Outdoorsmen Adventures.com

Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal

MULLEN, Neb. — Gary Howey spotted the coyote first. It was so far away it looked like a black spot moving across the snow.

Andy Glidden stopped the truck and we watched the dog cross the flat and disappear into the hills.

“We have permission to hunt that ranch,” Andy said.

We drove on, found a gate and entered the property.

We drove in about a quarter mile then parked the truck in a depression and began walking.

We were looking for a good place to set up, but that wasn’t happening.

We walked on.

Suddenly two doe mulies popped up on a hillside one hundred yards away.

We froze. If those deer spooked, our chances at the coyote would diminish. After looking us over for several minutes, the does trotted off, unalarmed.

Then we found the spot. The hillside dropped away onto a flatland and we set up the Fox Pro electronic caller and went to work.

“Coyote at 11 o’clock,” Andy said a few moments later. “200 yards.”

He had come in from our left side and managed to almost get downwind before we saw him.… Continue reading

It was well after noon when we arrived at the Sandhills Motel in Mullen, NE. www.gliddencanoerental.com which would be our headquarters for our first Midwinter predator hunt of 2010.

After unloading our extra gear and changing into our snow camo, we pointed the pickup south out into the Sandhills where we’d look for areas the cattle were using as cattle always attract coyotes.

As we turned off the blacktop, proceeding through the Sandhills, I spotted something working its way across the alfalfa field to our left.

Through our binoculars, we spotted the first coyote of the trip hunting his way through the meadow.

He headed west into the hills, so we tried to figure out how far ahead of it we’d have to be in order to set up and call.

A gate ½ mile down the road was the only entry into the field, so we drove in, parked the pickup and proceeded to hike off across the hills looking for a spot suitable for calling.

Calling coyotes is not all that difficult; it all depends on the terrain you’re hunting and the number of individuals you need to hide.… Continue reading

With the winter weather that we’ve gotten this year, hunters know that this is the ideal time to start calling predator.

I remember my first Nebraska predator-calling trip like it was yesterday.  A friend of mine from Omaha who works as a manufacturer’s representative for a call company was on his way north one afternoon and asked if I’d like to try calling coyotes.

I’m game for anything, so I told him why not. I figured we had a couple of hours of daylight left and with the new snow on the ground; we could easily spot the coyotes.

As the sun had just set he pulled into the driveway and I figured our hunting opportunity had just disappeared along with the sun.

Well, I was mistaken as he planned on hunting after “dark”, with the two of us sitting back to back on a snow covered hillside, calling and howling at the coyotes, using the light of the full moon to spot them as they came in.

Since I hadn’t gotten back from the military  all that long ago, I wasn’t too happy about sitting on a hillside in the dark, waiting for some outraged coyote to jump me.

Too make a long story short, on one of our first set ups, he howled in a “Pack” of coyotes, intent on kicking the heck out of whomever or whatever was making all that racket.… Continue reading

I noticed them while scanning the horizon with my binoculars.  They were coming out of the west, a good dozen Snow Geese in the lead flock with several others filling in behind them.

They were nosebleed high and didn’t look interested in setting down, but I had to try them as it had been a slow day and this was the closest birds that I’d seen.

I fired up the electronic call, a Fox Pro Fury and cranked the volume up as the wind was really churning things up.

As they approached, it appeared as if they were loosing altitude, getting closer with every wing beat.

I kept the call going, changing back and forth between several different Snow Goose calls.

As they neared our spread, I cut back on the volume as the racket the geese were making was deafening and they wouldn’t be able to hear the call above all the racket they were making.

With each wide swing they made, they dropped a few more yards and then the lead geese folded its wings, dropped twenty yards and then made the final approach into the spread.

The lead geese gilded over our pit blind, just clearing the top of the blind landing directly behind us as the remainder of the flock set their wings sliding into position to land in our decoy spread that laid out in front of us.… Continue reading