The excitement had been building for a couple of months now as the kids were getting ready to go on their first youth hunt. I made all the preparations to try and make this a successful hunt. I talked to a landowner to try and gain access to a ranch that wouldn’t have as much pressure as public ground. I also spent some time out trying to locate coyotes the night before the hunt. I located about 20 coyotes and was excited for the next day. The morning started early as I woke the kids up at 5:30 am. We got ready and then went and picked up grandpa.
On the drive out we discussed the how-to’s of calling coyotes. We approached the first stand with anticipation. My daughter ran the Foxpro and my son settled in behind his Ruger 10/22. Stand 1 turned out to be a dry stand. We switched things up on stand 2 and after slamming the door and playing the siren, my son finally got the rabbit distress figured out on the Foxpro. Needless to say, we didn’t see any coyotes.
Stand 3 was also a dry stand. On stand 4 we finally saw some action. We had been calling for a few minutes when a truck came from behind us and drove out into our calling area. After they had moved passed up about 3/4 of a mile they jumped out and began shooting at a coyote. My daughter was upset as she felt like this coyote was coming into her call and these guys scared it off.
The temperature started to climb and it wasn’t looking good for calling. As we were driving to our next stand my daughter spotted a coyote. There wasn’t enough time to get the kids out and setup with their guns, so I tried to be the hero for the kids. I laid my rifle across the hood of the truck, took aim, let out a bark to get him to stop at 240 yards, and then squeezed the trigger. The coyote dropped like a ton of bricks. The kids started hooping and hollering. They were so excited to finally see a coyote get shot.
The rest of the day proved to be a bad day for calling as the temperature rose to t-shirt weather. We pressed on and continued calling, but there just wasn’t any movement. We headed in for the 6:00 pm check-in with our coyote the kids named Bob.
We checked our coyote in and took 10th place. The winners had 4, second had 3, 3rd and 4th had 2, and eight other teams including ours had 1.
We went and signed in for the dinner and banquet and got our numbers. My daughter (9) won a pair of binoculars for her door prize and my son (7) won a shirt and a survival bracelet. Then during the 6-10 year old category my son got his number drawn to win a gun. He was so happy. It is a Savage over and under (22 LR on top and 410 shotgun on bottom).
After the banquet we headed to the “Hey You” hotel. We got to laughing when we discussed whether the hotel allowed pets and we joked about dragging Bob into the lobby and saying, “c’mon Bob wake up, we’re here”. The hotel got its nickname from staying up late watching King of Queens and in this episode Doug and Arthur end up sleeping in the same bed since Doug can’t sleep because Kari has a night job. When they wake up in the morning Doug says to Arthur, “hey you”. My son slept with me and when we woke up we said, “hey you”. The kids and I had a great time staying in the hotel and swimming in the indoor pool. Overall it was a great experience and hopefully a tradition for years to come.
