Coyote hunting excites no matter the season or the end result

The horizon changed. A new shape appeared. Binoculars focused on a coyote’s face. Adrenaline began to flow.

After about 25 minutes of electronic calls of coyotes, flocking magpies and now wounded rabbits, the hunter-becoming-the-hunted peered down over the wheat stubble.

The coyote (Canis latrans) stared at the source of the noise for what seemed like hours. It then started loping toward the screams and three unseen humans with guns.

The coyote, which looked much closer than the 400-yard distance, stopped several times and shifted directions. Its eyes never left the spot where the electronic call made a litany of excruciating noises.

The four-legged master hunter padded along a fence line. Then it stopped about 250 yards away. Staring. Staring. “BOOM”

My buddy, Tim Note, could wait no longer. Unfazed, the coyote bolted away from the thunder of the .280 caliber rifle.

The coyote ran left, out into the wheat stubble, until a second thunderous round smacked the frozen mud just inches above its back.

The coyote completely reversed its direction and dashed back for the fence. A third attempt at the running coyote also missed its mark.

Just like that, the predator hunt had ended and the ribbing of the shooter’s lack of accuracy began.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve hunted coyotes with Tim. He always misses,” Howie Halcomb said.

“Well, all I could see was his face,” Note said.

“Then why didn’t you let it get it broadside?” Holcomb asked. “It was going to come closer.”

The morning that started with so much promise, including having three different groups of coyotes howling in the distance, ended with hunting buddies looking for answers and a new place to do it all over again.

Hunter quest

Hunting coyotes provides a welcomed chance to get afield as the seasons for all other game species come to an end.

The hunt took place on private ground earlier this winter in the rolling agricultural fields west of Medical Lake.

A bit out of practice, the day started with Halcomb opening his ammunition box to find someone had packed .223 caliber rounds in his box labeled for a .243 caliber rifle. Except for throwing rocks, Halcomb was relegated to running his call.

I chose to use my 12 gauge with 00 buck shot shells, which limited my range to about 70 yards.

Just a few minutes into the first set, while Halcomb was using only coyote sounds, a coyote actually sneaked within range of my scatter gun. But it walked in front of some brush to my left before I could raise my shotgun.

The coyote never appeared at the other end of the brush and simply disappeared.

Before the second coyote came in, several others were howling behind a winter wheat field. As a result, Note set up on a knoll oriented to that direction.

The coyote that got the three-boom education came in from the opposite direction. Note didn’t see the coyote until about the time it reached the fence line.

“You can fool his eyes and his ears, but you will never fool his nose,” said Halcomb, who has been hunting coyotes in Washington and Texas for most of his life. “You want to set up where you can watch a long ways downwind.

“You don’t know where … the coyote is coming from, but you definitely want a big open area downwind so you can shoot him before he winds you.”

Halcomb focuses his hunts in the mornings and afternoons when coyotes move the most during shooting hours. He also checks the weather before planning a hunt.

“I’d rather have it down-pouring rain than windy,” he said. “Nothing affects the sound more than wind. Morning and evening give you better wind conditions.”

Coyotes tend to respond well to calls at any time of the year.

“But they respond very well, generally, in winter because it’s cold and they are hungry,” he said.

Date or dinner

After finding a good place to set up, Halcomb generally waits a few minutes for everything to settle down before he fires up the electronic call.

“I generally start with a female howl. When I set up, I get a little bit of coyote talk going. Because, the thing that will bring a coyote in the quickest is if I’m a female and he’s interested,” he said. “Whether it’s curiosity or responding from a territorial aspect, I use the female call the most.”

The caller shouldn’t try to sound like a dominant male, he said.

“When you are calling elk, you want to sound like a wimpy bull or a girl,” Holcomb said. “If you sound like a monster, they might leave.”

Another reason Halcomb uses the coyote sound is because most predator hunters only use rabbit noises.

“I think a lot of coyotes have heard it before,” he said. “I started calling coyotes when I was 9 with mouth calls. The technology today is better and more people know how to do it because of YouTube. It’s good more people are enjoying the sport, but coyotes are getting smarter.”

After initially using coyote sounds at the first setup, Halcomb then went to the excited sounds of a flock of magpies.

“I do a lot of magpie sounds. I think it’s a great sound,” he said. “It arouses a lot of curiosity. If a coyote hears that, he’s gotta think he’s going to get an easy meal.”

During the hunt, the electronic call lured in several crows and magpies, which turned into live decoys.

With the ability to change the call with a remote control, Halcomb would often use the magpie noises between coyote howls or barks.

“If you are calling a cougar or bobcat or coyote, they are coming in out of curiosity more than anything else,” he said. “The rabbit-in-distress call, very often, is the sound of last resort.”

A distressed rabbit call is a series of screams that can make your skin crawl. The excruciating noises trigger an almost uncontrollable urge for the listener do anything to end the pain of whatever is making the noise.

Apparently to a coyote, the haunting screams work like a dinner bell.

“The rabbit in distress has been the go-to call for a long time. So many times I’ve set up on a coyote and used the rabbit-in-distress and it goes the other way,” he said. “But that’s what brought the coyote in the other day.”

A couple of weeks later after our first attempt, we set up in the same locations and tried again. No coyotes responded.

“If you’ve called for 30 minutes and one hasn’t come, he probably isn’t coming,” Halcomb said. “Time is of the essence because I want to do as many good sets as I can in a day to give myself a chance. Sometimes, you have to do 10 set-ups to get one coyote.”