In late February of 2018, Dr. Michael Noonan, a professor at Cassius University in Maine, brought a class of students to Colorado to research and film the issue of reintroducing gray wolves to Colorado.
Major agreed to an interview with the group to offer them a perspective on the repercussions of the reintroduction. Several of Major’s statements were included in the two videos produced by Dr. Noonan and the group’s work. This video is the interview in its entirety.
By Major L. Boddicker
The motel maid, a pretty, very short, and full-bosomed young lady, knocked on the door of room 107.
“Good morning, is anyone in there?” she asked. There was no reply, so she slipped the master key in the lock and opened the door.
The Hayden, Colorado, motel, fairly new and well kept, was a business anchor in this small mountain town of 600 people—retired ranchers, loggers, miners, and the usual mix of mountain folk from the ski crowd. Nothing much out of the ordinary was expected or happened there.
As the maid entered the room, an unusually sweet and revolting odor met her. She immediately became alarmed. She looked over the room, checked the roster, and noted the name: Dr. Major L. Boddicker, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado. Suicide! The thought flashed through her mind as she approached the bathroom and carefully opened the door.
A blast of very obnoxious air engulfed her as she stepped into the bathroom. The curtain was drawn over the tub/shower. As she carefully drew back the curtain, dark red, bloody water greeted her frightful eyes. She let out a shrieking scream and raced out of the room, down to the office.
“There’s a dead guy in the bathtub!” she screamed at the clerk. “Call the sheriff!”
The 911 call went out to the Routt County sheriff’s office. The clerk translated the maid’s incoherent frantic message to the 911 dispatcher.
“Smells like he’s dead, lots of blood in the bathtub. My God, hurry up. No, no signs of life or movement. I didn’t actually see him. Hurry!” yelled the motel clerk.
It took about ten minutes for two sheriff cruisers and a highway patrolman to pull into the motel parking lot, lights flashing, sirens blaring.
The officers, guns drawn, maneuvered to room 107. The lead officer opened the door forcefully, pushing it and quickly moving inside, handgun drawn and pointing side to side. The other officers moved into the room. Nothing but a foul stench greeted them.
They moved to the bathroom door and slowly opened it, hearts pounding.
“Police! Anyone in there?” one of them yelled.
“Come on out, hands up!” One of them declared.
No reply.
Gun pointed at the bathtub, one officer slowly, carefully slid open the shower curtain. The smell was revolting and the bloody water a dark red hue.
“Oh, s—t,” he exclaimed. “You ain’t going to believe this,” he burst into laughter.
“Jesus, I’ve seen everything now,” another officer exclaimed.
There, laying head up, belly up with half of its tail out of the bloody water was a 60-pound beaver corpse.
I had put it there to thaw out for a beaver skinning demonstration at the weekend trapping workshop I was conducting. I thawed beaver out like that four or five times a year, and in six years it had never been a problem until that day.
Once they stopped laughing, the officers holstered their handguns, left the room, and reported to the clerk.
“The dead guy was a dead beaver, thank God!” one of the officers exclaimed. “As far as we can tell, it is not illegal to have a beaver corpse in your motel room bathtub,” he stated as they left the perplexed clerk.
That happened in November of 1982, before the Colorado Wildlife Commission passed the “Disrespectful Display of Wildlife” regulation, which requires a successful hunter to cover up his exposed big game on trucks or cars so the Eco-Whackos aren’t offended.
Since I had the shower curtain drawn to cover the beaver, I was probably legal.
Strange things happen when you are working with beavers.
When I returned to the motel at 1 PM to pick up the beaver, the clerk relayed the story to me with great enthusiasm.
“Please, when you do that again, let me know so you don’t scare my maid half to death,” he grinned.
“Sorry, I did not think a thing about that. I’ve done that same thing here every year for the last four years with no fuss,” I chuckled. “I’ll let you know the next time I thaw out a dead guy in my room.”
That is how trappers get to be legends.
That was 36 years ago this very weekend. Amazing how time has streaked by. November of 1982 was at the peak of the last great fur price boom. Trappers and fur hunters were hungry for new and better information to help them be more successful.
At the time, my job was to teach the full range of trapping and hunting techniques to Colorado citizens. It was the greatest job and fun I ever had. The normal forum was a heated barn, blackboard and chalk, slide projector, and a pickup load of trapping and fur finishing gear, which I hauled to every corner of Colorado.
My first year in Colorado was spent looking up and learning how to trap myself from Colorado’s old-time best. My teachers were George Stewart, Max Jordan, Logan Allen, John Arnold, Harley and Gene Peters, Gary Rowley, Dick Hane, Rich Heckendorf, Gern Terrell, and many others.
Prior to taking the job in Colorado, I had learned from F. Robert Henderson, Carl Ditsch, Dudley Scott, and Lee Steinmeyer in Kansas. These trappers and predator hunters are/were among the very best, worldwide. I have traveled worldwide and I know this is a fact.
The old adage that trappers keep their secrets to themselves, and it is hard to find a place to learn trapping is no longer true. The typical trapper’s response to the fur price bust, for 30 years, has been to improve and survive. Where would trapping be without the NTA, FTA, state trapper associations, and individual trappers and fur hunters stepping up to encourage new people? Trappers would be really scarce and headed for extinction.
The new opportunity is to hunt and trap for ADC and make a profitable professional business from it. If you haven’t tried it, you are really missing an opportunity for a great job and income for a great life.
In 1984, the anti-trapping people began to notice the success and enthusiasm for trapping was getting away from them. They hated the idea and the worldwide influence Colorado was having on the popularity of trapping. They organized a program to squash the Colorado program, and my efforts in particular. The extent and expense they went to, to destroy the Colorado Trapper’s Association and my CSU program is a story that is hard to believe. Started in 1984 by Governor Roy Romer and his Boulder and Denver animal rights buddies, it took them until 1996 to finally beat us and ban fur trapping by banning the use of snares, foothold traps, and body grip traps. There are exceptions for some ADC use bathed in red tape.
Almost all of the fur buyers and trap supply dealers are gone. But the re-named CTA, now the Colorado Trappers and Predator Hunters Association, still actively hangs on with an annual fur sale that is very successful. The CTPHA also has a large and popular booth at the Denver Stock Show each January, which provides an active market for tanned fur. There are two business meetings and a rendezvous each year in which members can participate.
It is tough to generate much interest in trapper education events with such a poor fur market and our best equipment is illegal to use.
My response to being ordered to go urban ADC and stop teaching lethal hunting and trapping was to go into business for myself and continue on course. That was a lot more fun than doing the ARF’s bidding. The ARFs actually did my family and me a huge favor; we squeezed the lemon and added honey. If you have read my articles for the last 40 years, you how know it turned out. Quoting B’rer Rabbit, “Please don’t throw me in the Briar Patch.”
Several years ago, I was hunting arrowheads about 100 miles east of Denver, out on the Colorado plains, in wheat country. On Colorado’s vast plains there are tiny islands of rough rocky country to break the monotony. Indians used to camp at these spots because there was wood and protection from weather.
I spotted a small petrified wood flake and bent over to pick it up. A very large lion track was imprinted in the dust right beside it.
My rancher friend tries to raise sheep in the area. Last year, he lost over 135 ewes to coyotes and lion. His four guard dogs (Greater Pyrenees) cornered and killed a yearling lion. One of his guard dogs disappeared and was likely killed by the adult lion.
The presence of lions in the area makes calling there a lot more exciting!
Most western states have seasons for mountain lions which run from October to March. Depending on the state, there are opportunities for calling by big game unit with quotas, so it is necessary to check with the local wildlife agency to see where the calling can be done.
After a general hunting area is selected, locate the specific hunting sites by scouting and asking agency people for advice. Look for rocks, trees, and deer. If any of those things are missing, keep driving; there are few lions there.
A day or so after a fresh snow, drive from the top of the mountain to the bottom, from one side of a drainage to the other, and look for lion tracks which cross the road. Lions have trails which show roughly when they are using them and what size lions are present. Above and below the cap-rock, at saddles between mountain peaks, at the base of cliffs, under bridges, and both sides of the dry washes where they go over and under roads, are good spots to check.
You can increase your probabilities for success considerably by such pre-call scouting. Lay out a route and a series of choice calling stands in the best of the lion habitat and deer foraging areas. Call these stands once per month until you get your lion. The same route will be good year after year. While you are at it you will get coyotes, bobcats, and gray foxes too. That’s hard-to-beat fun.
Ranchers living in lion country often have excellent advice on locations where lions are occasionally seen traveling or resting for the day. Sometimes the rancher or you will stumble across a fresh lion kill: deer, elk, or livestock. Often the lion will come back to a fresh kill to feed again. That means it is resting nearby and might respond to a call. Or, set up on the carcass and use it as bait with or without using a call.
Hand-held calls or electronic calls work. Lions respond to rabbit sounds, deer and antelope distress calls, elk cow/calf calls, and small cat sounds. Lion sounds are very effective for calling other lions.
Mountain lions generally are not very social and defend their territories vigorously. They kill bobcats frequently when they can get to them. Lion females may have kittens any month of the year, but the primary period for having kittens is April through June. They have one to four kittens per litter, with two being the most common. The kittens will stay with the female for up to a year and often get nearly as big as the female before they leave. Occasionally, a female with two or three kittens will show up for a caller.
The males generally are solitary, socializing only for breeding. Sometimes, several kittens or young male and female lions will be found together.
Mountain lions have many vocalizations in the form of purrs, bird-like chirps, growls, spits, coughs, and caterwauls that really put the hair up on the back of your neck. Steve Craig, a long-time trapper friend from Arizona uses digitally copied lion calls to successfully bring in lions. He has called scores of them over the past five years. It is easy to copy most lion sounds on the Crit’R·Calls also. Strange cats in their territories definitely interest lions as is obvious when bobcat gland lures, scats, and urine are put into their territories for trapping. Lions often trip bobcat sets lured with oil of rhodium, catnip, bobcat glands, scats, urine, housecat litter, etc.
A caller can locate lions and get a fair idea of when they are coming through on a trail by setting up tracking station scent posts. Rake three, 1½-yard diameter circles in sand or dust on or near a lion trail. Put a Q-tip full of Carman’s Canine Call lure, Pro’s Choice, or Bobcat Gland lure in the middle of each circle. Check these circles every 2nd or 3rd day for 20 days. If there is a lion around, it will track on those circles, giving the hunter its relative size, whether it is a female with kittens, and a rough idea of when it passes through the area. That can help a caller plan a lion calling schedule and locations of stands.
Motion-detector-activated cameras like the CamTrakker™ can be used to confirm the lion’s presence, size, and the time and date it travels through on a trail. Set the camera so that it overlooks the scent post and lion trail. When the lion poses at the bobcat gland lure, you get a picture.
The cost of a resident lion licenses is generally fairly reasonable, and seasons are long, so if you are calling in lion country, it pays out eventually. If you are a nonresident, a license is a lot more expensive, and the chances of success are very low. Hiring an experienced outfitter might be a better way to go. Trained dogs are the way to consistent lion hunting success.
Lion meat is very light colored and has an excellent flavor and texture. The old mountain men used to save it for their meals to honor guests or for special occasions. There is a very low probability of trichinosis worms in lion meat. Trichinosis is much more common in bear meat.
Occasionally, you hear on TV that lions are wilderness animals, shy and chased by humans into the most isolated pockets of wilderness, in severe danger of extinction. That is pure poppy-cock. Mountain lions are so abundant in their traditional ranges that they are pioneering out into country in which they have been absent from for 150 years.
South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and other Midwest states have had recent verified sightings, road kills, or depredations records. There is good reason to think that lions will re-establish themselves in suitable habitat in these states during the next 25 years.
In 1983, the Colorado Trappers Association and Furtakers of America put on a Trappers College at Colorado State University’s Pingree Park. The Park is about 9000 feet up in beautiful picturesque country. Elk, deer, bear, and lions are common in the forests around it. Our teaching locations were out in the forest at strategic points we chose, to demonstrate where to set to catch the most fur. One of the spots was in Jack’s Gulch, a saddle where an old logging and mining trail ran between two rocky high points. Several deer and elk trails, a long ridge, the old road, and edges of old clearcuts intersected in the area. It was a great place to set traps for red fox, coyotes, and bobcats. My group spent most of an afternoon choosing set locations, demonstrating how the area should be set up for multiple catches on several species. There was lots of coyote sign, some bobcat sign, and marten in the vicinity.
Trappers, mainly from western states, spread out over about 30 acres and made sets to catch fur. Most of them set #1½ coil springs and #3 double long spring traps in flat and dirt-hole sets for coyote, red fox, and bobcats, using a large variety of predator lures.
The electronic squeakers had just become available, so we set up one in each general trapping area to see what they would do. The next morning, after a great breakfast at Pingree campus, we drove to Jack’s Gulch to check our sets. Shortly after we parked the van, it was obvious that some significant action had taken place there.
“Hey, there’s a dead elk over here!” one of the trappers exclaimed. “I wonder what killed it.”
“Hey guys, let’s stay together and have a look,” I suggested. The ten of us carefully walked up to the still warm elk. It was a yearling cow, killed right in the center of our trapping area. The carcass was lying up against a log which some of the guys sat on the afternoon before.
“Wow! It took some kind of power to do this,” one of the guys said. The elk had been killed and dragged about 35 yards. It weighed about 300 pounds.
“It has to be a lion kill, but let’s take a careful look,” I suggested. The guys circled the elk, and I commented on the carcass and indicators.
“Lions usually jump on the back or sides, dig their front claws into the shoulders and sides, bite over the top of the neck, just behind the head, then twist, breaking the neck. Here are the claw marks, here are the fang marks,” I said as I pointed them out.
“Lift the head to see if it is detached from the spine. Bingo, this one is. This is a dead-ringer lion kill,” I instructed.
“The carcass is warm; it’s been dead maybe four hours. Usually the lion eats muscle meat of the shoulders or thighs. This one chose the hams.”
“It’s typical to drag the carcass to a place that is advantageous to hide it and to eat in safety, so it dragged the carcass from the open over here into cover,” I added.
The guys looked the carcass over and took a lot of pictures, amazed at the power of the cat. They pulled on the 300-pound carcass, and it took three or four of them to do what the lion did by itself.
