Summer Pups
Let me preface this story with a little history. It has been a year since I have taken a dog. I have been on numerous hunts but either nothing showed up, I missed (once), or they came in on my buddies side. There were night hunts, early morning hunts, hunts in subzero temeratures ( not fun when the thermometer in the truck says -14 deg), hunts every other time of day or night. Needless to say I put in allot of time trying to hunt coyotes.
It is now a year or so later, I almost didn't get out of bed this morning. The alarm went off at 4:30am. I rolled over and turned it off laying there thinking to myself " do I really want to get up". It has been very hard lately to get up early to go out and be shut down again. I rolled out of bed and got ready to go. Still wondering if I was wasting my time while loading the truck I decided to wait for a while and just take my time. I finally left the house around 6:30am.
I have hunted this area a couple of time through out the year but with no luck. I knew there were pups in this spot because this is where I got my last dog, and I heard them the last time I was here. I have been hunting the den in this area for two years. when I heard them last I was set up wrong for where the den was this year. I had the sun in my face and the wind was blowing right to them. I decide this time I was going to get closer to the hill they were denned up on and hope the wind was in my favor.
Arriving in the area around 7:30am, I parked the truck and got my gear ready to go. I was going to set up in a spot that was just north of the den but on the same hill side. The wind was swirling a little at the truck, but when when I got to the sopt I was setting up in the wind was directly in my face. I set up under a cedar tree and placed my caller about ten yards down the hill in front of me under another cedar tree. I checked the wind one more time and the I started the caller with pup distress playing.
I had my .17 HMR with me since I was over looking a large sage flat. I left the shotgun in the truck, big mistake! I was sitting ther for about a minute when I caught movement in the cedars right in front of me. By the time I realized what was going on there were two coyote pups standing right on top of my call, and I mean right on top of it. They saw me move my gun and took off. I was barking trying to get them to stop but they headed back through the cedar tree. I was trying to find them coming out the other side when I saw two more pups coming in to my right at a dead run. I changed my focus to them, shouldered my gun and waited for them to get closer. These two dogs did the same thing the others did, right to the call. The first one came right in and sniffed the caller and then caught a bullet. The second was a little bit behind the first and circled to the left around the cedar tree. It stoped about two feet away from the caller and it too caught a bullet. I looked up and seen the other two pups trotting out in the brush at about 100 yards. I barked and howeled to get them to stop and flung lead in their direction. I couldn't get a good rest so I was shooting off hand and I missed both dogs. Sitting there under that cedar tree I was saying to myself " I am glad I got out of bed". Hopefully the drought is over and it doesn't take another year to get another coyote.
My First big game Hunt
It was a week before the start of big game season and I was getting all my hunting gear ready to go. This was going to be my first big game hunt. We were going to the flattops just north of Glenwood Springs. My father and I had not hunted up in this area before so we really didn’t know what to expect. We were going with my uncle and a friend of the family and they had been up there before. They told us that where we were going to camp was right in the middle of a lot of elk and deer. The next day we got together with my uncle and started looking at the map of the area. He showed us where we were going to be camped and where we were going to be hunting. He told us that the ridge that we would start out on opening morning was always covered in deer and elk. We went over a few more spots to try if we didn’t get anything opening morning and then we headed home after making the plan for the hunt.
Friday October 12, and it was the day before big game season. We had the truck loaded and ready to go the night before so we hopped in and headed out. It was about 2:00 pm when we got to the road we needed to be on to get to camp. My uncle told us that this road was going to be very rough and he was right. It took us about two more hours at just a creep in most spots to get to camp. Once we arrived and stretched out a little, we started to unload our truck and set up camp. My uncle and our friend had arrived earlier that morning so they had a lot of the camp set up. All we had to do was set up our tent and unload some food. When we were all done setting up camp it was already dark. We ate dinner and sat around the campfire talking about the next day’s hunt.
