do this instead of this it might make a huge difference to the outcome and to someone else that can cause you a huge pain in your backside. Okay I'm done stumping for today. Take care and be careful in this weather, the hot can be just as deadly as the cold!!!!
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I was out one morning and saw a coyote jumping around in a snare caught by his midsection, the snare lock hadn't closed as fast as it should have. It wasn't my equipment, but I shot it anyway and left it there, a couple of days later just down the fence was a ewe caught dead in another snare. Again, I left them alone several weeks went by and they were still laying where they had been. In another fence I saw a coyote hanging dead, so I watched it, I first saw it in March, in June a rancher called me and asked me when I was going to take the coyote out of the boundary fence. I explained that it wasn't my snare and who's it was. He called his neighbor and told him that he had me take his trappers coyote out of the fence that it had been there awhile. His trapper got mad and told him it hadn't been there as long as he was told it had been I got called by the neighbor and cussed out for stirring sh08 and lying about his trapper and told that I was under no circumstances to ever put a snare in the boundary fences that bordered him. A few weeks later I was at a board meeting and one of the ranchers started yelling at me about causing his trapper trouble as the area supervisor had chewed him out for smoking in his work truck. I had never been in his truck, but he blamed it on me and said it was me that had smoked in his truck, I had stopped smoking by then any way. In the next year we had a lot of changes made to the regulations concerning snaring and fence lines. Then I was out and found several m-44's that hadn't been checked or picked up and got a call from another guy who asked me if I had some of his m-44's and some of his foot hold traps. No, I don't if you remember back, you borrowed some of mine and some of my traps and never returned them. That's why you are supposed to keep a listing and logs of placements and checks, why do you think that I called you and asked you about finding some m-44's laying in the road or one that a coyote had dropped when I snared it. No, I am not perfect, but I try to do the best that I can not to cause problems. My job was to eliminate problem not create them. It is things like this that cause all of us to lose some of the things that we use to our advantage in our line of work. I ran into a guy the other day that I had worked with he said you probably wouldn't like me now, I'm the safety guy, I said you know what that's mostly a thankless job I don't envy you at all, but we need you guys every one of the safety guidelines we have, and all of the laws have been written in someone's blood. So, then my friend called me and said with all of the butt heads running around now I see why you went ahead and retired, you don't have to struggle with that kind of stuff now. Most of the guys that I used to work with have retired or gone on to other jobs now, and a lot of the problem children have been told to move on to other horizons, but the damage they caused is still there for others to deal with sadly. I lied in the previous post I wasn't done stumping, but I am now lol yes I do preach to the people that already know.
The prairie is mostly brown and dried out now with only a few places that have any green left. Today around 2:35 I noticed a few antelope and deer venturing out to start feeding, the temperature was in the upper 80's nearing 90 with winds gusting to 25 mph. I checked to see when moon rise was it was supposed to be at 5:45 P.M.. I noticed that by 4:30 even the cows were out feeding where they were gathered by the water holes fighting the flies earlier in the day. Smoke and hot dry winds are still a problem and with the grass and other plants drying out so is the fire hazard.
Today's weather was a little different than we normally have here. We got to 103 degrees F, had 10 mph wind with gusts of 20 mph. The humidity was at 10 percent so the fire hazard is high, no open fires, smoking should be limited and not done outside, care should be taken when you are driving vehicles in and around dried grasses and weeds. The air quality is poor with all of the smoke from the wildfires. There are advisories for people with existing health conditions. People with heart conditions or lung conditions are asked to remain indoors as much as possible and when they do go outside to not overexert themselves, like in the extreme cold and snowy weather, to exercise caution and some common sense when you have to shovel your snowy sidewalks and driveways, don't get crazy and overdo it in the heat and poor air quality. We usually have around 19 percent oxygen at our altitude and are considered high altitude workers here then when you add high temperatures, it's hard on you when you are working or walking climbing in and out of draws. If you need to fly it's hard to get the proper lift after it heats up, but the early mornings are when you want to hunt the troublemakers from the air any way. nighttime if you are calling them. Well placed snares do good at this time, anything that uses any lure or bait tends to dry out fast, we talked earlier about having them set up so as not dry out as fast. Proper placement is essential at this time getting close to where they are living and near water holes they are using. Here they like ceder breaks, draws and near creeks and willow breaks where it is easy to find shade, water, cooler temperatures, and moist soil to cool down with.
A few years back I worked a ranch that had some rough country with deep draws and ceder breaks that always held coyotes at all seasons of the year. The ranchers didn't use that pasture much because they said it didn't have good water in it. There was a couple of reservoirs that dried up during the warmer months. After the first denning season I told them you have a spring in this draw and at one time it had been developed and there was a pipe with holes drilled in it to supply water to a hole dug in the bottom of the draw up by the spring. How would you know that one of them asked me the older brother said haven't you seen him calling coyote and his truck no place around, he walks all over he probably walked in there where we don't even ride a horse. I smiled and said that's how I know where it is but if you get to looking close there is an old two track road that goes up the ridge south of the draws and rough ceder breaks to within about two hundred yards of it. when you go up the ridge you will get to where there is a tall dead pine tree on a small hill and the spring is at the bottom of the draw by the tree. They hired a geologist who studied the country and told them that yes, they could develop the spring but if they would drill a well here at this depth, they could hit water according to his equipment from the same aquafer downhill about a quarter of a mile and in a place that the livestock could access easily they drilled and hit an artesian well.
I was visiting a friend the other day and ended up with a Remington SPS tactical chambered in 308 with a bull barrel, one in ten twist and twenty inches long, for a job I did for him. It hasn't had any rounds down it yet. I'm thinking a Boyd's at-one stock to replace the plastic stock, and a Red Hawk bottom metal, follower kit for it then putting on a new barrel. I have a new E.A.Brown barrel that is 26 inches long, one in eight twist chambered in 260 Remington with a number five tapper. I will set the old barrel up dial it in and make it into a remage install barrel most likley. I have a nice one-piece steel base with a twenty-moa tapper that I will fit to the action and machine it for the ejection port so that the brass clears well. I have some 30 mm Burris signature zee rings that I will use to mount the scope. I got a Burris Veracity for doing some work for a guy new in the box that I think will work well on it once I get used to the first focal plane
Sounds like a great project. I really like FFP scopes personally but can see how they may take some getting used to.