“Do you suppose the lion is still around here?” someone asked.
“Sure, it’s within a mile or less and will probably be back to feed on the elk,” I replied.
“Heads up, it’s possible one of you caught it. The #3 long springs occasionally hold lions, so approach your traps carefully so a lion doesn’t surprise you, especially if you have the trap on a drag,” I cautioned.
The trappers fanned out to check their sets.
“I had it!” yelled one of the guys. We went over for a look. The lion had come in to Carman’s Bobcat Gland lure and had set off a Victor 1½ coil spring, pulled out of it like it wasn’t there and left.
The lion had set off three other traps, probably caught momentarily, then pulled out and went to check out the next set.
At the squeaker, which was about one mile away, the lion had played with and batted the squeaker around, matting down the grass all over the area.
Afraid of people? No!
Great animal to hunt by calling? Yes!
How does the mountain lion or puma or cougar compare with the jaguar, leopard, and tiger? It is a wimp in comparison. I know people who have turned lions loose from leg-hold traps by themselves without getting sliced up. Never try that with leopards.
I have an acquaintance from the Colorado mountains, a trapper who during the fur boom was just out of high school and made a living by full-time trapping. At that time he was not known as having the mental capacity of a brain surgeon. Since then he has undergone a rather significant increase in his intelligence. Back then, he was compared by other trappers to a box of rocks or low I.Q. possum. I’ll call him D.S. Trapper (dumb sucker) just to denote his past mental capacity.
As a trapper, D.S. was dedicated and successful because he really worked hard at it. D.S. chose to trap in the foothills in some low fur density country ad specialized in bobcats.
One cold, snowy morning back in the early 80’s, D.S. came up to a set for bobcats. The trap was on a drag. The trap and drag were gone and the tracks said lion, loud and clear. My friend tracked it, carefully sorting out its movement through the brush as it worked its way into some rough boulder and cliff country. D.S. had only a .22 six shooter and a hunting knife with him. After about ¾ of a mile steep hike, D.S. tracked the lion to a cave.
The cave’s opening was just wide enough to let the lion in. D.S. could crawl back into it if he crawled on his elbows with his shoulders tucked in tight. D.S. crawled back in, pistol in hand, with just enough light that he could make out the lion at the end of the cave. Now what! D.S. aimed the best he could, fired six times at the lion’s head. After the shooting was over, ricochets had stopped, smoke and dust cleared, and D.S.’s ear drums were pounded. The lion was still heads up, snarling and with his eyes open. What to do next? No problem, D.S. still had his hunting knife. So, he backed out of the cave, cut a four-foot pole, took trapping wire and wired his hunting knife to the pole and crawled back into the cave. He then crawled up to the snarling and spitting lion and speared it to death. Were all of his problems over? No, he didn’t have a license for a lion. So, D.S. hurried to town and bought one. D.S. had the wits about him to properly rearrange the sequence of events over the next few days so he could legally keep the trophy.
Now was D.S. crazy or not? Seems like this story is rather similar to one included in the bear calling story. Who says there are no adventures in modern hunting?
One early summer morning in 1979, the phone rang.
“Major, could you come over and look at a dead deer at our place? It’s laying about 20 feet from our bedroom window, and it’s had some meat eaten off its shoulder,” Cathy, our neighbor said excitedly.
“Sure, be right over. When did this happen?” I asked.
“Last night some time. It’s scary,” she added. “What could it be?”
“Dogs or a mountain lion would be my guess,” I replied. “I’ll tell you when I see it.”
So I drove the two blocks to my neighbor’s place. She and her husband met me in the driveway and led me to the deer. It lay 20 feet or less from their open bedroom window. About 10 pounds of meat had been eaten from its shoulder. The carcass was partially covered with grass.
“Looks like mountain lion kill to me; the grass cover and location of the feeding are signatures,” I said.
“How can this be? We had the window open all night and did not hear a thing,” Don said.
“Lions are silent killers, sure doesn’t surprise me. I can tell for certain by checking out the neck. It if is broke, it was killed by a lion,” I suggested.
I picked up the large doe’s head; it was loose as a wet noodle. There were large fang punctures right over the spine. That was impressive.
“It’s a lion for sure and a large one,” I said.
My kids were ages two through 16; my neighbor’s kids were 1-3. They played without worry throughout the neighborhood, not exactly expecting mountain lions to be lurking nearby.
“What should we do?” Don and Cathy asked.
“Well, we call the Division of Wildlife, and I will get a permit and set traps and snares for it,” I replied.
“This scares us, what do we do about the kids playing?” Cathy asked.
“Well, until we get the lion out of here, I’d be sure they were not playing outside after dark. If you see the lion is lurking around here, let me know.”
I called the Division, and they said to go ahead and set some equipment. If I caught a lion, I was to call them so they could relocate it. “Sure,” I said. If I caught this lion, it would have been relocated permanently without further ado.
A predator which can instantly snap a 120-pound doe mule deer’s neck offers a real threat to people, particularly kids. And, more particularly, when the predator is feeding, loafing, and hunting in our landscaping, there is no theory about it. The appearance of a person eaten by a mountain lion is a whole lot like the bag of bones and guts that they leave when a deer is eaten. Having kids, wife, or neighbor lying eaten in a pile of grass, dust, and cougar pee would be a nightmare no one would forget.
So, I was excited about it and in no mood for getting the typical Colorado agency responses: We will relocate it; or it’s part of life in the West, get used to it; or it was here first so it is your fault it ate your kid. That doesn’t do it for me.
I went out around the neighborhood looking for tracks and sign and putting out the word.
Come to find out the lion had been coming through the subdivision for about a month. It was a female lion with two half-grown cubs. Its normal time appearance in the subdivision was 3 am on Saturday morning. It followed a large irrigation canal down from some high ground north and west of LaPorte, crossed Highway 14 just east of Vern’s Cafe going south, then followed the front range ridge east of Horsetooth Reservoir, and down to Highway 34 at Loveland. It turned there and headed back north up the second ridge and back to LaPorte in a 30-mile circuit. The round-trip took a week.
I set two very large cage traps and six snares.
On the following Saturday morning about 3 am, the neighborhood dogs raised cane. The lion and her cubs were back. A horse was attacked near Vern’s Cafe, which ran in terror through a fence and out onto Highway 14 where the horse was killed by a truck. The lion was not interested in my baits in the cage traps. It just lucked out and avoided my snares by taking one trail I did not set.
Two days later, the lion was killed by a Loveland rancher as he caught it stalking his calves. The two cubs were captured and taken to a rehabilitator.
Our neighborhood problem was over, temporarily.
My guess is lions go through my yard or close by monthly, without leaving a trace. It makes me apprehensive when I go out to shut off my irrigation water at 10 pm. Sometimes I take my .357 S&W. I have not seen lions in my yard, but I have found their tracks.
Lions are incredibly stealthy; people live among them for a lifetime and never see one. They are so common in Colorado that they have adapted well to the suburbs and mountain subdivisions, eating cats, dogs, llamas, 4-H sheep, and thoroughbred colts. They rest under people’s decks, watch TV through the sliding patio doors, and have kittens in the hay lofts of old barns.
In the past 25 years, there have been two human deaths in Colorado from mountain lions killing people and eating parts of them. There have been at least three child disappearances that could have been lion predation where no traces of the kids were found. Two of these were within a few miles of my home. The danger from lions to humans is real. That makes calling them very exciting.
Mountain lions are big cats comparable to leopards and jaguar in size and food preferences. They like larger prey, in the deer and antelope size range, killing animals up to 450 pounds or larger. A cow elk size is no problem for an adult male or female lion. That puts people in the preferred food size.
Like most cats, lions find their food primarily with their eyes. Their ears are also acutely sensitive with their noses being of somewhat less importance. Lions are very heavily into meat, fresh meat, and are not attracted to rotten or spoiled food. They rarely feed on prey or carcasses which they have not killed. Fresh gut piles and road kills may be eaten, but when the meat starts turning foul they move onto another kill. Research over the past 40 years with radio telemetry has found they kill from 1-3 deer per week. A substantial lion population really knocks the deer herd as we in the Western USA have discovered.
There are at least 3500 lions in Colorado. If they eat one deer or elk per week, that adds up to 182,000 deer and elk per year. That is a sizable chunk of our big game herd.
Restrictions on dog hunting, severe penalties for trespassing, an “exclusive trophy” lion management approach by the Colorado DOW has resulted in lions here about as thick as Mother Nature can stand them. Young lions are frequently encountered well out onto the plains to the Kansas border. There is no room left for any more in the mountains.
Lions love cliffs, rocks, brush, and mixed types of tree stands with lots of deer, sheep, elk, and bighorn sheep. They have large territories, 3-10 square miles for females and 100 square miles for males.
When looking for a place to call lions, have great lion habitat all around you. Lions love to rest during the day on big boulders, in the sun, tucked away in inaccessible places where they can overlook large amounts of territory. When they travel rough terrain, they follow the benches just below or above the cap rock. Trails and road crossings are consistently used by succeeding lions. When crossing open valleys, they will stick to the lines of trees and cover along stream bottoms or fence lines. They walk the same trails as bobcat.
A woolgrower friend of mine back in the early 1980’s was having trouble with lions killing his lambs. He bought a #4 ½ Newhouse trap and called me, wanting to know where to set it. He said he wanted to catch and kill the lions before they ate his sheep, not after. He lived at the bottom of the Bookcliffs between Rifle and Grand Junction, Colorado. The Bookcliffs are sheer cliffs, maybe 1000-1500 feet almost straight up in some places. They extend from Rifle, Colorado out into Utah desert, many miles to the west. Lions love them and use them like Interstate 70.
Across the face of the Bookcliffs is a trail which has been used by mountain lions for thousands of years. I told him to climb up to that trail and set a blind set where the trail squeezed between two large boulders. I had taught him how to make an Indian trail set, no bait or lure, which is deadly for cats. He wired a large colored flag to the trap on a long wire so that when the trap was sprung, the flag would be jerked out of place. He could see the flag with binoculars from a mile away. While he was on that ranch, he averaged catching seven mountain lions per year with that trap. It cut his sheep losses by lions by 3/4ths.
What does this B.S. story have to do with calling lions? Everything. It tells you that lion calling is a real toss-up hit-and-miss thing. To have a chance at calling a lion, you need to know its habits and its hangouts. Call where you know they cruise through and approximately when they are going to be there. The remote sensing camera traps set in lion trails can give you photos of lions and times and dates when they are using trails which can help you know when you have your best chance.
Otherwise, it’s fun to call lions when you have no idea whether or not they are around. Generally, in lion country, there are black bear, coyotes, bobcats, and gray foxes as well so you always have a great time.
I have to confess, I have called only two lions that I know of in my life. So, most of what I think I know about lion calling comes from descriptions of my customers’ successfully calling the cats.
The first lion I called was at night in the mountains on the Wyoming border north of Fort Collins, Colorado. Two good friends were with me. They had our only spotlight and were sitting on a rocky point about 50 yards to my left. I sat at the top of a ledge looking at a steep rocky face that tapered down to a grassy open meadow. Snow covered the ground. The night was quiet and clear. One of my friends had a .30-30, and I had a .223 bolt action rifle. We were expecting coyotes.
The sound I used calling that night was a low-pitched jackrabbit squall. It carried very well and echoed off the canyons and cliffs around us. After 20 minutes of calling about 8 squalls, twice per minute, nothing showed up. I was watching the star-show above and enjoying the atmosphere when I heard my buddies whispering. Then they yelled, “Hey Boddicker, there’s a big lion right under you, looking up at you!” They then dropped the spotlight, and it went clanging, rolling down the rocky slope. I jumped up and looked over the ledge to the snow below to see nothing but some fresh disturbance in the snow about 20 feet down. The lion had escaped into the shadows. How it got there without them or me seeing it we never did figure out. I never did see it, just the tracks.
Another time a friend and I were calling near Red Feather Lakes (Colorado) after a 12-inch snow. We set up about 150 yards from where we parked on a rocky mountainside covered with cedar trees and boulders. I used a high-pitched cottontail squall for about 30 minutes. Neither he nor I heard or saw anything. On our way back to the truck, about 80 yards from our stand, a fresh set of tracks crossed ours. A big lion had circled between us and the truck. When it hit our scent, it veered and trotted off. We tracked it for a mile or so but never got a glimpse of it.
Several hunters I know who regularly get lions with calls say to take a partner along and set the partner up to do the shooting about 80-100 yards up-ridge from the caller in the direction from which the lion is most likely to approach. The partner will get the shot as the lion circles the caller and walks into the partner.
Lonnie Jackson, a good friend of mine from southern Colorado, has called up 6 or 7 of them during the past four years by taking advantage of the lions’ habitual selection of loafing and feeding spots. He finds their tracks where they have been feeding on deer and scouting his horses. The lions habitually lay up for the day in some rocky shallow caves in cedar-lined draws. When he spots the tracks, he sets up where he gets a good view of the cow and game trails coming out of the ravines. He hunts lions using the Crit’R•Call Standard and PeeWee, making rabbit squalls and fawn bleats. From basically one stand he shot four lions in two days several years ago. The predators had unsuccessfully attacked his horses so he got permission to control their depredations from the Colorado Division of Wildlife. He sure has been successful at it. His ranch is the lion honey-hole of all time.
Several customers of mine have called in lions when they were calling elk, using our Cow/Calf Mew call which is our PeeWee with a special reed. They make a distressed calf call.
Another friend was calling deer with the Crit’R•Call Peewee, making a fawn bleat, while he was bow hunting. He spotted the lion about 100 yards away, stalking him. It stealthfully ran low toward him, taking advantage of the rocks and bushes, until it was 10 yards away. He sat with his bow arrow notched, in his lap, not thinking about what he was going to do when the lion got there. All of a sudden it was there, crouched, ready to spring, with its tail raised and tip twitching from side to side. All he could think to do was to draw his bow and fire. So he did and hit the lion in the front of the shoulder. The lion turned and leaped away, leaving the arrow hung in a mountain mahogany bush that it bounded through. My friend said he ran back to his truck. He has been somewhat hesitant to try calling deer since that close call.
Big cats are as curious as house cats. Teasing them with distress cries is good strategy. Having a deer-type decoy or eye attractor can help too.
