Here's a couple that I shot last week:
Today, I went out to my favorite spot. Parked the car, and snuck over to the edge of the coulee and imidiately spotted a coyote at 250 yards. He was upwind and had no idea I was there, I though "perfect - this is a done deal." I laid down to shoot, but just as I was lining up on him, he took off like he was shot out of a cannon. It was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen, he never even glanced over at me before running away. I watched him run away for over a km and he never slowed down to look over his shoulder once. So much for a done deal. COYOTE #1.
I hiked up the valley to where I was planning on calling from, but when I got there, I saw that two coyotes had beat me to it. Took a 250 yard shot and dropped one of them. The other took off into a swamp and I couldn't get a shot at him. COYOTES #2 and #3.
I headed in the direction of where the second coyote had run, and when I crested the hill I looked down to see a coyote on the other side of the reservoir out on a mud flat. I pulled up my binos and realized that there was not one, but 8 coyotes out there milling around and playing! I've never seen a pack that big before, I was speachless. COYOTES #4 to #11.
I watched them for a few minutes and realized that it wasn't worth educating a whole bunch just to get one or two of them. Just as I was turning to leave, I looked a few hundred meters farther down the mud flat and saw what I though to be a small flock of geese sitting out by the edge of the water. When I raised my binos, my jaw hit the ground - what I though was a flock of geese was actually another pack of coyotes - this one had 9 in it! I was absolutely dumbfounded as I sat and watched 17 coyotes milling around within 300 meters of eachother. COYOTES #12 to #20.
I snuck out of that area without bothering or educating any of them, and headed off for another calling spot. When I got there, I sat down and decided that I didn't want to educate any coyote to a distress sound since it was the first hunt of the year in this area, so I did a calling sequence of howls only. A few minutes later, I saw one comming in. It took me about 20 minutes to bring him in close, but he finally came in to 40 yards and I let him have it. COYOTE #21.
After I skinned out the two coyotes, I headed back to the car and spotted one more on my way. He was on the other side of the unfrozen reservoir, so he was safe for today. COYOTE #22.
I have never seen coyote densities like this in my life, and I am by no means new to coyote hunting. All of these coyote were in a 3 km stretch of river valley. I knew I had a great place to coyote hunt, but I never imagined it was this good. I'm looking forward to knocking them off one by one this winter.
