Coyote Hunting in Texas

News & Tips: Coyote Hunting in Texas

CoyoteHuntingTexas blogLast week we talked about a coyote hunt in Kansas. This week let's move down to a coyote hunt in Texas. We'll start off on a cloudy day right at daylight in north Texas. We set up along a fence line between two costal Bermuda hay pastures. Across the fence on the other ranch to the south laid an old abandoned peanut field turned pasture 40 years ago. To the east was a thick post oak forest.

We set our coyote call and coyote decoy out 30-40 yards in the pasture, sprayed some Tink's Predator Mist on the grass around our decoy and on the brush by the fence row. I wanted to light off a Tink's Smokin Predator Stick but it was super dry so I didn't for fear of a fire.

We ducked back into the brush the best that we could, waited a few minutes and then fired up the call. First off he hit the howler and then switched over to a wounded rabbit. He had an AR .308 and I had a shotgun loaded up with HEVI-Shot Dead Coyote loads.

The call hadn't been going five minutes and my compadre hit his squeaker. To my left a coyote came in hitting Mach I. He ran within 10 yards of the decoy, got nervous and ducked tail and zipped back the other way.

I'm always nervous to hog shots even though I had the shotgun. Buddy crawls over.

Him: "Why didn't you shoot?"

Me: "I didn't want to hog the first shot."

Him: "That's why you have the shotgun. He was going 20 mph."

Me: "No, actually he was going about 30-40 mph."

JHim: "There's another dog."

Another coyote ran out of the brush 50 yards from where the other one had entered. He ran out along the fence line, doubled back and then stopped for a brief moment about 125 yards out. Whammo. DOA.

We went up and looked at him. Wow, what a big yote. I hesitate to ever throw out weights but he was a nice male. We took pics and then moved back in the woods to an opening and set up again.

We called a bit but no coyotes came in. We then started up the call with a bunch of busy bird calling trying to lure in a bobcat that he'd seen lately. Cats take at least 30 minutes to come in as the norm so you have to be patient and really watch the brush. I remember once Gary Roberson with Burnham Brothers sent me a video of a cat that came in within the first 2-3 minutes but that's not the norm.

There'd been a lot of crow activity so we set up and called them for a bit. We'll cover that hunt at a later date or we'll run out of ink.

We then moved to the south ranch and pulled in and hid the truck. We decided to put the decoy out in an open pasture with a creek bottom on each side. We had a rabbit, coyote and Fawnzy Montana decoy with us and on this set-up we were going to use the rabbit.

There was a fence line on the west side of the pasture that had a line of cedar trees in the fence line that we were going to hide behind. We creeped out into the pasture to setup our decoy and call and as we were setting up looked up and a coyote was working the north fence line on top of the creek. He worked along the fence line and sniffed on back into the brush.

We hunched over, slapped up the shooting sticks and got ready. I told him to hit the call right fast but before he could I spotted him 50 yards further down the fence line. He coasted along for 50 feet and stopped.

After a 150-200 yard shot and we ran over to look at him. My gosh. The other coyote was as big as I've ever seen but this one was at least 8 pounds heavier. I held him up by the back legs and he had to snap the picture within 3 seconds or I was dropping him. He was a huge dog.

When we went back up to the truck to grab the camera he'd said whoa, there's another coyote. He slipped away and we ran down and got the call and jumped down in the creek bottom and got setup right fast. We couldn't ever get him to come in.

Wow, this was rough hunting. First set-up 5 minutes. Third one, 2-3 seconds. Doesn't get much better than that.