The major key to successful lion calling is finding stands which get you into the hearing range of the big cat. Once that is done, sound like a deer, or something good to eat.
It is a good idea to take a partner to watch the back door, don’t get sleepy, and keep the eyes glued to the avenues by which the lion will approach. They show up sometimes instantly, other times after an hour. Sometimes they are very close when you finally spot them; sometimes they are hundreds of yards away. They always give you a big thrill when you see them coming. It’s nice to have a proper license when you do so you can bag the beast.
Lions are not noted as being particularly tough to kill like bears, but take enough gun. I usually take my .308 H&K when I am calling in lion country. Lots of lions have been killed with .22 long-rifle cartridges and .38 specials from hand-guns, but a .243 or larger is better for calling because a long shot might be all you get.
The Alaskan stream behind me was about 20 feet wide and 6 inches deep. It gurgled quietly by. I sat with my back against a huge 60-foot tall spruce tree, which towered over the stream bank. A large moose trail ran along the stream and beside the tree. I sat with my feet in the moose trail.
During the summer of 1968, I was smoke-jumping/forest fire fighting in Alaska between semesters working on my Ph.D. at South Dakota State University. I was also working on a prototype predator call as a result of consistent freeze-up failures of various calls I used in the frigid South Dakota winters. When the fire was out and while we waited for a helicopter ride out, I would walk out into the Alaskan taiga and blow my Crit’R•Call prototype.
A .357 Magnum Smith and Wesson Highway Patrolmen revolver lay in my lap. My target critters were lynx, wolf, and red fox.
The view and circumstances were breathtaking, beautiful beyond words, with the midnight sun setting to the right.
My call made a great caribou calf bawl which reverberated down the valley and across the Alaskan meadows. I spent about 15 minutes calling and turned to my left to view the dense willows to see if something might be coming. There was no sound, but the willows moved slightly.
Slowing poking out through the willows appeared an enormous grizzly bear’s head, about 20 feet away.
Did my whole life experience pass before me? No.
Did I start my Act of Contrition to prepare my soul for death? No .
I said something like, “Oh crap, get the heck out of here, you big SOB.” The bear looked at me for perhaps ten seconds, slowly backed into the willows and disappeared. At that point in life, at age 26, the razor-edge of life and death was really fun to play. That day was close enough to death to shake me up. I walked back to camp in the middle of the stream, .357 mag. in hand.
Bear calling is special, as folks say. If you don’t believe me, rent or purchase Wayne Carlton’s video, Callin’ Bears. He answers the question: “Are bear callers nuts?” He says they are, beyond any doubt.
My personal bear calling experiences are limited. I have rarely done it, on purpose. Most of the calling I do is not in bear country, so my chances are low. Over the years I have gleaned a lot of bear calling tips from my customers and users of our “bear calls” which we used to make for the Wayne Carlton label.
During November of 1997, Reid Aiton, past president of the California Trappers Association, invited me to a bear hunt in the redwood/hardwood forests of northern California. Reid’s country is beautiful, heavily timbered, with various oak trees, maples, and berry- and nut-producing plants. The terrain is steep, about 30 miles in from the Pacific Ocean. During the winter months, the area gets lots of fog and rain. It is perfect black bear country, and they are abundant.
Bear pelts prime up in November-December, just prior to their hibernation. They are out foraging for acorns and foods to fatten them, so they are in a race with Mother Nature to get fat enough to survive the hibernation period. The bears congregate in oak tree stands to forage on acorns. Redwood and spruce tree bark cambium layers are also a choice food at various times of the year. Bears damage lots of valuable trees with their feeding.
A common way they are hunted in California is to drive old logging roads and spot them foraging across the valleys and ravines. The bears are then stalked and shot.
Bear dogs are also used. Hunters will drive the back roads until fresh tracks are found, then dogs are turned loose. The dogs run the bears up trees, or the bears turn and stand at bay until the hunters arrive to shoot the bears. Many bears around the country are taken over baits from bear stands.
Over the years, many Crit’R•Call users have written us about successfully calling bears. Reid Aiton was one of the successful bear callers and thought I would enjoy calling one myself. Reid and I have worked on various fights with the California animal rights folks for years, so I was happy to get the invitation and showed up for the hunt.
Hunting bears in California requires that you apply for a license several months prior to the hunt. All in all, it was not difficult to get one or outrageously expensive.
Northern California weather is pleasant, often wet, but warm compared to the mountains and northern plains. For the first two days we hunted in beautiful, cool, dry weather. Reid and I called in oak tree stands and mixed types of forest. Then it got very wet, that continuous light cold rain which soaks you to the bone. With raingear, you get just as wet from condensation.
The forest is thick and dark; even during the day it is difficult to see very far. In the rain and fog, often the distance one can see is 5-10 yards. So, calling bears successfully means close encounters.
On the fourth day of calling, with no luck but a fleeting glance at a bobcat, we walked down a grown-over logging road into a heavy stand of evergreens. Reid and I sat about ten yards apart, looking different directions so we could safely cover each other.
I called, using a PeeWee Crit’R•Call with a .015″ reed, in a very loud and raspy squall that sounds like a bear cub in distress. Three to five squalls were made with about 1.5- to 2-minute gaps between squall series.
Forest sounds in the rain are peaceful, constantly dripping as the fine rain accumulates into drips which fall onto the leaf-covered forest floor. Light wind grumbles in the tree tops, making a lot of noise to compete with approaching predators.
I was staring into the gloom, trying to see black bear and getting back lots of black lines of tree trunks and fog. It was about 10 am. I finished my fifth calling series, put down the call, looked up, and out of the gloom walked a 160-pound sow bear with a 100-pound cub. They were ten yards away, walking right at me. I did not move. They were smaller than I wanted and though both were legal, I did not want to shoot either one.
The bears walked to within ten feet of me, then caught my scent, slowly swung their heads back and forth, then turned and slowly walked off into the gloom.
Reid, sitting ten yards away, did not see or hear them.
We continued calling for two more days without success. That experience alone was worth the trip.
Bears like forests and heavy cover and rarely get far from forest, brush, or swamps. They prefer to hunt and forage at night, though they do feed during the day, particularly when just out of the den in the spring and during feed-up in the fall. If you plan to hunt bear, scouting is essential to locate where there are bear and where they are currently feeding. Their territories are large. They move to feed and will often stay for long periods in small parts of their territories, eating a favorite food.
Where legal, setting up bear baits will give good service to the caller. When the bear hits a bait, it will be loafing in the vicinity, available for calling. Calls can also be used from bear stands over baits.
Bears travel like other wildlife, using ancient trails through mountain saddles, along creek and river bottoms, taking the easiest path to get where they are going. Bear tracks can be picked up on trails and often followed to the cover they are using for feeding or loafing.
When setting up to call, put your back against a tree, rock, or bank, or have a partner cover your backside. Sit in an elevated place if possible so you have an advantage of seeing the bear’s approach. Bears’ sight is not acute so the caller can get away with some movement and less camouflage; however, their noses and hearing are exceptionally good. Be very aware of the wind direction and sounds made on a stand. Try to ascertain where the bear will come from and arrange yourself so the wind blows to you from the bear’s approach. Also, try to allow for the bear circling to get your scent by having an avenue to see it circling or a partner setting about 50-100 yards downwind to intercept it.
Set up your stands in timber with broken cover near heavier cover. Give the bear a comfortable avenue of approach.
Predator calls are often used to bring bears closer after they are spotted out of range. The technique is to drive logging roads and trails in bear country until one is spotted. Then the caller gets into position with correct wind and calls the bear into range.
Calls are also used to locate bears. When a bear shows itself from heavy cover responding to a call, dogs are released on it. The bear is then treed and shot.
Sounds used for calling bears successfully are bear cub squalls, pig and adult hog squeals, caribou and deer fawn bleats, and cottontail rabbit distress cries.
Good choices of calibers for bear are .44 mag., .308 Winchester, .30-06, .270 and larger. Bears are big, tough-skinned, with thick, fat tissues, so use enough gun! Wounded bears are real interesting to hunt.
Several years ago, a Colorado trapper and his son were bear hunting in southern Colorado from a tree stand over a bait. Late in the afternoon, a bear approached and the son shot and wounded the bear. The father and son went after the wounded bear. The bear ambushed them and attacked the father. Trying to save the father, the son shot at the bear and killed his father. Bear hunting can be dangerous, so approach it very carefully.
When I was in Idaho working for the Forest Service in 1962, we were constantly having bears break into our food storage shed, garbage cans, and kitchen at camp. Our foreman, an old-time Idaho woodsman, shot them in the lungs with a .22 semi-auto pistol. The bears would run off and die from 100 yards to ½ mile out. He didn’t appreciate bears and did not want to have to haul them anywhere. He wanted them to run away from camp and die. I certainly wouldn’t recommend any .22 caliber rifles for bears or shooting bears in that way. They are a great trophy and should be managed that way.
Bears are certainly a huge pain if they are getting into feed, livestock, garbage, or camp food. If you are interested in hunting bear, check with a game warden about hunting a problem bear, or in areas where bears are problems. That information can be very helpful in lining up a successful hunt, getting access, and locating current activities of bears.
Grizzly bears, including the Kodiak bear, definitely respond to calling much the same as do black bears. They are obviously dangerous, so take great care to avoid them unless licensed and ready to shoot one. Call areas populated with grizzly after they have hibernated or where there are several hundred yards of open country so you can see their approach and get to your vehicle.
I have had several customers who have reported grizzlies showing up in Alaska, Montana, and Wyoming and giving them a real thrill. Fortunately, everybody has gotten into vehicles or to safety before they were jumped. But, beware, bears are not funny. They eat you alive or dead.
Bears often can be hunted along with other big game during fall seasons. A long-time friend of mine sat down to call coyotes during an elk hunt. As he was squalling a cottontail distress cry, several doe mule deer ran toward him. They were joined by a large coyote, then a golden eagle, and finally a large black bear came loping up in the rear. In the melee, my friend did not shoot any of them; he just had an unforgettable memory.
If you have never skinned and butchered a bear, you are in for an unforgettable experience. I skinned out a 275-pound black bear in a blizzard in northern Minnesota in 1965.
My wife’s uncle had been standing on a huge old white pine stump for a deer stand. His feet got cold so he started stomping his feet to warm them up. A black bear was hibernating in a hole under the stump, which he had not seen. His stomping woke the bear up. He saw the bear as it lunged up at him with a loud roar. He turned and shot the bear in the head at point-blank range, using a .30-06 Remington semi-auto. The bear dropped back into its den hole. The uncle jumped off the log and ran back to the cabin and burst through the door, excitedly telling his story. The other five of us were eating lunch and warming up from the cold Minnesota pre-storm weather.
After finishing lunch, I asked the uncle if he needed help to gut and bring the bear home. He said I was nuts, no way he would bring a bear home to eat. They were worthless varmints of no value but to be shot and left. So, I asked him if he would mind if I took the skin, skull, and claws. He said that was fine with him.
He said he would go along with me to show me where it was. He was not sure the bear was dead since it had backed down into the hole and could not be seen from the entrance. I would have to go into the den after it to get it tied up and pulled up out of the den.
So, I took a long piece of rope and a pistol to take down into the den with me.
We had several glasses of adult beverage at lunch and pain was not being felt as we trudged into the increasingly furious blizzard. When we got to the stump and I looked down into the hole, I didn’t feel so brave. In fact, crawling into a den with a wounded bear would be real stupid. Stupid was a big part of my life at that time.
“You ain’t going down there are you?” Uncle Gordy asked.
“Let’s run a stick down to see if it is dead or alive,” I replied. So I got a long pole and poked it down the hole. Gordy stood back with the rifle to shoot it if it decided to come out.
“Can’t feel it, don’t hear it, must be dead,” I said. “I am going in.”
I remembered the story of General Israel Putnam of the Revolutionary War fame who crawled into a wolf den with a rope around his ankle. If the wolf attacked him, his friends were to pull him back out with the rope. So, I cut the rope in half and tied ½ to my ankle, took the other half to tie around the bear’s head.
My trusty Colt Woodsmen .22 pistol in one hand, the rope I the other, I crawled head first into the hole. “If I get into trouble, pull me out,” I said.
“Hell yes,” said Gordy.
As I crawled into the hole, my body shut out all of the light. It was pitch black in there. As I crawled down the tunnel, I reached out with the rope hand to feel for the bear. I moved about 3 feet, then lay flat and silent and listened very hard for the bear to breathe. It was very quiet. The thought occurred to me that I should back out and quit while I was ahead. In a few short minutes I had sobered up completely and rational fright had set in. Now what?
I crawled another three feet and listened, reached out with the rope hand and felt for the bear. No bear.
Three more times I crawled forward and listened.
“Hey, you dummy,” Gordy yelled. “You okay?”
Like I was supposed to yell back at that moment. So I didn’t answer, and I just tugged at the rope tied to my ankle. Gordy thought I was in trouble so started to pull me back out.
“Okay,” I said in a quiet voice. “Okay, blast it, quit pulling the rope!” I exclaimed.
I crawled ahead, reached out, and felt the bear. Man, I was petrified. Was it dead or alive? I pinched several hairs between my thumb and forefinger and pulled them a bit. Doot doot. No reaction.
“The bear is dead,” I yelled. “Give me more rope.” As I crawled into the snug den hole, some light got in there with me. It was crowded with me and the bear, which lay on a nice soft bed of leaves. The bear lay there with its paws on top of its head like it had a headache. Dead.
I snaked the rope around its neck and tied a slip-knot on it, cinched it up, then moved the bear’s legs and body around so we could pull it out. What a feeling of relief when I crawled back up the tunnel and out into the blizzard. “Done!” I said.
“That was the damn dumbest stunt I have ever seen done,” Gordy remarked. “I never would have believed it if’n I hadn’t seen it. Damn!” he shook his head. Gordy and I pulled the bear out onto the fresh snow. It had a gorgeous prime glossy black pelt.
“I’m going deer hunting.” And he walked off into the snow and wind.
“Well, thanks for the help, Gordy,” I said.