Four o’clock comes really early if you are going to work or doing anything else but hunting. My father and I were up and ready to go. We grabbed some coffee and a roll for breakfast and the headed out. We arrived on the ridge well before sun up so we setup and waited. I had a deer tag and he had a bull elk tag. Once the sun came up and we could see we noticed allot of orange all around us; other hunters. We sat and watched another hunter about four or five hundred yards away from us kill a very nice bull elk and we saw a few nice deer but I could never get a shot. We headed back to camp for lunch and a little nap before the afternoon hunt. Around three o’clock we headed back out to the ridge to see if we could fill our tags. We sat until dark but never saw anything.
The next morning we awoke to about six inches of snow and it was cold. We grabbed our breakfast and headed out to the back side of the ridge we were on the first day. We setup by a big rock in the middle of two little openings. We sat there in the snow for about two hours when suddenly my father said he could hear something coming. We watched the side of the ridge for a minute or so and then we saw something coming across the ridge through the trees. It was a big deer, he was on a dead run and it didn’t look like he was going to stop. We lost sight of him for a minute and then he popped up right in front of us about fifty yards away. I took aim with my Winchester 30-30 (with open sights) and I let one fly, a clean miss. The deer took off to our right and I followed him with my gun shooting two more times and missing both times. He made a half circle all the way behind us and stopped right in the middle of the big opening. I took aim again and another clean miss. The deer didn’t stay put for another shot and ended up running up the ridge behind us and into the trees. We headed back to camp after that for lunch and to tell the guys about what happened. On the way back to camp my father told me that the only thing I killed with all the shooting I was doing was an old dead tree. When we got back to camp we proceeded to tell the story and of course my father had to tell them about the tree. I was known from then on for the rest of the hunt as little aimless. Neither my father nor I filled our tags that year but we had a lot of fun anyway.
Two Jakes on the Run
It was April 13th the second day of turkey season and my son and I were headed out to find some birds. We woke up early that morning and headed to a place that was supposed to have a lot of turkey. Arriving just before sun up we started out to set up under some trees on the edge of this large field. When the sun finally came up we started calling; nothing. We sat there for about two hours and then decided to move to another spot. We walked around for about another hour trying to locate some birds but had no luck. By this time it was around ten o’clock so we decided to go home get some food and make another plan.
We made our new plan and started back out to a new place around twelve o’clock. I new we would probably not have very good luck being that it was the middle of the day but we needed to find a spot and just wait. We showed up at the new spot about an hour later and started out to find us a good spot. I told my son that we would just walk a little and then stop and call. We walked half way around the property stopping and calling every so often and didn’t hear a thing. Finally I said to my son that I was going to just stop calling and we would find a place to sit and wait. It was about 2:45 when we found a spot to sit. We setup along an old dirt road that ran along a small field that had a dry creek on the far side of it. On the other side of the creek there was a ridge that was sparsely covered with juniper and pinion trees. I set up the decoys and we got ready for a long wait. I started to yelp a little with my box call and I wasn’t even done calling and we heard a gobble. I looked up on the top of the ridge across from us and I could see two turkeys running down the ridge. I called a few more times just to keep them interested (not like they weren’t already). I told my son to get ready and stay as still as possible they were coming. The turkeys came down the ridge and across the dry creek at a quick pace. When they came through the trees at the edge of the field we could see that there were four of them. I told my son that we had to wait until they got closer to the decoys so we new they were in range. It took about a minute for all four of the birds to reach the decoys. My son kept asking me when he could shoot. I had to keep telling him to wait and not to move. The four birds came in and were spread out across the field giving my son and I good shots. I told my son to take the one on the left and I would take the one on the right. They took two more steps and I said “shootem” and we let them have it. Both of the birds went down and the other two just ran around in circles trying to figure out what just happened. They got so close to us that I thought they were going to run us over.
We ran out to get our birds. The first ones we had ever harvested. They were both just small jakes but we were very happy. Now that we had our birds we had a very long walk ahead of us back to the truck. We finally got back to the truck and it was around five o’clock. The walk in and out of the spot took longer then it did for us the kill the turkeys. When we got back to the house I called my buddy and told him that we got our birds. He was so excited that he came right over to check them out. We took some pictures and then took care of the dirty work with the birds. I mounted both of our bird’s tail fans and they are now hanging on our wall at home.
