I took advantage of “The HUNT Advantage” on my recent trip to Arizona over the Labor Day Weekend. After two years in Nevada, the World Coyote Calling Championship will be moving to Arizona this year and most of the state is foreign country to me so I had to get started on getting farmiliar with it. What better way than taking a long weekend to go check out the hot desert.
The HUNT Advantage
What is the HUNT advantage you ask? It is the ability to:
- Find public hunting lands
- Discover new hunting areas
- Know private land ownership
- See hunting unit boundaries
- Access road trail and water data
- Map your route with 24k topo
all using one of the Garmin GPS Maps, Computer Maps, Mobile Device Maps, or Paper Maps from OnXMaps. These maps have been a great benefit to me in helping me locate new areas to hunt predators.
The Scouting Trip
I loaded up my gear and traveled down I-15 Friday evening and met up with my hunting partner. We continued into Arizona arriving way past dark. I put the AZ Hunt Chip to work in my Garmin GPS right off the bat as we were looking for a place to setup our cots for the night. We found a little side road off the highway and bedded down for the night, but of course we couldn’t just go to sleep without checking to see if there were any coyotes in the area. We didn’t have to do any work though as they told us they were there before we even tried. Over the course of the weekend we put many miles on the truck as we searched for good areas that might hold enough coyotes. As the weekend was coming to a close I asked my hunting partner if we were doing any good and he said, “If nothing else, we are eliminating the areas of where not to go”. All in all it was a productive trip and we had the AZ Chip running the whole weekend informing us of public and private land. But we just couldn’t make a trip to Arizona without brushing up on our calling skills. After setting up the cots for the final evening and getting some needed shut eye, we woke up with the rising sun and slipped over the ridge. I broke the moring silence with a few series of rabbit distress cries. A few minutes later the white chest of an approaching coyote was easily spotted in the morning sun. It had its after burners on and was closing fast. When it got to 70 yards it started to veer off. I quickly lip squeaked and it turned back my direction. It past by my partner at 10 paces and all he could do was watch as he was holding the rifle. Then at the 30 yard mark it started to veer off to my right which actually could have caused a huge problem. The problem was that the coyote put itself right between my partner and I. My partner is grateful that I practiced safety first as I didn’t take the shot. I let the coyote clear my partner before putting it down at 15 yards. Nothing like getting the blood pumping to start off the morning.