I had skinned a few rats, coons, a fox or two, lots of rabbits, and two deer before this bear. So, I knew something about it. I sure learned a lot about skinning when I bailed into that bear. I had one hunting knife with no sharpener, and one Estwing hatchet. At 1:30 p.m. I started skinning the bear. At a black 4:30 in a howling blizzard, I finished getting the skin, feet, skull, and bacculum cut loose from the bear.
The bear hair is like cutting bailing wire. It took the edge off my knife quickly. The hatchet was used and dulled the same way. Every piece of skin had to be cut from the bear through baling wire hair and 4 inches of thick fat. I sharpened the knife and hatchet on a rock, enough to keep cutting. When the pelt was loose, it weighed 60 pounds with meat and fat. I rolled it up, tied it into a blob, hefted it to my shoulder, and hiked ¾ miles to the cabin. It felt great. I still have the skin and bacculum, and treasure them.
Do I need another one? No. For me, that bear was enough, but I might go again. Everyone needs to hunt, kill, and skin one bear.
With all of the restrictions now in place on bear hunting regarding baiting, dog hunting, etc., calling bears is an effective and legal method of hunting bears. As bears expand their ranges and abundance nationwide, bear hunting is becoming more available to everyone. If you decide to hunt bears, take a predator call. It helps.
Sensory systems (smell, taste, touch, hearing and seeing) work like an old John Deere slip-clutch tractor: as the clutch lever is first pushed, no movement happens; then it engages, but slowly; responses and sensing accelerates; then it is fully engaged and the tractor moves at full speed.
There are millions of tiny particles in the air. Each one carries an odor factor from almost zero to one. As the nose and its millions of olfactory (smell) receptor cells bring these particles in, the receptor cells capture and evaluate them. When enough receptor cells confirm the odor, a signal goes to the brain that registers and interprets the message, and the critter recognizes the odor and responds. Most odor molecules are in very small numbers and in huge variety, so the sensory cells test them but do not react because for each chemical particle there is a threshold, a minimum amount of the particles that it takes to make the receptors trigger a signal to the brain. That signal says what the particle is and how much there is.
If each olfactory receptor sent a message for each particle, the brain could not process all of the information. When odors are in a mixture, the strongest odor dominates.
When you pick up a skunk odor that is faint, you have pulled in enough skunk musk molecules to trigger the awareness behavior. When you get blasted in the face with skunk musk, you vomit, and other behaviors kick in based on the overwhelming sensory input into your brain and the behaviors that are triggered from it. In fact, you automatically respond to those overwhelming skunk musk molecules. Escape, vomiting, and eyes watering and burning follow the blast, and you can’t do anything about it.
With all of the senses in mammals, the mechanisms are similar. At first, the sound, odors, touches, tastes, and sights are weak. The predator may or may not get enough of them to trigger awareness of it. When the stimulus gets stronger, or it stays longer to the point the animal becomes aware of it, the predator may or may not react to it. It might react to it without being conscious of it, or it might adjust its behavior as a result of it.
The predator might become aware of the stimulus, but because of other reasons, from other sensory input, might not react. The behavior its mind indicates that it should do might be over-ridden by other senses.
For example, the donut shop blows its exhaust out, and the wind blows those odors down the street. You are three blocks away and are pulling in those odors. They are too diluted in the air for your nose receptors to trigger the awareness thresholds. But you might suddenly begin thinking of how good a donut would be.
Then you get two blocks away and your receptors become full of the great sweet smell. Your mouth waters; you think of what a nice advertisement that exhaust is. You are thinking donuts all the way up to the door. Then you see your wife wagging her finger at you in your donut-focused brain and you say no, remember the Atkins Diet; so you keep on walking, still lusting after that donut!
Calling sounds work that way. Way out—1/2, 1, or 1½-miles away—the predator can hear, but the sensors do not yet refine the sound waves. The predator may or may not decide to come, or decide what the sound is. The closer the predator is to the sound or the stronger the sound waves, the more discriminating it can be, and the stronger the response can be.
Practically speaking, that is why coyotes howl at sirens: they hear a very high-pitched, quivering sound. It is strong enough to trigger their howling response, so they howl. In fact, they may have to howl unless there is a heavy override, like someone shooting at them.
Predator responses to calling are the same. Predators are instinctively programmed to come to those sounds unless there is an override, like previous bad experiences. They may have full bellies so are not hungry. They might have a stronger interest like breeding behavior. One never knows when calling whether there are no predators within hearing range, or one of the override factors are working to keep the predators from coming. That is why it is necessary to have a variety of sounds to tickle several behaviors.
Sounds are not the same to a predator’s ear. Some sounds stimulate the feeding behavior; others trigger curiosity, breeding, fear, or territorial behaviors. Learn to play tricks with your calling sounds, and modify when and where you use them, to increase success.
There is no law against using a rabbit distress sound for ten minutes, then a puppy ki-yi call, so that two different behavior triggers are teased in coyotes or red fox. Or, use both a fawn bleat and cub squall for bear. A mouse squeak and chicken cluck combination works for red fox.
Great callers use psychology on the predator by mimicking situations with which predators are familiar. I once witnessed a coyote catching and killing a cottontail. I was fumigating prairie dogs east of Longmont, Colorado, early on an August morning. Coyotes in that country are used to people and are not much afraid of us. An old, scruffy coyote ran along a fence about 40 yards from me. It came from behind me, passed me, then took a hard dive to the left and disappeared into some tall grass.
A cottontail almost immediately let out with three low-volume squalls. The coyote came out into the open about 50 yards ahead of me and laid down chewing on the rabbit. The rabbit was still alive and made several feeble attempts at escaping while the coyote played with it. The coyote played with it perhaps two minutes and the rabbit squalled twice, three squalls each time in those two minutes. The coyote picked the rabbit up, bit down hard and gave it a sharp snap, then loped off.
Some callers swear by low-volume, two or three calls per series deliveries, as authentic as the incident I witnessed. They do very well also. Others like loud, long series of more continuous and exaggerated rabbit-like squalls. I have tried both and use both. I start out authentic and end up authentic, expecting predators in close to respond. If no predators are in close, the sound waves have to be of enough volume and force to hit their hearing thresholds. To make their ears work at 1½ miles takes some strength, so I give it to them.
My favorite rabbit squall sequence is as follows: wwhaa…wwhaa…wwhaa. At 50 yards my partners can hardly hear it. Five minutes into the series, I am really laying into the call, trying to get enough power to rattle the predator’s eardrums out at 1.5 to two miles and flip its switch on. I repeat the wwHAAa…wwHHAAa… 8-12 times nearly as hard as I can blow it. Then I back off to a more realistic range. The same goes for puppy whines, ki-yi calls, fawn bleats, and others. Yes, it is a natural delivery, but not an exclusive natural delivery. A lot of my successful calls are greatly exaggerated and loud.
Have you ever played with a dog to try to get its confidence? When I was in South Africa in 1987, my friend, Peter Schneekluth, and I visited a grape and sheep farm in a rough neighborhood. It had lots of blacks stealing and killing whites, during apartheid. The farmer we visited had vicious Doberman pinschers, trained to attack humans. They were fierce.
When we arrived, we stayed in the truck until he locked four of them up. They had all run up to the fence, propped their front feet up on the fence and snarled and barked at us.
He kept one dog with him. He warned us to not attempt to shake hands or touch him, or the dog would attack. We introduced ourselves, had a short chat, and then went into his living room. He poured us some excellent wine, and then he sat down. The dog faithfully lay down at his feet and looked at me. The farmer said that the dog was strictly a one-man dog and had never warmed up to anyone else. He wanted it that way.
Whether it was the Carman Canine Call lure on my shoes, or coyote estrus urine extract on my skin, the dog was really interested in me. So as I talked, I teased the dog with a slight, quick movement of one foot then another, then I pulled air through my teeth and tongue, never looking directly at the dog. The Doberman could not stand it; it started wagging its tail and inching toward me. It would look at the farmer to see if he was going to swat it, then scoot closer to me. In about five minutes, it had its head lying on my ankles, smelling my shoes. The farmer watched in good humor as it happened. I scratched the back of the dog’s head with my other foot, then reached down and scratched its head, play-biting its head and face with one hand. The vicious dog was my buddy. The farmer couldn’t believe it. So I explained it to him.
You tease predators by how you play the sound of your call, with changes in notes and pitch, skips in the squalls, holding your breath, going momentarily soft, then hard, then harder, then backing off. Move the call and your head so it resembles the rabbit squalling while the predator is shaking the prey.
When you want to get the predator close for a photo or shotgun, then tease its eyes and nose too. There are great commercial decoys available of rabbits, fawns, turkeys, and deer. Some are electronic, others you can move by tying them to your foot with a cord and moving your foot to move the decoy. It doesn’t take much. White and black chicken feathers wired or glued together hung from a low stake are a nice easy tease; or a mounted coyote or fox, or old white sock attached to a cord you reel in as the coyote sees you. Housecat hides, tame rabbit skins, etc. are useful decoys and tease the eyes. They can be hung from a stake 5-10 yards away from the caller.
Callers have many theories about cover scents. The primary theory is to use skunk musk, coyote urine, or some other strong animal odor to mask or to cover up human scent. There is a lot of evidence around that says that is highly unlikely. However, the skunk musk, coyote urine, or other masking scent might be of higher interest than the weaker human odor interspersed with the strong stuff.
The second theory is to use an attractive curiosity or food lure like rabbit urine, Carman Canine Call lure, mink musk, or other long-range lure that will appeal to their feeding or curiosity behavior and help attract them to a decoy or calling sound.
It is splitting hairs to discuss these as different. How much these odors contribute to success, I do not know. Frankly, as I have said many times, I rarely use scents when I am calling and try to manage my scent by having the air currents take it away from the predator, not toward the predator.
When predators hear the prey or other predators’ sounds, they are expecting animals to be there. So some movement is expected. However, a 250# lump is not what they had in mind, a 3# rabbit was more their plan, or a coyote, fox, or raptor. Minor movement or slow, deliberate movement with dull-colored clothing is not a warning flag. Sudden, large, and trackable movements are a problem. So, wear clothes that you can move in without having color clashes. Also, keep arms close to the sides, and keep your movements slow and confined to the front of the body.
Many coyotes have died 30 yards out from me where I have moved a gun from my lap to my shoulders, sighted it in, and fired while the coyote was looking directly at me. Just move in slow motion, no jerky movements.
If you use flags—fur or feathers—keep them at or under 18″ from the ground. Objects over that height seem to put some coyotes on alert. Make the decoy so it is small, with color contrast, movable, but not large enough to be threatening.
Many predator hunters have the opinion that coyotes have rigid rules they always react to. That has not been my experience with coyotes. The problem with coming up with “facts” about coyote behavior is the amount of variable factors over which the hunter has no control. When a coyote does something, the observer can only interpret what he sees. The coyote doesn’t tell him why it did something.
When a coyote is observed 400 yards out coming up-wind toward the hunter, and all of a sudden it stops, turns, and dashes off, the conclusion is often that the coyote smelled the hunter. Maybe, maybe not. It could have seen the truck. It could have seen a glint from glasses, zippers, or scope lens, or it could have seen another coyote that was out of sight of the hunter that scared it off. There are scores of reasons why that coyote could have cut and run other than the hunter’s scent.
So, the hunter puts on skunk musk, goes out to the same stand, same wind, and a coyote comes in the same way, only this time it keeps coming and is shot at 60 yards. Does that mean that the skunk musk was the difference? No, the coyote could have been a different one. Whatever caused the turn-around for the first coyote may not have been present or did not chase the second coyote off.
The point is that predators are individuals, and will react differently than others at any given time. Not only that, they may act differently to the same set of circumstances at a different time.
Trapping smart coyotes was a great lesson in the unpredictable variations of wildlife behavior. Back in 1980, Stan Pilcher and I partnered trapping coyotes in eastern Colorado. It was sandhills country and was great trapping. Each morning we read what the coyotes did the night before.
We put in 200 trap sets over 400 miles of sandhills roads. Most were set in bare sand where the coyote’s behavior could be read when it checked out the lures. We used 2-4 sets in clusters with 4 to 8 lures used in combinations at the sets. The coyotes showed a wide variety of behaviors. One coyote would sometimes trot right through the middle of a cluster of lures and never break stride, no reaction. Two days later, probably the same coyote would trot through, pick out one lure and sniff it. Sometimes it was its last sniff. Sometimes it got lucky and missed our traps. One particular coyote trotted by a set every second day for 12 days. When a big weather front was on its way, the song dog could no longer resist, and we nailed it. Was it the same coyote? Truthfully, I don’t know, but it stepped in the same tracks every other day, same sized tracks. Why did it go for the lure? The “feed up” mechanism probably kicked in, triggered by the falling barometric pressure. Can I be sure? No.
You might compare an individual predator’s behavior to your own. Lots of times your behavior is predictable, other times it is not, and there is no particular reason for it.
Do predators get “educated” to calls so they won’t come in to calling? Yes and no. They might associate a calling sound with shooting, pain, fright, and danger and be real careful about coming in again. Or, they might not.
When I first started calling in South Dakota in the late 1960’s, a buddy and I got hooked and went red fox calling nearly every weekend. One snowy, dark morning we sat on a knob overlooking a large slough near Bruce, South Dakota. I called for 20 minutes and nothing showed up. When I got up to leave, there were fresh fox tracks in my last footprint! The fox had stuck its nose within inches of the back of my head, and I didn’t detect it.
The next Saturday, my partner and I sat in the same places. After 5 minutes, a nice red fox trotted across the ice and snow in a deeply cut trail. It got to 30 yards and both of us missed, repeatedly. The fox got off with six .222 rounds and twelve .22 RF magnum rounds after it. The following Saturday, same place and time, I sat down and called again, using the same rabbit call (I did not know any other sounds at the time). Here came a red fox, using the same trail. It looked like the same fox. At 30 yards, Charlie shot and missed. The fox spinned around and dashed off. Charlie’s next shot killed it.
Were there three different foxes, or just one dumb one that didn’t learn quickly? It could have been either.
Several times I have shot at coyotes and missed, ran to the truck, driven around 2 or 3 miles of the draw the coyote escaped down, popped over the hill and called in the coyote I missed ten minutes before. The coyote’s tongue was hanging out and the markings were the same as the one I missed, so I was quite certain.
Be patient, don’t jump to conclusions, improvise, and try new tricks.
