The Moment of Truth
Ok, so you have all the gear and you’ve practiced with your calls for hours and hours and now you think you’re ready for show time. You head out early that morning to try your luck at a number of likely locations you pre-scouted the weeks before. Now you are sitting in your first stand of the day and blow a couple of call sequences and what do ya know, here comes a coyote sneaking towards your location at about 150 yards…..WHAT NOW!!!

Well the first thing you don’t do is yank your rifle up and start shooting, rather you need to gather your wits and be patient. Try and get a sense of how motivated the coyote is about coming in and getting this rabbit. If he is coming in at a pretty steady pace wait until his view is obstructed by cover (a bush, or low point) and get your rifle up and in position but keep your mouse squeaker handy in case he stalls. If he continues in and gets within 75 or 50 yards go ahead and take your shot when you feel confident it will be a good one.

If he stalls or slows down before hitting that 100 yard point or if he starts veering off to one side or the other, he needs a little more convincing. Try a very short call sequence but make it very soft, mournful and as desperate sounding as you can, then re-evaluate the situation. If he is just sitting out there looking in your direction, then sit motionless and silent for 3 to 5 minutes, this may be enough to get his curiosity up again and start him moving. If not, then try a rodent squeaker but just a few squeaks to see how he reacts. If he is still just sitting or worse yet, starts to leave or tries to flank your location then get your rifle up slowly and get ready for a long shot. When you are ready, hit your mouse squeaker hard but only once to get him to stop and look….you may only have half a second so take your best shot.

If you miss the first shot reload but don’t get up and keep the rifle to your shoulder. If the coyote is on a dead run away from you there probably isn’t much you can do but sometimes they get disoriented after the first shot and may stop to look back, this is when you want to be ready to take another shot. You can also try to whistle or a sharp sound on the call and sometimes this will stop them briefly.

After he is gone or well out of range, you can either just sit tight to let things settle and try a few more calls for the ones that may have been a little farther out but I usually give it up at that point and start thinking about the next stand. When you do stand up, do it slowly and keep your eyes moving, there may be other close by that you never saw or even a cat that was watching from a distance. Take a few minutes to thoroughly survey the area.

As far as brushing up on your shooting skill, I would practice on coyote size targets at 100 and 200 yards from a sitting position with whatever you use in the field (shooting sticks, bipods, etc.) but try to duplicate the exact conditions you have in your calling stands. It doesn’t really do much good to practice from a shooting bench with sand bags

Ever time you are in the field calling or not, you need to pay attention to every detail and store them in your memory banks. They may not mean anything at the time but after awhile you start to see patterns in coyote behavior related to the time of day, weather, smells, sounds, etc. This is how you develop those critical insights that are so important to this sport but are hard to describe, let alone teach. Good luck and don’t get discouraged.

Go to Chapter VI