Small Game, Predator and TrappingFrom shooting squirrels in your backyard to calling coyotes in Arizona. This forum now contains trapping information..
It would be dark in a couple of hours and I had horses to feed before an approaching front would cause the weather to deteriorate. At the conclusion of my chores, directly across the road, a chorus of howls erupted from the hills giving birth to images of song dogs throwing a party just out of view. Their serenade sent the three dogs at my place into a barking frenzy and what once was a peaceful sunset became the chaos that riots are made of. The boldness of my dogs and their "śtough-guy"ť attitude made me chuckle. I knew if they weren"™t on their home turf they would have run and hid. One is a mutt that we took in as a stray, and the other two are registered English pointers. One of the pointers is a decent bird dog but the other one, the one my son calls "śMoses"ť, isn"™t good for anything except eating dog food and fertilizing adjacent fields. In fact I am not sure of this but in certain dictionaries if you looked up the word "śworthless"ť you might find a picture of this dog there. Like his name sake, he has been forbidden to enter the "śPromised Land"ť when it comes to hunting"¦.
"¦.In the din of the posturing cousins, it didn"™t take a mind reader to know what was going through my head. If I could somehow get over that south hill without being noticed I might be able to call one of those coyotes out into the open and quite possibly get a shot. Should I be able to get in position undetected I liked my chances.
There was a huge flaw in my plan however and I knew it from the get-go. In spite of my best efforts Moses has developed a way to climb out of the kennel at will. Though his little "śHoudini act"ť is the one single sign of promise in the life of this other wise useless dog, even it, is an irritant to me. Knowing it was likely he would escape and ruin my plan I nevertheless kenneled the dogs up, grabbed the little .204, and following the advice of my Grandpappy I headed for the hills.
Before I was even close to reaching my destination Moses was on my heels. I scolded him mercilessly for leaving his mates and his shelter. He lowered his head in acknowledgement of his transgression and feigned repentance as he did an about face like he was headed for home; I knew he wouldn"™t go back however; we had been down this road before. He would have to be my hunting partner for the remainder of the evening.
Feeling like the odds of me scoring were almost zero I was not the most discreet in where I chose to set up. I plopped myself down just over the crest of the hill in the middle of a picked corn field. It seemed like I could see forever in three of the four directions.
You could have knocked me over with a feather when Moses moseyed up and sat down right beside me as if we had done this a hundred times before. I figured he was just taking a breather before he ran off and ruined the hunt but he stayed right by me as I began calling. I squealed and howled for sometime without any positive results but old Moses undeterred, sat statuesque the whole time as if he were a veteran yoter. I was just contemplating calling it a day when a series of howls exploded from a valley not far away. I was enthusiastically responding with my Lil"™ Dog mouth call when to my surprise Moses started howling. It was all I could do to keep from falling off of my bucket onto the frozen ground in laughter. (I can tell you if Moses sang in a quartet, he would be the bass singer.)
As darkness approached my vision was reduced dramatically and with a winter"™s chill clawing at my back, I once again I felt it was time to put up the white flag and walk home. Suddenly Moses rose to his feet and gazed intently into the valley below. I thought he was going to recklessly bolt down the hill but he didn"™t move one step forward. His face wrinkled as his ears reached their peak on his squared head and his body went rigid. It was obvious he saw, heard, or smelled something below that I couldn"™t.
A little over two hundred yards away was a long deep crevasse. Next to it was a blanket of snow that covered the ground before it turned into bare earth and picked corn. With that snow as a back drop I was able to discern movement that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. Sure enough there was a coyote trotting across that patch of ground.
It looked like a shadow making its way across the terrain as I swung my shooting sticks around hoping to catch the critter before it vanished into the night. As it reached the edge of the snow cover I let out an "śAAAOOOOOOOO"ť in hopes of stopping the coyote. Like magic she stopped on a dime approximately one hundred and seventy five yards away.
My scope was set to its lowest setting which is a six power so I found her in my cross hairs in a moment"™s time. The gun was steadied by the sticks as I squeezed the trigger and the hammer fell. Detonation caused the little rifle to bark and push back against my shoulder. A lightening rod of fire burst forth from the end of the barrel and the flash momentarily lit up the darkness that surrounded us as I saw the silhouette in the valley disappear.
The whole process took Moses by surprise. Startled he jumped sideways at the shot. When I stood up he took off toward the coyote. When he started barking I knew he found the critter.
The coyote turned out to be a thirty five pound female. The 32 grain bullet hit her left shoulder breaking it and killing her instantly. She probably never even heard the gun go off.
As for the conduct of Moses"¦well, I am not holding my breath. Only time will tell if it was a fluke or not. I will say this however; let there be no doubt, if it wasn"™t for Moses I wouldn"™t have got this coyote. His actions betrayed her presence. If he does turn out to be a coyote dog, Old Moses has found the Promised Land"¦..
It's incredible the hearing and sight of our canine friends,and their sense of smell is very amazing,I sometimes take a little beagle/blue heeler dog with me she loves it,and after a minute when she calms down and I start to call,I have yet to see incoming game before she does,so if you have one that will set with you,then you have live binoculars,hearing enhancement and a sniffer second to none all for your use for just some food and attention for the rest of their life,pretty good trade off isn't it.and very well written story of you hunt.
Moses Finds the Promised Land
