By Rick Nolan, Nolan Outdoors
The northeast Texas weather in late February can be unpredictable at best. It can be warm and still or it can be blistering cold and windy. My son and I had put this trip on the calendar for a couple of weeks and we were not going to let bad weather stand in the way of taking my grandson to our Texas deer lease for a little coyote calling. Sure enough, Friday night came and the temperatures started dropping as the north wind howled, leaving Saturday morning with 30 mph north winds and the mercury getting close to the freezing mark. My oldest grandson, Gabriel, has been deer hunting with his dad many times but this was my first chance to take him with me. It was my turn to introduce him to coyote calling 101.
Because it was so cold and windy we went to a low pasture and to a box blind that overlooks a large open hay meadow, where we could get out of the wind and we would be able to see them coming from a ways off. I knew it was going to happen here or nowhere because I was not going to take the boy on a forced calling campaign in the cold wind.
I set the FoxPro electric caller in the open field and we took cover in the box blind and turned the call on, cranking up the volume. Nothing happened, so I switched to “crow fight” call and I showed him how to call crows, and come they did. After we let the crows go back home I tried the jackrabbit again and sure enough a coyote came slipping around at wooded point at about 300 yards. I managed to call him to about 200 yards before he lost interest and went back into the woods.
We waited about half-an-hour before turning the FoxPro back on and it did not take long before the lone yote slipped back out of the thick cover to take second look. This time I turned off the caller, barked at him and he stopped at 227 yards offering a broadside shot. I then introduced him to 55-grain Nosier ballistic tip from my Tikka 22-250 and he dropped in his tracks.
Gabriel thought that was “too cool” to call in an animal, stop it by barking at it and then to shooting it. All I heard from the boy for the rest of the day was “let’s do some more calling”.
I have killed more than a few coyotes over the years but this one may just be the best one so far. Nothing like taking a kid or grandkid hunting, I have four more boys and three more girls that will be getting old enough before long. I cannot wait!
