Some Early 'Yote Hunting

But wait, you say, coyote hunting does not open until 15 OCT 2017 in Indiana.  So how can you be hunting them already and still be legal?  Great question.  According to the regulations, land owners may take coyotes at any time without a special permit or license - or, they may provide written permission for others to take coyotes on their behalf on land they own.  We fall into that latter category.

We rolled out at 0500 Sunday morning and headed N at 0540.  Our target location was a farm along the Wabash River, between Delphi and Logansport.  We were on our first set by the time it was just barely light enough to see without artificial light.  All the crops are in and there was CRP grass on the other side, so visibility was tough.  We called until sunrise with no luck.

We moved to the W edge of the property where we had longer shooting lanes.  We called again, with no luck.  I will add that the Mojo decoy was broken, so all we had was the call.

Our morning ended in the field with zero coyotes seen and zero shots fired.  We saw ducks, heard geese, saw 5 doe and one buck, and had a nice long walk in the brisk morning air - it was 53 F when we started.

So we drove back into Delphi and ate breakfast at the Sandwich Shop - my first ever visit there.  They put on a pretty good spread.  A nice family of four came in - mom, dad, and two daughters (maybe ages three and one).  As a nice treat, we bought their breakfast for them.  See?  We aren't total jerks!  Maybe just 75% jerk.

We came back to load up the tractor and mow some sunflowers - hoping to draw in more doves.

And then our plan was to go catch our lunch in the pond.


Looking out over the field, waiting for coyotes to show up.  Spoiler alert - They never did.
The Wabash River is directly behind me in this picture.

MPK ready to walk back out - pondering where all the coyotes could be...

Sun coming up over CRP.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cleaning Winchester SX3 / SX4 Shotguns

Image
The Winchester SX4 is my Go To shotgun for everything - clays, doves, ducks, geese, pheasants, whatever.  It is an awesome firearm.  The drawback?  There are multiple moving parts and a few of them like to collect carbon.  And this carbon sticks as if it were put on those parts with super glue! Specifically, the magazine tube and the gas piston are the main carbon collectors.  Those parts come out more black than silver & gold. The inner components of an SX3 / SX4 with highlights where carbon will form So what is my trick for cleaning those bits?  I drop the gas piston into my Hornady sonic cleaner.  Inside the cleaner I put in about a cup of Hornady's One Shot Sonic Clean Solution for gun parts, add some DI water, a couple squirts of Dawn liquid dish soap, and then top it off with a dash or two of the citrus version of Dr. Bronner's pure castile liquid soap.  I have found that the citrus Dr. Bronner's is awesome at removing grease and oil.  All of that bakes in the son
Read more

Winchester SX4 Trigger Assembly Update

Image
First, you need to read the post immediately before this one to understand why I had to take my Winchester SX4 shotgun apart - all the way apart - specifically the trigger assembly. Second, my bad.  I had neglected to clean the gun after returning from last October's pheasant trip.  I had about one bale of grass seed inside that gun, which in the end, may have kept the #8 pellet from getting out on its own.  Shame. Finally, I did not give up.  I watched four different YouTube videos on how to disassemble and reassemble the trigger group.  Sadly, no one did the SX4, only the previous version, the SX3.  Close enough.  Why did it take 4 videos?  Because no one explained HOW the damn sear goes back in.  Everyone either ASSUMED we all know how OR in two cases, the reassembly process was out of the camera frame.  Aggravating! The key, and this is more for me to remember, was on the fourth video, the author said, "The sear kinda slides down into a channel in the housing."  Bam. 
Read more

Determine Sex of Deer from Tracks

Image
It IS possible to determine from a set of tracks whether the deer you are tracking is a doe (female) or a buck (male).  And, it's actually pretty simple if you know a few facts about deer. First, you have to know what a deer track looks like.  Deer leave a track that looks like the outline of a heart. Next, you have to know the direction of travel.  Deer are moving toward the "pointy" end of the heart.  So in the above example, the deer is traveling toward the top of this post, or up. Here is an actual photo of deer tracks in the wild so you can get a better idea.  Again, this deer is traveling up, or towards the top of this page.  (It is also clear that this deer was STANDING, not walking - well clear enough to me.  Read on to find out why I know that). Sometimes if the ground is soft or if the deer is traveling really fast (jumping), the track left will show the deer's dew claws at the rear of the direction traveling, like so: The two little "
Read more