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Author
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Topic: Krusty, ???'s for you.
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Doggitter
Knows what it's all about
Member # 489
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posted October 29, 2005 09:15 AM
Reading your posts about your lack of success and can't keep from wondering why you don't put yourself into a position(physical or mental) that would afford you to connect? ![[Confused]](confused.gif) Afraid "the fever" will take over and you'll be hunting Coyotes day and night till a walker becomes your main squeeze? ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif) Have you ever hunted east of the Cascades? It really is a simple thing to connect on at least one out of a few trips afield.
Posts: 273 | From: Oregon rain forest | Registered: Dec 2004
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Krustyklimber
prefers the bunny hugger pronunciation: ky o tee
Member # 72
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posted October 29, 2005 05:49 PM
Well first off, I apologize.
I didn't mean to hijack Bryan's thread, just to point out that sometimes it is impossible to know what is or isn't working, and why.
(*I never really thought of this place as a "stick to the flight plan" kinda site, I thought it was a joyride, and everyone on the plane was willing to change destinations... once in a while)
Second, let me at least set my record straight.
As far as predators, I have called in some coyotes, about ten if I remember right. I've called in a few more bobcats than that, a couple of bears, and a mountain lion as well.
Never killed any is all.
Doggitter,
I'm not sure how to answer your first question. I guess I don't know how to "put" myself in the right position, that's why I haven't.
It's more likely that after I finally kill one of the yellow eyed lil' bastards, I can put it all behind me. I climbed lots of mountains, that took several attempts... once, and never went back.
It's definitely a case of stubborness, now, not persistance.
Yes, I have hunted east of the Cascades, many times (three times in the last month).
It really can't be a simple thing, or I could have pulled it off by now. No?
I must be missing some part of the puzzle?
quote:
Krusty,
I don't know you or your history. You've stated you've never called/shot a coyote. Have you ever tried to spot one, then call it in?
If you have "rolling foothills" broken up by roads. I'd wait until I got a fluff "quite snow". Sunny out, wind out of a Northerly direction. Then go "spottin" the rest will fall into play ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
If you did know my history, you'd know it's been rocky and rough. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
I get a kick out of your "spotting" thing. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
I've been to Iowa, you live in a completely different world than I do. There's no way for me to explain how different, you just have to come here and see for yourself.
I've always wondered how you gain access to the land you spot these coyotes on?
In the past four years I have seen a total of six coyotes from a road.
Not a single one was where I could have legally shot at it (with tresspassing being the least of my crimes).
We don't really have rolling hills, in my part of the state, or snow.
As Lion Ho stated, coyotes have fallen low on my priorities list, because I have "other opportunities" closer to home (and I'm not any better at upland bird or duck hunting ![[Razz]](tongue.gif) ).
I have also slowed down a whole lot, since I started calling.
I called a couple hundred stands the first year (obsessed), maybe a hundred the second (stubbornly), less last year (becoming discouraged), and very little yet this year (don't fricken care anymore).
The whole thing, hunting in general, is God's way of giving me something to work for, and to make fun of myself with.
But as I stated in the other thread, and as has been stated by others, I kinda do "owe it" to a lot of people to keep trying my best, so I do.
Krusty 
[ October 29, 2005, 06:05 PM: Message edited by: Krustyklimber ]
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Think about how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of them are stupider than that!
Posts: 1912 | From: Deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia | Registered: Jan 2003
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Doggitter
Knows what it's all about
Member # 489
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posted October 29, 2005 09:18 PM
Well if you were to hunt in an area similar in "quality" to where I usually hunt it'd take no more than 2 days, at most!, for you to get on a coyote. If it didn't happen then I'd be dammed curious to what you're doing that prevented it. The last 5 trips I've made out I've taken more than 5 Coyotes and I'm sure not anything of a special hunter. Last Sunday I called in 4 that I saw, 3 of them hit my scent right before I drew a bead. This in an area that I haven't done much good in the past. I don't know. Good luck with what you do but I wish you had enough success on Coyotes that your interest would elevate that way. Loren.
Posts: 273 | From: Oregon rain forest | Registered: Dec 2004
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bearmanric
Knows what it's all about
Member # 223
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posted October 30, 2005 09:07 AM
I live here in Washington. there are alot of coyote's.sure there is brush. i just call different. i ve hunted with Krusty once. he doe's everything right. he didnt move at all. i think Krusty is to serios on his sound's. try different sound's find out what work's try a closed reed. i called a coyote to my house yesterday day from inside wasnt trying. then got the mail later he took off from behind the shed.
Posts: 78 | From: Tenino Wash. | Registered: Jul 2003
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LionHo
Knows what it's all about
Member # 233
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posted October 30, 2005 10:10 AM
Hey Krusty,
Hoping to be helpful here, not critical, but when you wrote the following it triggered something:
"I guess I don't know how to "put" myself in the right position, that's why I haven't.
It's more likely that after I finally kill one of the yellow eyed lil' bastards, I can put it all behind me. I climbed lots of mountains, that took several attempts... once, and never went back...
It really can't be a simple thing, or I could have pulled it off by now. No?
