Last week I was in Georgia hosting the Southern Precision Outdoors tournament. Everybody wants to win, but these tournaments are really about the people—standing shoulder to shoulder with some of the best coyote callers around and BS’ing about what area you actually hunted.
This weekend I hunted the Oklahoma Wildcatters tournament and we ended up taking 2nd.
We spent two days scouting. Then, from 7 PM to 7 AM, we ran as fast as we could move. If we shot coyotes, we kept calling while one of us ran out to get them. We ended up shooting several in the 350–600 yard range. You get winded running a few hundred yards dragging coyotes.
You can’t graft a new idea onto a closed mind. I try to stay green and teachable—approaching every stand like I don’t know what I’m doing and need to figure it out. Watching the topo, reading the wind, and trying to catch the little details that are easy to overlook—where coyotes can burn in and out with no shot. Every run, every drag, every shot teaches something. A lot of times it’s in the spaces between the obvious—the mistakes, the unseen paths, the subtle signs—where the hunt keeps me stumbling my way to happy destiny.
I used to always hunt alone. The past couple years I’ve started hunting with others, and it’s made me better. I’ve hunted with some really solid guys and picked up tactics that have challenged some of my old habits and tired approaches. I’m still green, still learning, and still trying to get better at calling coyotes.
The older I get, the more I realize the coyotes are still the ones doing most of the teaching.
This weekend I hunted the Oklahoma Wildcatters tournament and we ended up taking 2nd.
We spent two days scouting. Then, from 7 PM to 7 AM, we ran as fast as we could move. If we shot coyotes, we kept calling while one of us ran out to get them. We ended up shooting several in the 350–600 yard range. You get winded running a few hundred yards dragging coyotes.
You can’t graft a new idea onto a closed mind. I try to stay green and teachable—approaching every stand like I don’t know what I’m doing and need to figure it out. Watching the topo, reading the wind, and trying to catch the little details that are easy to overlook—where coyotes can burn in and out with no shot. Every run, every drag, every shot teaches something. A lot of times it’s in the spaces between the obvious—the mistakes, the unseen paths, the subtle signs—where the hunt keeps me stumbling my way to happy destiny.
I used to always hunt alone. The past couple years I’ve started hunting with others, and it’s made me better. I’ve hunted with some really solid guys and picked up tactics that have challenged some of my old habits and tired approaches. I’m still green, still learning, and still trying to get better at calling coyotes.
The older I get, the more I realize the coyotes are still the ones doing most of the teaching.