Tease predators by coming at them with a variety of stimulations to their senses—some strange, some familiar, some loud, some soft, some big, and some small. Tickle their behavior triggers: jealousy, curiosity, territoriality, hunger, and greed.
The whole point of being a great varmint caller is to out-fox the fox. The craftier and tougher the predator is, the greater the pleasure of nailing the varmint.
February 21, 2001, 20° F, wind out of the northwest at 5 mph, with a storm two days out. Two friends and I went calling in the mixed sandhills and crops of eastern Colorado. A 130-acre irrigated cornfield sat on the north side of the road with 60 head of pregnant cows in it. A big sandhill peeked out just on the north edge of the cornfield. A sagebrush-covered pasture extended to the northeast and west of the cornfield. The history of the spot was great—called 27 times in 25 years, nine coyotes shot there.
We drove to the edge of the cornfield, parked the truck, and walked 50 yards up and over the crest of the hill. The shotgunner was in the middle, riflemen on both sides. All of us spread out our sitting rugs in front of yucca plants, and then laid back into the plants. The wind was straight into our faces. I gave a lone howl, then a hunting call on the Crit’R·Call Magnum. Four coyotes immediately howled back in a group yip howl, ½ mile out straight into the wind. Safeties went off and we got ready.
I called using a low-volume, high-pitched rabbit squeal. The coyotes were sprinting in. They dropped out of sight in a low spot. We shifted to get ready to shoot. All four coyotes were in a close bunch when they popped into view. They were on top of us. I was ready to shoot when Stan pulled the trigger on my big 10 ga. and dropped the one I was sighted in on. I pulled off on another one and click; I had a misfire. Blam, the 10 ga. went off again and another coyote folded. I worked frantically to clear the misfire and get a new round in. Blam, the Big 10 barked again, and I could hear a loud coyote ki-yi. My rifle was now ready. I could see one coyote about 200 yards out about to top the crest of the hill. The crosshairs went where the coyote would be in the next 10th of a second, and I pulled the trigger. Kerwhoop! I nailed it!
When the smoke cleared, we found three dead coyotes and one that managed to escape with steel shot in its butt. When you can put it all together like that, it makes for great excitement. We saved our rancher friend some calves.
Great tactics make the difference!
Sit low in a high place with the wind on your face. Within your sight radius you should see predator food and areas of loafing, playing, and escape cover. The predator should have a comfortable approach lane to get to you. Repeat this simple formula and tactic over and over.
If you are in dense vegetation, get up on a ladder, vehicle, tree stand, windmill, or tree. Locate the breaks in the vegetation that gives you visibility and shots. Capitalize on camouflage.
Hide the vehicle behind a hill, in a draw or depression, or behind a fence, building, or bale pile. Another option: Make a camo cover for the vehicle, or bribe your wife to make one in her spare time. The bribe worked for me.
Lay your guns out so you can instantly get to them. I put my gun across my lap with my left hand ready at the trigger, ready to bring it up into place. I call with my right hand, ready to drop the call and shoot instantly. If I take both rifle and shotgun, I lay the rifle across my ankles, the shotgun is held at the ready on my lap. If I need to switch, the shotgun goes slowly onto my lap; I pick up the rifle with the left hand and am ready to shoot. The guns are positioned so I have to move the least to get a shot. Guns are always moved slowly into position unless the coyote has already bolted.
Stop the vehicle, and keep the door slams and talking to a minimum. Take your time so a coyote close at hand will turn its attention back to what it was doing, before you top the hill. Try to approach the stand out of the skyline, walk around the hill until the final move up and over the crest. Do things quickly; don’t walk around the stand area looking for the exact sweet spot to sit on. Do that after you have called. Before you go out to call, consider putting quiet mufflers on the vehicle and quiet the rattles and squeals.
Remember that calls bring predators to you; you don’t have to walk to them. Walking eats up time you want for calling new places.
Pick out a prey distress cry that is common to the area and start it at a low volume, slowly working up to a very loud volume, then dropping it back down to a realistic volume. When a predator appears, drop the volume to realistic, but repeat the squalls or squeals quickly and excitedly. When the predator is in shooting range, stop and shoot.
For coyotes, introduce the calling with a lone howl or hunting call; wait several minutes then use a prey distress call. Use a combination of coyote or fox sounds and prey sounds. It does not hurt for partners to both call at the same time. Think about your delivery to fit the species you are calling.
It does not hurt to script and practice your delivery choices—bark-bark-wwWWHH OOOO oooo—30-second delay—waah waah, waah, waah, waah, waah.
Move! Organize your routes, walk quickly to and from stands, and make the time count. I call from five minutes to one hour depending on the place and species that I am hunting. Most of my stands on normal days are 20 minutes, by watch. Then I move at least ½ to 1 mile before I call again. It is safe to assume that if a predator hears you, it will come or it won’t. So assuming that the call sounds travel 1+ mile, how long will it take the animal to get to you? Twenty minutes or less.
There is no law keeping you from staying 60 minutes at each stand if you want. In my experience, less than 5% of the animals will show up after that. It gives you a better chance to get to a new stand and call new predators.
Predators have a statistical density—only so many animals will be in an area. The more animals you can expose to the call, the better chance you have of getting several to come in. Try to make 15 to 20 stands per day. Try not to call the same country with your sound, so space the stands at least one mile apart unless the weather or vegetation cuts the distance of your calling.
Sit on the front side of a hill or elevated position so the predator has to look up to see you. Generally, they do not look up until the last 50 yards. It gives you time to plan and to adjust the calling as the animal’s behavior indicates what it is doing. This is the most-used strategy. The disadvantage is the predator can see you, your movements, glints of light, etc. The advantage is you know what is going on. If you miss, you get follow-up shots.
Sit on the backside of the hill. Some great coyote hunters sit back behind the hill so that when the predator tops the hill, it is at very close range and can be shot with a shotgun or open-sight rifle. The hunter is out of sight for most of the predator’s approach so glint, camo, and movements are not so important. The disadvantage is that you cannot see what is happening on a large scale, like multiple coyotes coming in. If you miss, you have little time for follow-up shots. The advantage is that the predators are very close when they show up. That makes for exciting action.
One person who is efficient is the professional level ultimate. There is no one to make mistakes. One person offers the smallest amount of movement, noise, and odor, with the fewest suspicious things to stop the predator from coming in. When I am hired to kill coyotes, I go by myself so I know and control Murphy’s Law. The disadvantage is there is no one to witness the 800-yard running shot.
A calling partner is great if he/she can shoot, is cool, has great eyes and ears, is safe, brings great lunches, insists on driving his great heavy-duty 4×4, and knows how to call. For every extra person there is more noise, more smell, more safety risk, more screw-ups, and fewer calling stands because it takes longer to organize and move people. The advantages are more eyes to see the predator’s approach, and more bullets will be in the air to kill the predator. I have called predators within ten yards of 60 people, so it can be done.
I like a semi-auto .308 Heckler and Koch shooting a 125-grain Nosler Ballistic Tip or 110-grain Hornady V-max bullets. It is great for close range, long range, and for running shots.
A 10-gauge Ithaca or similar semi-auto with the heaviest load of T-shot or 4-Buck available works well out to 40 yards. Both of these guns at each stand really gives you an advantage. But it is clumsy to carry two guns. Often it is better for the caller to take the shotgun only; the partners can do the rifle duty.
Shotguns are great for making doubles and triples at very close-range coyotes. When calling in very tight cover when shots will be less than 50 yards, the scattergun is great.
The caller should attempt to call the predator as close as it will get, and the shotgunner should take the first shot. If the predator drops with one shot, immediately resume calling and anticipate another predator showing up.
The left-hand shooters sit on the right side, right-handers on the left, for safety and quick responses.
Generally speaking, we have a rule: If the predator comes into range in the 45° of range you are covering, you get the first shot. The second shot can be fired by anyone who can safely shoot, then Molly-bar-the-door. We don’t cross over the other hunter’s zone unless it is obvious that the hunter cannot see the predator, but another hunter has a safe shot.
Calling predators in close can get very exciting. The safety of shooting should be maintained so hunters are safe. There should be no shooting within 30° of a partner. Watch the background so livestock, buildings, and other structures do not get accidentally shot. Shotguns and open-sights work fine.
I prefer to bring a predator in to about 50-60 yards, stop it with a change in calling, and then shoot it. The predator generally is not on alert so stands well. The scope is clear and sighted-in for 100 yards. If a miss is made, follow-up shots are possible, and using yelper sounds, often the missed predator will stop and give you another shot.
Since calling is great fun, some callers love to set up for long-range shooting, using ultra long-range calibers and rifles. The technique is fun but long-range scopes, rifle rests, precise ammunition, and sight-in time is needed. The calling techniques can be relaxed. Park the truck in the open and call from it. Coyotes will show up on ridgelines and places from which they can see. They will generally sit out there at 300-1000 yards, smugly thinking they are smart and safe, when their lights go out.
Coyote talk, using howls and yelps, is often very effective for setting up long-range shooting.
The predator tells you. If it is in range of the gun, in a safe spot, in a position so an efficient kill can be made, shoot! If the predator approaches, stops, tests the wind, and then locks up on the caller or hunter, ears sticking up, eyes focusing straight at the caller, and within range, shoot it. If not, keep calling. If it refuses to advance, shift into a higher-pitched, more excited call of lower volume. Repeat. If it still doesn’t move, make several puppy whines, ki-yi calls, and then change to a howl. If it is range, shoot.
Sometimes the coyote, when it breaks from such a lockup, will start trotting in a circle toward the wind or escape-cover. Shoot as soon as a good shot presents itself. The critter has your number and is suspicious. It is making a delicate maneuver to escape, or at least get into your scent. Often the predator can be stopped with a sharp bark, whistle, or change in the call delivery.
Shoot at it, in front of it, to the side of it, depending on how far away it is and how fast it is running. It is like leading a pheasant. I like 10-shot clips so I can adjust my shooting based on my misses. Get a lot of lead in the air so the odds are increased on your side. Practice on jackrabbits, cottontails, and squirrels with a .22 until you get proficient.
I like a 2.5 to 3.5 variable scope that I keep on low power unless I have a long-range standing shot or need to use the 9-20 power for scoping long range. The low power gives me a large field of view for making running shots.
Use yourself and your clothes for your portable blind. Blend in. You can build blinds in some situations from tumbleweeds, baled hay, broken-down buildings, and machinery. Use existing plants and stuff for blinds. Your vehicle can be a blind. Build a camouflage cover and paint optical illusions on it and call from the pickup bed or open top, ditto a trail bike or 4-wheeled ATV.
There are several different tactics that are useful in calling predators. Drive and park at selected calling stands chosen according to the rules for picking stands earlier in this article. Drive as close as you can to the stand and walk fast.
Walking and calling is a technique that is useful in heavy cover and rough terrain where the callers walk ½ mile down ridges, or over ridges, and call down into the side ravines, into the wind.
Some will follow tracks in snow until they feel they are within hearing range, and then they will call. They drive around after a fresh snow, find tracks, track the predator until it indicates it is looking for a bed, then set up and call.
Another tactic is to howl at coyotes, plot their locations on a map, then drive or walk to the approximate location and call into the wind.
When coyotes respond and are shot, the callers then walk roughly ½ mile in the direction from which the first coyote came and call again. Generally, when walking, the callers keep the calling volume rather low so as not to alert coyotes from long ranges.
Some callers in open, flat country will drop two callers off at a likely spot and the third hunter will drive off. He may call a mile or so away, but will return in 20-30 minutes to pick up his friends and then drive to a new stand and drop.
When you learn these tactics and practice them, you do them without effort and don’t really think about them until you go hunting with someone who doesn’t know calling tactics.
March 10, 2001, Mountain Valley in Colorado, 9000 feet elevation, 28°F, wind west at 5 mph, 12 inches of crusted snow, and 100% overcast. I went calling with three friends, none of which was an experienced caller. At the first place (suggested by one of the guys), the stand was a ¼-mile walk through the crusted snow. So we went slowly, and it hurt. It took one hour for the round trip, and we didn’t call at all because there was a cowboy feeding cattle from a tractor where we were to call the coyotes from. We discovered this when we got there. Thanks Murphy!
The second stand was wrong for the wind, had fresh snowmobile tracks through it and poor visibility due to dense willows.
Time for a refresher course in tactics: Let us drive north and south on county roads that overlook creek and river bottoms, with calving cowherds. Let us park back from the snowfree rims, drop over and sit down, looking down into the creek bottoms. Let us call loudly and pull the coyotes out of the brush and up to us.
In the next six stands, we called in six coyotes and killed four of them. Two coyotes came in from over 2 miles away. They were dark dots on the snow. It took them 45 minutes to make it. All four were killed within 125 yards, standing shots. They did not have a clue. One coyote got away—no shot because one of the guys set up wrong, and the coyote got to within ten yards of him but he did not see it. The rest of us could not shoot for safety sake. The other coyote came behind one that was killed and was too far out for my 10-gauge, and I was the only one that saw it.
Tactics make a big difference to success. Don’t get anal about them though. Many different tactics work.
A caller from the Texas mesquite country wrote to me about his tactics for heavy brush. He has an 8-foot ladder, which he has modified by bolting a swiveling bar stool seat on the top. He painted it a camouflage color, welded four rings to the leg bases, and he stakes the legs down to give him stability. The ladder is loaded onto a special rack on the side of the truck and is driven as close as possible to the stand. The ladder is set up in a clear spot in the thick brush. The hunter climbs up in it and calls. He shoots the coyote, bobcats, and foxes with a .357 mag. pistol and short-barreled shotgun. He said the biggest problem he has is getting into position so he can shoot the predator without blasting the legs off the ladder. It is clever!
Tactics are a big key to success.
Sam was a nice guy, from another state. He was excited and gung-ho. But as he climbed a fence, I stared down the hole in his gun barrel again, after I had requested that he be careful about it. His friend was equally careless about where he pointed his loaded gun. Since they were from out of state and I had two more days to hunt with them, I felt I had to do something to reduce the hazard.
When we got back to the truck after an unsuccessful stand, it was time for a pow wow.
“Just a suggestion, guys,” I said. “The gun barrels pointing at each other has not improved. I know you fellows are excited, but you have to be more careful.”