I must be missing some part of the puzzle? [Confused]"
So here's what I was thinking. Wrote this all down yesterday but wasn't going to post cuz I didn't want to be accused of totally hijacking that other thread . That said, here it is:
Success in the early days at first seemed dependent upon psyching myself into being (over)confident that 'any-any-moment-now', a bobcat was going to stalk in closely. Probably took some kind of false confidence, alright, to keep me on the stand for an hour or more at a stretch, week after week...month after month til I got over the hump. I was emboldened by a
couple of strokes of beginner's luck-- such as on one of my first stands in Big Sur, catching a very fleeting glimpse of departing bobcat butt right the base of the oak I was using for a treestand.
Then it would be MONTHS and MONTHS of NOTHING.
Think it was something like 9 or 10 mos of calling several times per week, scouting and talking to everybody and their cousin about
recent bobcat sightings, before I eventually got a frame-filling photograph of one. I figured once that I'd put in a couple hundred hours of actual listening to the screaming rabbit tape (not
counting time spent hiking or driving) till that fateful day.
Ah-yep... I was just about as obsessed with bobcats back then as I am with ML now (and Krusty seems to be with his mystically elusive
Coyote.)
When it finally happened that I got a stalker at 25 feet, head-on at eye-level--and I banged off 8 frames in about 1 1/2 seconds--well, the payoff was pretty danged sweet indeed. Dined out on that
story for a couple of weeks. (Three guesses what everybody on my list got a photograph of for Christmas '87?)
Didn't know then how or exactly why it all fell in place, but shortly afterward, just over a year into it, I was amazed that in relatively rapid succession I started to call in other cats, and
with relative ease.
Looking back, what it probably was, as much as anything, was finding a circuit of really boffo stands, places with just the right combination of hide-ability, edges/open pockets in oak savannah, abundantly-populated habitat, favorable afternoon breezes and good lighting (it's a photography thing). A great spot for a calling stand has that certain je ne sais quoi, and it took a bunch
of fieldwork to find more than a very few. But after a year plus I had a heavy handful, at least, and started to lay out a strategy for a given day by considering which ones would be more favorable under certain weather or seasonal conditions. Some worked only when the leaves were wet to allow a quiet approach, some worked only in the summer due to steady NW breeze, etc.
Sure took awhile to find enough spots, ones that were magnificently "bobcatty". Not only can I can recall them-- nearly two decades later-- but know that I can return today to these very same honey
holes, and count on finding cat sign, and consistently call bobcats. Might still go several months between ones that sneak up close enough to make for a good picture, but I know I'll eventually connect in my sweet spots. And with subsequent experience, I somehow developed a sort of sixth sense for what constitutes a good predator stand. A place just has a particular feel to it, and I am frequently rewarded by listening to this (developed) gut instinct.
I've been referencing this all to bobcats, but through the same process I also found stand that were coyote-specific, some best for fox, and places where I called none of the above. Places like that were just too perfect to be
explained otherwise-- these I eventually came to recognize as having excellent ML potential.
Stubborness helps, to a point. Not everybody is going to stick with a pursuit like this long enough apply a kind of methodical, empirical approach and wait for the feedback loop or wait for it to sink in at a limbic (gut) level. Perhaps I grew up in another era from the fast-clip sound-bite modern one...
As a kid, there was this creek a few miles away from me, a trout stream that was anything but blue-ribbon. You could practically jump across it in places, and most of the trout were stocked. That said, for several summers of my adolescence, I pretty much had it all to myself, at least beyond a few weeks after the season opener it was all mine, and the fish became rather feral if not truly wild. My own little 5 mile long trout laboratory. Having done this once, I can reach back and better "read" trout water pretty much
anywhere there's a stream, ie good pocket water you recognize as having to contain fish.
There's still a big challenge with anyplace new, ie you gotta figure how to approach and cast to them, at the right time of day when they'll be receptive, all over again. That's gotta be
worked out every time you go someplace new. Not a problem in your own stomping grounds.
Developing this kind of intimate familiarity with a manageable-sized, productive area that you get to know like the back of your hand is probably the key element to most successful hunter's and
fisherman's disciplines.
One of the biggest mistakes observed among newbies in either pursuit-- particularly ones who start out on the path a little later in life, say beyond their early 20's--is their incessant and restless dashing-around-in-frustration to new water or new lands week after week...without first ever learning a small stomping ground.
Krusty, I don't know you except from your posts, but they've been prolific enough to have a fairly good sense of what you've been through. So all of it brings me to these questions:
Is it possible that you've been so frustrated by the unmet goal of killing a coyoote that you've been dashing off in too many directions, following too many disparate and conflicting bits of advice, covering too much ground, to really hunker down and settle in and find your own methodology that works for you in your neck of the woods?
Have you found a productive little pea patch yet to call your own that you know contains coyotes in abundance, critters you get to know almost as well, and that you can observe as easily, as fish in a tank? (A state park or game preserve, perhaps, where you don't carry anything but a call and a camera???)
If any of the above hits home, maybe you need to find the relatively open-ended serious play time to allow yourself a season or two of discovery, much like that of an 11-15 year old adolescent unloosed on the same task?
Again, just sort of thinking aloud. Hope it helps.
LionHo
Posts: 88 | From: Ventana Wilderness, CA | Registered: Aug 2003
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