So here he is, decked out better than his dad!
I've been shopping for an electronic game call for hunting coyotes. I did some shopping and some research on the Internet and this is what I came up with, a home-made e-caller. An electronic call from Bass Pro or Wholesale Sports started at $40 and went up to over $500. The cheaper one's had very limited options and only a half dozen sounds at the most and they had to be hand operated.
So, I came up with this; I picked up this little "iHome" speaker and a cheap MP3 player at Wal-Mart. I downloaded some calls from the Internet and viola, an e-caller for less than $40!
All that was left to do was go out and give it a try!
Blair patiently waiting for something to come in.
Which it did! Here's how it went;
We located a stand in some sage brush on the east side of a draw, in the valley were some buck brush and a small slough. We had seen a coyote cross the road to the north the previous night just after dark so we assumed that's the direction he would come from (which he did).
At first I set up my e-caller 50 meters west of us, we had a southerly breeze. The e-caller was on a continuous loop with a series of rabbit in distress calls, at various volume levels, that ran for 30 seconds to a minute with 1-2 minutes of silence in between.
We sat and waited and watched. There were several white-tailed deer feeding in the valley, a male pheasant strutting around and a cotton-tailed rabbit to watch. Then we heard some coyotes yipping and howling to the southwest. I retrieved my e-caller and brought it back to our hide (this was a mistake!).
I played some coyote calls to try and bring in the pack but this proved unsuccessful, so I tried a serious of rabbit in distress with my Predator Quest mouth call.
As I was scanning the surrounding hill sides I suddenly noticed a coyote approximately 200 meters to the north staring directly at us!
Blair was watching in the other direction so I got him to slowly turn around behind me so he could watch.
The coyote started making his way toward us, he disappeared below a hill and when he re-appeared he was headed southwest for the buck brush in the bottom of the valley. He was still 150 meters out and I decided to take the shot before he disappeared into the brush. I waited until he stopped and squeezed off a shot with my .17 hmr aimed for his chest, an instant later he whipped around and hit the afterburners, running back north. I fired a couple more fleeting shots at him as he got smaller and smaller in my scope but he didn't let up his pace.
I have no doubt he was enticed into the area by my e-caller and my mouth call was just icing on the cake.
So what did I learn? Next time I will be setting up the e-caller and leaving it out, then we'll just sit back and wait for the coyote to come right in and hopefully be able to nail him with the shotgun and some 00 buck at close range or a well placed shot with the .17 at less than 100 meters!
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