“I guess we didn’t notice—too excited about killing coyotes,” Sam said.
“New rules for everyone: Unload your guns before we get up from the stand, keep them unloaded until we sit down on the next stand. No loaded guns until we are sitting on a stand and the calling begins,” I ordered.
“Sounds like a great idea,” said Jim.
So, the next three days went by safely and friendly. My original thoughts were to yell and get grumpy with them to make a point, but that might have lead to hard feelings and bad days ahead. Be nice! Generally it pays, but get the safety rules laid down and obeyed.
Most callers hunt with buddies. That can be great or can be miserable. Generally speaking, somebody has to be the boss. Because of age, experience, and disposition, generally when I am on a predator hunt, I run the show. Whether or not the rancher or a friend is along, generally I choose the stand locations, direct where we stand to take advantage of the wind, and guide the other hunters to their stands.
Coach the other guys on how they should act, when to move, when to shoot, where to look for predators, etc. It is great if they can also help with the calling to spell you. Suggest a time limit on a stand and what to use for sound. For example, you might suggest that a stand has been a great producer with a jackrabbit squall for 20 minutes. If a coyote gets within 100 yards and you have a good shot, take it. If the coyote drops with one shot, immediately start a coyote yelp for a couple of minutes, then resume the rabbit sounds.
Talk to each other. Don’t assume your partner knows what he is doing unless you have had some time with him. Most partners are very glad to have you with them and have no problem discussing tactics and taking suggestions.
Once in a while you run into a real loser partner, and the answer to that is politely get through the day and never take him again.
Back in 1980, coyotes were bringing $100 each. My partner and I were driving back home from checking our trapline late in the afternoon on a cold, gray, and windy day.
“Jeez, there’s a coyote!” Stan said, pointing to a song dog standing 50 yards off the ranch road on my side. He slowed down, I rolled down the window, stuck my Ruger mini-14 out the window, took careful aim, fired, and the coyote ran off.
“Blast it, blame it, shucks, shaw, how the Hell did you miss the SOB?” Stan exclaimed, teed off completely. He got grumpy.
“I don’t have a clue,” I said dejectedly.
Stan proceeded to lecture me on the merits of being a good shot, having the rifle sighted in, etc. He was not at all diplomatic, but my ego was surviving.
About three miles down the two-track road, I looked over to my right and a red fox was sleeping on a bale of hay about 70 yards from the road.
“Hey, Stan, stop, there’s a red fox on a bale back there on my side,” I exclaimed.
“No, you can’t shoot him, I am going down, turn around so I can shoot,” he said sharply.
So, we drove over a hill, turned around, drove back, and stopped. Stan rolled the window down, and he raised his Remington Model 788 in 6-mm Rem. The fox was asleep, laying dead center on top of a small bale of hay.
When Stan shot, the fox jumped four feet straight up in the air, and then sprinted off. The bale of hay exploded. Stan had shot both bale strings in two, under the fox.
“Blast it, blame it, shucks, shaw, how did you miss the SOB?” I exclaimed. Enough said!
Do what you can to have your partner ready with a good gun, sighted in with the proper ammo, and know what to expect. Tell him.
Alternate who drives, or agree who drives, the other caller buys the gas or returns some equitable favor for the pleasure of driving your vehicle. (Remember, if you drive, he has to open the gates.)
I have a friend who is worth $2 million at least. He and I have hunted together for 26 years. Never in the 26 years has he brought lunch. Not only does he not bring my lunch; he doesn’t bring his either, so he eats mine. So? I plan for lunch, and if I want to eat any I bring lunch for him too. Generally speaking, it is almost his only fault so we get along great. When we call by ourselves, we do a cool, professional job of killing predators. When we go together, normally it is a stuff-up from the beginning to the end. However, it is great fun to hunt with the sorry stuff-up guy. Now that coyotes are worthless to $12.50, it is even more fun.
Plan! Bring water, lunch for whomever, and remind others to bring lunch and drinks. Bring extra in case of emergency. Bring an extra rifle for you and your partner in case of a breakdown. Sight the gun in often and shoot it frequently at targets. Target practice at prairie dogs, jackrabbits, crows, woodchucks, and other varmints keeps your shooting skills sharp.
Drinking and predator calling don’t go together. Save the alcohol consumption for story time after the hunt. Predator calls are not fun to listen to with a throbbing hangover.
Famous words: “Heck yes, we can make it!” So, Stan jammed down the accelerator, flew out into the middle of a 100-yard, three-foot deep snow-filled buffalo wallow and stopped like a mouse on a glueboard.
“Ah, why didn’t you just drive around the edge of this stinking pit on the grass?” I asked politely.
“You get out and scoop this miserable, dad-blamed useless truck, you knot-headed ignoramus SOB!” I followed up quickly just to let him know that I knew we were stuck just at dark, 43 miles from home, six miles from the nearest help, with one shovel, and his wife demanded he be home for a Christmas party.
Amazing how fast a guy can shovel snow when he is looking at extreme wife sanctions. He never shovels that fast under normal circumstances. A good farmer’s scoopshovel is the best for serious snow removal.
Frankly, it is better and smarter to be cautious. If some long mud hole, muddy road, snow-filled ditch, or snow-filled buffalo wallow looks impassible, go around it or turn around and find a different route.
“Yeah right, Boddicker, I know you and you try to make it through,” says anyone who knows me.
“Yeah, and I get stuck a lot. Just take my advice, don’t do it like I do it.”
Park your vehicle as close to the stand as you can get it and still have the truck hidden and downwind from the approaching predator. Frankly, I have called coyotes and fox from vehicles often. It is quite possible to camouflage the vehicle with a cover or paint, creating an optical illusion, and call coyotes up to the truck. At night, calling predators to a dark-colored truck is no problem whatever. Just keep the moonlight and spotlight reflections down by covering or painting chrome and glass reflective surfaces.
How many people are best to take on a calling trip? A great tactician caller is best by himself because there is a lower chance the predator will detect the hunter and then leave. When I am hunting for pay to kill serious livestock killers, I usually hunt by myself. A partner who is as good as you, can actually increase the success with the extra eyes and backup with a shotgun or rifle. A stuff-up partner can drive you nuts as well. But remember, predator calling generally is not for $100 fur, it is for fun. Stuff-ups on the scale of 8 to 10 are remembered longer than efficient kills, so it is fun to screw up. Enjoying the outdoors makes calling the special treat it is.
Sometimes I take 3 to 6 people with me. Once at Springfield, Colorado, I put 30 people on the side of a bowl-shaped sand dune, and then called a coyote up to ten feet away. In front of 30 cowboys and trappers, I missed. I never have been able to live it down either. After 25 years, I run into people who were there, and they always remind me of it.
The key to having several or many people is that they sit still, don’t talk, and don’t smoke. You arrange them so that the coyote cannot see them until it has exposed itself. Put them behind a low ridge, back behind the hill or vegetation, so that the predator is close when you see it or it sees you.
My first stand was in 1952 when I was ten. I got a Herter’s Model Perfect Predator Call, my Remington Model 341, .22, and went out to get a fox northwest of Shellsburg, Iowa. I called in a crow. I’ve been hooked ever since. Over those 49 years, I have made every screw-up in the book except shooting someone or livestock. Accidents happen, even under the best of intentions. With varmint rifles, accidents are seldom funny.
When I was in Africa several years ago, I was teaching a course to 23 African farmers. We were showing them night-calling techniques for jackals and caracal (African lynx). My friend was in a different truck using an electronic caller. I was using a red lens spotlight (1 million candlepower) looking over the veldt (shrub-covered desert), when one of the guys spotted eyes glowing back at us. “Lynx,” he exclaimed in a forceful whisper. I scoped the eyes with a 16-power Lightforce scope. It looked like a big lynx with the typical black lines on its face and ears, but the body posture was not right. It was about 275 yards away.
“I’m not sure it is a lynx, its body posture isn’t right,” I reported. The owner of the place looked at it through my scope. “Shoot it, it’s a caracal for certain,” he said.
So I drew down on it and touched off my friend’s .25-06. “Toowhoop,” came the sound of the impact back, and the lights went out.
“Great shot!” The guys exclaimed as they jumped out of the truck to retrieve the lynx. We went to the area and searched for it with no luck. I suggested it might be further out and went for a look.
“Do lynx have cloven hoofs?” I asked.
“No, they have claws,” was the reply.
“Then this ain’t a lynx,” I said rather dejectedly. It was a steenbok, a small antelope the size of a greyhound dog. The steenbok has facial markings that give it the look of a lynx, probably an evolutionary development to ward off eagles and other predators.
The point is this: Be sure of what you are seeing before you shoot. Make sure that is clear to your partners. The black guys helping us were really happy because they got to eat my mistake.
“Hello, Joe speaking.”
“Hi Joe, Major, a couple of years ago you mentioned you wanted to go coyote calling. I’m going out tomorrow; would you like to come along?” I asked.
“No, I don’t think so, I have had a change of heart, I have decided not to hunt anything that I can’t eat,” he said.
“Well Joe, tell you what, you can eat all the coyote.”
He got a big laugh out of that, but decided he probably couldn’t eat a coyote. I’ve set out to try, putting a fresh fat coyote up on the gambrel to skin, then butcher to eat, but I never get past the bung hole and smell.
Anyway, decide what you are going to do with the animals. In the past, we would skin and sell the hides and split the proceeds after expenses. Lately, anyone who wants the critters gets all of them. We make an effort to not waste the animals, but there is a point where the work, dirt, and pain are more than the pleasure so the shot-up coyotes get tossed. Be careful to toss them in a place that is out of public view and acceptable to the landowner.
Think about the landowner as you hunt. Be on your best behavior. Just some tips: Hide your long hair, tattoos, nose and belly-button rings, and silver nipple piercings. They don’t go over too well in ranch country. Introduce yourself, ask permission each time, or get long-term permission. Let him know you are coming, tell him the kind and color of the vehicle you will be driving. Let him know when you leave and what you shoot.
Don’t offer the rancher a tug on your Jack Daniels before noon. Don’t leave a pile of dead coyotes by his mailbox unless he’s a Greek sheep rancher. If he is, then be sure to pile them there. Don’t sight your rifle in on his windmill or stock tank. If the gate is closed, close it again. If it is open, leave it open. If it is locked, get a key; don’t tear the gate or fence apart to get through. If you shoot a wire in two, fix it. If you shoot a pig, llama, goat, sheep, cow, or horse, cut its throat, gut it, then go tell the owner and get out your insurance company’s address or checkbook. Face up to it and take the flack. It is better than county jail. If it is a good calling place, you got a chance of getting back.
If you shoot a llama or an ostrich, the rancher might pay you for the ammo and send you back out to shoot the rest of them.
Calling now is just not what it used to be. Vehicles are expected to start now, even after sitting 1/2 hour in -30° F. weather.
Cell phones make emergencies, long hikes, and extraordinary mechanical repairs a thing of the past. One no longer gets that near-death experience when the fuel pump goes out in a blizzard five miles from the nearest ranch, at dark. GPS units can tell you exactly where you are and exactly where to find the great stands again.
All of the clothes and equipment are better and more reliable than the old stuff. Us old-timers can remember calling in the pre-Sorel boot days when calling meant frozen feet every time. Life for us is split between the before Sorel life, and after Sorel life.
Always take something to sit on as you call. I use a 36×40-inch piece of ivory colored brown flecked carpet to sit on. That keeps ants, cactus, and sundry beasts away from the see-dar-rumpus. That end of the anatomy is particularly vulnerable to cactus, rattlesnake bites, and spider bites, so protect it with a sitting pad of some kind.
Bring a roll of paper towels. They make great toilet paper and serve for several other purposes as well. Put the roll in a heavy plastic bag so it stays in good condition.
Bring large plastic bags to put the predators into to keep your vehicle clean, if that matters. Bring flea spray for killing the fleas that are common on fox, coyotes, and cats. Keep the carcasses cool and out of the sun so they don’t spoil before they can be skinned.
People-management on stands needs to be done with the thought clearly in mind of bringing in the predator so the shooting is safe and the predator is in a position to kill. When calling, one finds out in a hurry that animals can size up a situation quickly and somehow escape, like Houdini, from impossible situations.
A partner and I were calling in a contest in SE Colorado. A guide was assigned to our team. The guide was great but dressed like he was going to church. When he sat down at the first stand, he fired a round off next to his foot. Why? I guess to see if his rifle would shoot. Anyway, his gun handling made us real nervous. We called through the morning with not a lot of luck. Our guide had lots of glints from the sun off his rings, tie tack, belt, and gun. He had no camo, and his colors stood out like a sore thumb.
About 11 A.M., we sat down just under the rim of a high butte, overlooking a wide valley that ran to the north. My partner sat about 30 yards to my left. The guide sat at a right angle to me to my right. He looked straight north. My partner and I faced east.
I started calling. After 5 minutes, we spotted small dust clouds kicking up about one-half mile away, four coyotes were running in. They were headed straight at us, coming upwind to us—perfect. They ran hard, three coyotes about 50 yards back from the leader. When the leader got about 50 yards below and to the front and left of my partner, the lead coyote stopped, gazing with a smirk on its face at our guide. I waited for my partner to shoot. He didn’t. He was waiting for the three coyotes to catch up.
After a minute or so, I slowly brought my rifle up to shoot because the lead coyote obviously wasn’t going to stay much longer. It leaped the instant I was pulling the trigger, so I missed.
What did the coyotes do? Instead of turning around and running off so we could shoot at them, they kept running at us, turned and ran between my partner and me. So, neither of us could shoot, nor could our guide shoot. The coyotes topped the butte and dropped into the only depression they could get into to escape.
My partner creased the last coyote as it topped the butte, but we did not catch up with it.
It was an unbelievable escape! The only way those coyotes could have escaped out of an infinite choice of escape routes was the very route they chose. Was that new? No, it has happened before, too often to be chance.
Those remarkable escapes are just part of the fun, and they keep your perspective and expectations in line. Just when you get cocky and sure of yourself, El Coyote teaches you a new trick.
Beep, beep, beep, beep—that obnoxious alarm rang at 4 a.m. I looked out the bedroom window and was greeted by a nasty blizzard.
