Friday night started out western. We set up our first stand, positioning ourselves crosswind on a fence line next to a county road with our scent drifting down the fence. As soon as I started calling, a group of coyotes lit up from behind us across the road. I answered back with a group howl, then went quiet for a moment before going into some whimpers, chirps, and whines mixed in with flycatcher at varied low volume. After a couple of minutes, we had 2 separate coyotes coming in from the center of the section. I coaxed in the first one, alternating between whimpers and flycatcher just loud enough to hear. After shooting the first coyote, I went straight into MFK tablescraps, which brought the other coyote in on a run. As that coyote was coming in, another one came from across the road right behind me. I heard commotion in the weeds behind me and glanced over my shoulder just in time to see it turn back and run. We fired on the second coyote, putting it down, and I immediately went into pup distress 3.fxp The next 2 coyotes did everything coyotes are not supposed to do: they came across the road, running across our scent trail, through the fence directly between Ian and myself, paying no attention to our scent. It was organized chaos at best; Ian initially thought they were my dogs and was uncertain as to whether to shoot them. There were sparks from a bullet hitting a wire, my dogs were growling and wuffing trying to get them to stop. And then, just like that, only a few minutes into the stand, all went quiet, with 3 dead coyotes before us. It was one of those stands you will always remember.
At the next spot, Ian said that we were about to get hit. I thought we could we could bust out the stand before the storm rolled in. Lightning sparkled as I placed the call among the love grass. I ran back to the rifle and no sooner had I howled, big drops of rain began to fall. The radar showed hail, so we headed back to town to wait it out at a car wash, passing emergency vehicles through a heavy downpour.
The rest of the night cleared up, but everything was wet. We battled a slow swirling wind, getting to spots and being unable to call them due to the changes in wind direction. They were active on the stands we were able to make. We called until the break of day; in fact, the last coyote came in and saw our truck a few hundred yards behind us as light peaked over the horizon. It was coming in on a string and then alerted and turned, running away into a tree line. I glanced over my shoulder, through the twilight and could now makeout the vehicle and knew the mistake I had just made. I went into pound town and called her back to the edge of the tree row, shooting her at a distance. It was a decent night of hunting, rolling with the punches of the night.
On one field we encountered a large sounder of pigs, we decided to leave them alone, coming back Saturday night with an ATV, killed a pile of bacon
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