“Good morning, Bill. It is nasty out here. What is it like in Denver?” I asked on the phone.
“Bad, but we can make it,” he replied.
“Are you and Gordie sure you want to get into this misery?” I queried.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Okay, I will see you in about an hour and a half.”
“Nuts!” I exclaimed after I hung up the phone. This was one of those days not for wimps. In fact, it was so bad even tough men’s men should know better. But callers are extraordinarily tough (some say dumb).
My gear was packed the night before. I use a checklist to back up my memory. Do not forget an essential piece of clothing for calling in cold weather. My gear consisted of one Chapstick, two pairs of 60% wool socks, one pair of light-weight skier’s long johns, one pair of regular jockey shorts, one T-shirt, one Cabela’s chamois shirt, two gray insulated zipper-type hooded sweatshirts, one pair of insulated coveralls (Key, Carhart, or Cabela’s), one set of Cabela’s winter camo shells (pants and hooded windbreaker), two pairs of Thinsulate gloves, one belaclava (pull-over face mask), one Scotch cap with ear flaps (the brim is important for shading the eyes), one set of ear plugs, one pair of sunglasses, one pair of Sorrel-type boots with felt liner, one belt, and one handkerchief. I wore all of this when I was sitting on my calling stands, and I was warm.
At 5:45 a.m., we got into Bill’s big Dodge 4×4 and headed toward Limon, Colorado. The wind was howling at 50 mph+, with snow coming down sideways at an inch per hour. At Limon, I-70 was closed, and vehicles were stacked up at the truck-stop by the hundreds. We stopped for a cup of coffee.
After a short discussion, we decided to go north on Highway 71 and give calling a try since we had come this far. So, out into the howling blizzard we went, slowly grinding our way north on Highway 71. We arrived at the ranch just as it was light enough to shoot. It was a real struggle to get our hunting clothes on—everything we had—as the wind and snow swirled around us. A blizzard is one of God’s great works of art to watch and be in. This one ranked right up there.
From the truck, we walked 50 yards into the wind and down into the top of a big ravine. I sat down at the edge of a steep ravine while they sat at the head of another, about 75 yards further. I chose to use a Standard Crit’R·Call and let out a real loud and squally scream. I had not finished my first 12-squall series when a coyote jumped up out of the ravine on my left. Slowly, I raised my rifle as the coyote watched incredulously, trying to figure out what sort of a snowman I was. One shot rolled it back down into the ravine.
After the shot, I made several very loud coyote yelps on the Crit’R·Call Magnum, and then continued loud rabbit squalls. After a five-minute interval, I heard another 2 shots. Gordie and Bill had shot a coyote responding to my calling. I don’t know how that coyote heard me, but it came at least ½ mile downwind in the howling blizzard to get to me.
We called in two more coyotes in that blizzard. Both came out of deep ravines and heavy cover.
Weather and time of year are important keys to good calling. Predators are most abundant in June through September. Their numbers take a big tumble in September through December through hunting, accidents, cannibalism, and starvation. From January through April, more die. In April, they start having pups so the numbers go back up quickly. The cycle starts all over again. The most animals respond to calls between August and October. By February, less than half still are alive to hear and to respond.
In the cold months—November through March—predators need lots of food to stay warm and breed. Then they need more food for raising pups and feeding them. April–June are often great months for calling because the predators are hungry.
In early fall, the young animals are out looking for food on their own and having difficulties. They are also inexperienced so generally respond to calls very well. Use medium-volume prey distress sounds. Don’t use strong coyote sounds during this time. Use moderate to weak coyote talk.
In late winter, canines and felines are breeding, so their interest changes from food to sex. That means using cat and canine sounds to call them. Coyote talk works well during this period.
Predators feed in early morning, 3 to 9 a.m., then loaf. From 4 to 11 p.m, they feed again. Then from 11 to 3 a.m., they rest and loaf. They can be called at any hour, but research has shown that they are most responsive during feeding hours.
Find out where your quarry is feeding, and call it there. Trappers, for centuries, have known that all animals feed up just prior to storms, preparing for a long rest while the storm rages. From two days prior to a storm to the first hours of the storm, calling can be dynamite.
During the intense storms, calling is generally poor. Whether it is because they can’t hear or just do not want to be out in it, I cannot say. However, it is a rare day that is productive in a dry windstorm or a howling snowstorm. If you have to hunt (callers often have to hunt), then call in heavy cover and storm-protected places. Call louder and at closer intervals.
I have not had luck in rainstorms or while there is muddy ground. Predators do not like to move in wet vegetation and soil.
Wind is probably the key to poor calling in storms. Quiet snowy days seem to produce good calling. When wind gets over 15 mph, responses seem to drop. I have seen coyotes lying in cover during heavy winds, and I have called them. They did not move for any sound I made. After the wind died down, we went back, the coyote was still there (across the fence in a National Wildlife Refuge). I called again. It immediately jumped up, ran directly to us, crossed the fence, and we bagged it. Many times that same scenario has been repeated. Conclusion: Wind above 15-mph results in lower success.
Cold: Below 50 degrees F, cloudy and still days, one or two days before a storm are often terrific days for calling coyotes.
Try to arrange your stands to have the sun on your back so the sun shines on the coyote’s white throat, and the coyote has to look into the sun to see you.
In November 2000, a friend and I went calling in eastern Colorado. The day was sunny with less than a 5-mph wind. There was about 1 inch of snow on half the land, with a recent ½ inch of rain before the snow. We got there at 10:30 a.m., just as the frost went out of the ground, leaving the top ½ inch of soil greasy. I told my friend that we would get nothing until 4 p.m. when it froze up again. Stand after stand we called, and nothing responded right in the middle of hundreds of coyotes. There was no show by Mr. Fox or Mr. Coyote.
At 4:15 p.m., the sun dropped over the Palmer Ridge, and the soil surface froze. We sat against a bale pile, calling into an unharvested sunflower field. In two minutes, a coyote trotted in and I dropped it. I continued calling. Two minutes later, another coyote ran up behind the one I shot. I missed the second one. One mile further down the road, I called in and shot the third coyote. It came in, saw my partner before my partner saw it, and was leaving when I nailed it. One more mile down the road, in the failing light, we sat down in wheat stubble. I called in a dark red coyote and dropped it at 25 feet. Did I expect that? Yes, I have never had luck getting predators to respond to calling over muddy ground. Why? I don’t know; I guess they don’t like to run in mud.
What is the coldest temperature I have called predators in? Minus 30° F. with a 30-mph wind, wind chill at a -80°, a poor red fox. Generally, they come in cold without wind, sometimes very aggressively.
What is the hottest temperature I have called predators? When denning coyotes in June, I have called in four at a stand when the temperature was at 90° F, but generally when temperatures hit 80° F, responses fall off quickly.
What are the best weather conditions for calling? High relative humidity in the 60 to 80 percent range, one to two days before a storm, with a falling barometer, partial or full cloud cover, 30° – 45 °F, with a 1–10-mph wind, in the dark of the moon. When that combination of weather conditions rolls in, get out in the bush and pull out the predator call. You have action coming!
Carnivores are found all over the world except in Antarctica. They all respond to calling, more or less strongly. Anywhere man can live, you can find carnivores, from the Arctic fox and wolf in the Arctic Islands of the north to the mountain lions and foxes in southern Argentina and Peru. From the open ice flows to the barren mountaintops, there are predators present. That is what makes calling so interesting.
Are predators refugees in modern life, cringing and lurking in islands of wilderness? Absolutely not. They have been found in Central Park on Manhattan Island in New York City, also in downtown Denver, Chicago, and in Los Angeles. In fact, the closer one gets to the suburbs, the higher predator density is. Some of the best calling is at the edge of the large urban areas.
With the exceptions of cougar, bear, and bobcats, most predators will carry populations of 2 to 3 times higher in urban and suburban areas. If you want to have success calling, call near towns, farms, ranches, roads, railroad tracks, and cultivated fields.
Several years ago, a buddy and I entered a coyote-calling contest in Wyoming. We went up several days early to locate coyotes. We drove on and on, looking and finding no sign. The sheep folks don’t tolerate coyotes well, and government trappers had really smoked the coyotes out. As a last resort, we drove to the closest big town and drove around the outskirts. Sure enough, there away from sheep and persecution, close to dog-food, housecats, and road kills were the coyotes. We called there during the contest. A combination of bad shooting and lucky coyotes resulted in us getting an unpaid 5th place. We saw enough to get first place. Each carnivore has a favorite niche; you call them on their terms in their places.
Maps are important. Get Forest Service, BLM, or Game and Fish maps to locate public lands open for hunting. Get county plat maps with land ownership listed so you can contact landowners for permission.
Dedicate time to scouting and pre-season permission from landowners. Make up and pass out cards to landowners. Get their telephone numbers so you can inform them when you will come through. Visit with them and offer help with their farm chores when you can, to repay their kindness.
Make friends at school, church, and work with landowners. Don’t be bashful about asking them for permission to hunt predators. Most landowners, when properly approached, will give you permission. When you establish that you are responsible and successful, they will introduce you to neighbors. Predator hunters are often very welcome, and that gets you in the door for trapping, and bird and big game hunting too.
Read the maps and read the geological features. Carnivores need vegetation and cover. They hunt and rest there. Creek and river bottoms are productive. Grass, brush, and crops over four inches high are great places to call anywhere. Marshes, sloughs, abandoned farmsteads, Conservation Reserve ground, wildlife refuges, and parks, all hold higher than average carnivore numbers. Calling brings them out of those places and onto property you have permission to hunt.
Locate stands where you can see the predator, but it can’t see you. Blend with the background, be it cornfield or cedar tree. Sit low in a high place. Park your vehicle behind a hill, then pop up over the hill and sit in a slight depression in front of a bush or bale of hay, below the skyline.
Generally, I don’t use a cover scent. I am just lazy and don’t feel I need it to get the predators. However, I am very aware of the wind direction. I want the wind carrying my scent away from the approaching predator. It makes no difference whether it is a side wind or frontal wind; just don’t line up with the wind currents carrying your and your vehicle’s odors to the varmint.
Do I skip a great location if the wind is wrong? No, I call them anyway, but I expect to take longer shots. Sometimes, air is stratified, so wind currents carry your scent away from the predator even though it is blowing in the predator’s direction.
Nothing wrong with cover scents, use them if you like. Put coyote, fox, rabbit, or bobcat urine in a squirt-type shampoo bottle and squirt a half-circle of it around you so the wind carries it in the desired direction. You can put it on you if you like, but I never much cared for such an up-front odor. It doesn’t do much for your love life and may get you kicked out of restaurants and bars.
Occasionally, I use a 1-ounce bottle of trapping lure like Carman’s Canine Call or other skunk-based lures. Dip a Q-tip in it and toss it out away from you as you set up a stand. That’s enough, and it works.
How much do cover scents really add to calling success? Nobody really knows; it is one of those hunting myths where research has not been done on it. We know carnivores have great noses and can separate odors out of a stream of scent. So a dog, fox, coyote, or bear can smell human scent when its nose is sticking in a rotten pig. Will a human that smells like a skunk fool a varmint? I doubt it.
I had the opportunity to hear the famous archer, Fred Bear, answer a question about cover scents years ago. He said he had once been a big believer in them but changed his mind. As he was stalking an Alaskan grizzly to shoot with his bow, he was covered with cover scent (I think it was caribou urine). The bear had its head inside a rotten moose carcass that was stinking to high heaven. The wind changed and blew Mr. Bear’s scent to the bear, which immediately detected Fred Bear and his scented guide. Out of the intense stink of the rotting moose, the bear could distinguish the human odor. Believe me, a coyote and fox can too.
Geology is important. Big public lakes often provide great calling. Call from a boat, or park the boat and set up on shore, a mile apart along the shoreline. Rivers offer the same opportunities.
Where there is water, there is food. Where there is food, there are plant-eating critters and meat-eating critters. Where water is scarce, calling around water is productive.
Some soil types mean great predator calling. Sandhills equal great coyote calling. Rolling glacial hills means great fox and coyote calling. Rocky cliffs and steep tree- and brush-covered hills mean bobcats and lions. Corn and soybeans mean red foxes and raccoons. Deep hardwood timber with berries and acorns means gray foxes, raccoons, and bears. Mountain berries, acorns, and wet pastures mean black bears. Mountain deer and elk habitat means mountain lions. Prairie dog colonies, meadow vole meadows, antelope, and sheep herds mean coyotes are near. Open barren grasslands with deer mice, grasshoppers, and jackrabbits means swift and kit fox.
Learn to read the topography and vegetation to increase your success. When you choose a stand to call, ask yourself: Is there a reason for a predator to be here? If the answer is no, then don’t waste your time. Move on to a place with better probabilities.
Choose places that make it easy for a predator to get to you across safe country. Predators don’t cross highways and barren fields easily. They like to run along the sides of crops, wood lots, and escape cover. When you sit down on a stand, pick out the most likely place the predator is. Then look to see if it can get to you by a safe route. If it can’t, then move to a place that gives it a comfortable approach.
How long is a good interval for calling predators? It depends. On a day with wind blowing at less than 15 mph, 20 minutes is a good time period. Good calls reach out 1/2 to 2 miles. Give the predator time to get to you. If the wind is strong or vegetation thick so the call sound cannot travel more than one mile, then call ten minutes and move ½ to 1 mile rather than 1.5 to 2 miles to a new stand. For cats, call longer—30 minutes to 1 hour. I gauge how long I call at a place to the probability that something will show up. A great place might be worth 45 minutes to an hour. An average of 20 minutes is about the optimum calling interval for everything but bear and lion; give them at least 30 minutes.
How loudly should you call? That depends on how far you need to throw the sound to reach the predator. If you know the predator is near, ¼ mile or less, then use the high-pitched mouse squeak or muted and soft rabbit squalls. If within ½ mile, start softly and work up to an authentic rabbit squall. If you want to reach out to two miles, start quietly and gradually work up to very loud sounds, shifting up from the Standard to the Magnum call. I usually blow only as loud as I can in heavy wind or I’m trying to call predators out of a place I cannot get close to. Otherwise, I gauge my blowing volume to one mile, and then move to the next mile.
Sometimes you can call too loudly and spook coyotes that are close by. Too loud also puts coyotes at long-range on alert so they are disturbed and looking for problems, or you leave before they arrive. They might have to cross a territorial boundary to get to you, and that might stop them.
Most carnivores have territorial and spatial boundaries. They may not cross those. Sometimes you see a fox or coyote coming to a call, and it will stop and hang up. It wants to come, but like it had an invisible fence in front of it, it will not come. Don’t give up. Just set up your stand the next time within its territory, and it will come right in. Those territorial limits for foxes are about 2 square miles, 3 square miles for coyotes, and 4 square miles for bobcats.
The territorial boundaries are often fences, roads, and waterways. When you can, call at boundary intersections where several animals feel comfortable at the spot. Often, great calling stands are the same as great trap-setting locations.
Keep maps of predator calling routes; mark productive stand locations, and keep notes about them. Always work to improve the exact spot you sit. Make notes on land ownership with names, addresses, and telephone numbers so you can get permission, and report your results. I have five favorite predator calling routes that I call 2 to 3 times per year at least 6 weeks apart. I try to make two stands per hour.
When I want to call bobcats and lions, I go into the rough foothills deer and rabbit country. When I call red fox, I go into the corn and alfalfa country. Swift foxes are found in the barren grasslands. Coyotes are most abundant in the prairie sandhills and mixed croplands and rough pastures or high mountain parklands.
No matter where you live, there is carnivore hunting somewhere nearby. Once you find a successful stand, return to it. There are stands where I have called 30 coyotes over 25 years, sitting on the same spot.
Great hunting to you!
A delegation of three Dutch muskrat trappers was visiting Denver several years ago for a meeting of the European Economic Union’s humane trapping group. I was asked to host them for an expedition; so, I took them on a coyote-calling safari. None of them had called before, but all had some sort of firearms experience in the police or Dutch Army.
Each was issued a Swedish Mauser in 6.5 x 55-mm, and we went into the bowls of the plains. When we got to the ranch, I gave each a Crit’R·Call and a five-minute lesson. Then each gave it a try and demonstrated what they could do. The range of calling quality was from lousy to dismal. They were embarrassed at their inability to master such a simple tool. I stuffed my earplugs in tightly.
At the first three stands, they alternated calling every five minutes, each taking his turn. Oh, it hurt me to listen. I had this compulsion to take over the calling, but held back. Finally, at the fourth stand, ten minutes into this miserable calling effort, I put my Crit’R·Call up to my lips for the sweet sound of death that I make. I was just ready to blow when the first shot went off. Off to my right, two coyotes were charging in, not hesitating, running full tilt to that dismal sound. One of the Dutchmen had flattened the lead coyote. I went into a puppy yelp and stopped the second coyote, then flattened it with my .25-06. It was a great moment for the Dutch muskrat trappers and for me.
Miserable calling techniques are often rewarded nicely; so, don’t be self-conscious and think negatively about your calling. Like any hunting, you start out less than great and become great with practice and experience.
There are two basic types of hand-held calls: the open-reed type and the closed-reed type (aka as fixed-reed). The former, like the Crit’R·Call, Tally-Ho, and sundry copies, have the main operating feature of an exposed reed that is manipulated with the upper lip to give it range, modulation, and quality. The closed-reed type has an internal reed where the reed length is fixed and therefore it cannot be modified as it is blown.
Both types of calls can be manipulated by how hard the air is blown into them, muting them with the hands over the barrel, back pressure from closing the hands over the barrel, and inflection by the length of breaths blown into them.
The closed-reed calls with the pre-set reed length have a fixed sound. They are simple, repetitive, and work fine under most conditions. It does not take much practice or sophistication to use them, which is an advantage. On the downside, the closed-reed calls have tendencies to fail often from moisture and dirt interfering with the reed vibration. They commonly freeze up in cold weather. The metal reed types often fail from the reed hardening and breaking or warping. Replacement of the reeds is frequent under heavy use, or a new call is needed. Compared with open-reed types, closed-reed calls do not produce the volume or variety of sound required for consistently good results. Varmints get educated to the closed-reed calls more quickly. Ease of use is traded for quality and variety of sound.
There are millions of closed-reed calls sold each year, and they are successfully used. The average sportsman has the closed-reed call model fixed in his mind as the only call around.
By contrast, open-reed calls have long and open reeds that are operated on by the upper lip, tongue, and cheek muscles. An infinite number of pitches, tones, notes, and subtle sound quality can be produced easily and instantly—caller’s choice.
The reeds are made of break-proof nylon, plastic, and epoxy that work under all temperatures and moisture conditions. The longevity of open-reed calls is many years. The variety of sounds varies with each caller, so varmint education is less of a problem.
A caller can make mouse squeaks and bird tweets of ultra-high pitch by tweaking the tip of the reed. Moose grunts and ultra-low-note bawls can be made on the same call and reed the next moment by vibrating the entire reed. The lip can be slid forward on the reed to produce a slurring weeep sound. The lips and tongue can be quivered to get delicious wails and whimpers. Open-reed calls can produce emotion of much better quality than can fixed-reed calls.
If the caller likes the fixed-reed characteristics on an open-reed call, he can roll a rubber band onto the reed of an open-reed call to the length and sound he wants, and leave it. Blowing with the lips behind the rubber band produces the closed-reed sound on the open-reed call. So, Crit’R·Calls (and copies) can be used either way with authentic sound production. Using the lip produces by far the best sound quality.
The reeds in open-reed calls are very tough and resistant to breakage, warping, and damage. They are easily changed or replaced and can be tailor-made by the caller to fit his needs. Open-reed calls can use jerry-rigged reeds made of credit cards, plastic pop bottles, collar stays, and various substitutes and work fine.
Soon after I made Crit’R·Call, I tried to sell the open reed call to a famous call maker. He told me “No, your call is no good. The average hunter is too dumb to learn how to use it.” It was a good lesson. So, at Crit’R·Call we go out of our way to instruct customers how to use our calls. It does take a minimum amount of practice to learn how to use them. As the open-reed calls are used and the techniques mastered, quality and confidence improve, but simple repetition of the basic Crit’R·Call rabbit squalls with emotion wins predator calling contests all over the USA. Even we calling dummies can learn how to use them. When you buy a call, read the instructions. It really is no statement about your manhood, just read the blasted instructions! Buy an instruction tape which gives you examples of what you should sound like. It will bring you up to speed quickly.
Open-reed calls like the Tally-Ho, Crit’R·Call, and copies, all work pretty much the same. Put the call in the mouth, reed up with the upper lip resting on the reed. The barrel is pointed away from the mouth, held between the thumb and forefinger. Place the lip or rubber band down on the reed to produce a fulcrum so the reed length is established. Hold the lip there as you blow into the call.
Bring the air up out of the chest and into the reed in a tight column that vibrates the reed and makes the basic sound. Muting the call with the hand over the barrel is important for volume and inflection of the sound. Start with the hand closed over the barrel and as you blow into call, saying whooo, open the hand at the same time. When the whooo is finished, the hand is open.
To use less reed, move the lip or band back, pushing the call further out of the mouth. That produces a higher pitch and notes. Tightening or loosening the lip bite produces higher or lower notes and pitch. Slide the lip forward or backward as you blow, which produces nice slurring and a weep sound. Slide the call further into the mouth, resetting the lip back on the reed produces lower notes.
Blow harder and softer, change the cadence of your blowing by holding your breath for fractions of a second, and then resume the blowing. Wiggle the lip or call and bring the air out of your throat with a roll. Put all of that together and you have excellent calling for coyotes, fox, bears, bobcats, and literally hundreds of other animals.
With the Crit’R·Call, I can sit down with the Standard and Magnum or PeeWee and Song Dog and call every critter from the weasels to moose in the USA and pygmy mongoose to elephants in Africa.
Open-reed calls have it for volume and range. On a quiet night, line of sight, a coyote howl on a Magnum Crit’R·Call can be heard 2.5 miles by the human ear with normal hearing. Predators hear better than do humans. Calls can also be quieted down to very soft whimpers by muffling with the hands and low pressure blowing.
Open-reed calls will make teaser mouse squeaks, low- or high-volume rabbit squalls, and variety from puppy whines, fawn bleats, doe bawls, etc. at an instant with no change in calls or reeds. That variety of sound adds scores of predators to the bag.
Cost of most open- or closed-reed calls is under $20. Metal, closed-reed calls used frequently last one season or less. Calls with plastic reeds (closed-reeds) last longer.
Open-reed calls last indefinitely. Some of the first Crit’R·Calls are used frequently today, 27 years old with the original reeds! I have a Tally-Ho call I bought in 1965 that still works fine.
South Dakota winters are tough! In 1968, a friend and I bought a famous brand-name electronic caller, a record player adapted for portability, battery operated with a speaker. It was -10 degrees the morning we first tried it. We lugged it out to a stand overlooking a cattail marsh, set it up, then turned it on and sat down. The player rolled the record around about ten revolutions then wound down to a stop. It froze up; batteries would not run the turntable. My friend shrugged his shoulders. I pulled out an open-reed Boyton’s Famous call and called up a nice red fox that we bagged. The electronic call was packed up and returned for a refund. Electronic callers have come a long way from those pioneer efforts.
Cassette tapes, CD’s, and microchip electronic callers are available for $1000 or less. Most run in the $250-$450 range with all of the bells and whistles. Many have remote switches and are wireless or in one unit with the speaker. They are portable, dependable, and handy.
Most are 12-volt with sundry battery configurations, including rechargeable C- or D-cell replacement batteries. Claims of superiority vary, but there is a large range of quality, dependability, range, and convenience. The major companies—Burnham Brothers, Lohmann, Western Rivers, and Johnny Stewart—make good products. Looking at the components, most seem to be made of very similar stuff.
Electronic calls handle many kinds of tapes, CD’s, and chips with a large variety of bird and mammal misery. Some brands are recordings of actual live animals; some are made from recordings of people using calls. Do not dismiss people using calls to produce the recorded sounds. Exaggerated animal distress cries often work better than the original animal distress recordings.
Many are excellent, clear, with no feedback or aberrations, just the animal sounds. The recent products are much better than the old cassette and record sounds because of electronic computer cleanup of the flaws.
Volume, of course, varies with turning the volume switch up and down, and the size and quality of the speaker. Generally speaking, electronic units send sound no farther than good open-reed calls. The louder the volume on electronic calls, the more sound distortions are amplified, and the quality suffers. Some units are affected by side winds that interact with the speaker to produce distortions.
Most electronic units now available, are reliable, durable, and work quite well. However, electronics and batteries are still susceptible to cold, moisture, and corrosion.
An alternative to the made-for-varmint-hunter-type electronic callers are the common boom boxes and tape players you can buy for $60-$150 at the local electronics or discount stores. Most of these units are great, with excellent quality speakers and sound, have remote switches for on/off, volume, and for selecting CD choices. If you don’t like the color of the unit, paint or tape them up, or put in a brown carrying bag. If you don’t like the large sizes, use the small portable type with the small plug-in speakers. They work just fine under ordinary conditions. Point the speakers at where you think the predator is, walk away 20 yards and sit down at a convenient place, get ready, turn on the unit with the remote, and prepare for action.
There are several disadvantages to electronic calls. They are inconvenient to carry around. Weather causes failures. There is an inability to change call sounds when needed; however, you can use hand-held calls with the electronic calls. Some remote units also allow for selection of different sounds on the same CD at the touch of the remote button.
For convenience of putting your effort into looking for predators and shooting, the electronics are great. The work is a trade-off—carrying some of the units is work and inconvenient. Calling with a hand-held call is work, and it is more difficult to concentrate on finding and shooting the predator while blowing at the same time. Open-reed and some closed-reed calls can be used without hands.
My recommendation is to try both and use whichever you like best. After comparing both types of calling, I use open-reed hand-held calls 98% of the time.
Recently, a friend called. “My friend has a mountain lion on his farm. It is killing his calves and dogs. He called the Game and Fish and they said it couldn’t be. Must be dogs. What can he do?” he asked.
“Well, see if he can get a permit to kill it. Usually, state law gives him the right to kill predators that are killing stock. Then take my CD#2 with African sounds, plug it in to his kid’s boombox, set it on #5 (Steenbok squalls), point it to the direction the lion should come from, turn it on, sit back 50 yards and play it for an hour. If the lion comes in, shoot it,” I said.
The place was 200 miles from mountain lion range, out in the middle of the northern prairie.
I got a call from my friend two weeks later. “Hey man, you know what you are talking about. My friend did just what you suggested. He killed a 120-pound lion after 20 minutes of playing the Steenbok song.” It sure is nice to be right some of the time!
Predators respond to a wide variety of sounds. Sounds like high-pitched rabbit squalls will attract all predators. Some sounds, like an adult coyote yelp, will attract basically coyotes. The following is a basic list of common sounds and species that can be expected to respond.
| Sound/ Distress Cry | Predators that will respond |
| Cottontail, jackrabbit, and snowshoe distress calls | All predators |
| Mouse squeaks | Canines, cats, and some weasels (badger and marten) |
| Fawn bleats | Coyotes, wolves, bears, lions, and bobcats |
| Adult deer bawls | Lions, coyotes, wolves, bears, and bobcats |
| Turkey chirps | Coyotes and bobcats |
| Bear cub squalls | Bears, coyotes, and wolves |
| Cat caterwauls, purring, and mews | Bobcats, lynx, and lions |
| Coyote talk: adult howls and yelps | Coyotes |
| Puppy ki-yi yelps | Coyotes, foxes, and wolves |
| Bird distress cries | Cats, foxes, coyotes |
| Baby pig squeals | Coyotes, foxes, cats, bears, and pigs |
When you sit down and listen to a wide selection of recorded bird and animal distress cries, you can’t avoid the conclusion that they all sound very similar in pitch, sequence, and high and low notes. From a distance, it would be hard to tell which critter was squalling. One essential common characteristic seems to be the C-sharp note. Most of the serious squalls get to that high note which flips the predators’ switch on. All of these distress sounds have a similar pulse.
I gave a seminar once in California to non-hunters where I demonstrated several calling techniques. After the session, a young lady came up to me. She was an EMT (emergency medical technician). She said my coarse cottontail call brought back a horrible memory. She responded to an auto accident where a young woman had the top of her skull cut off, including the top of the brain. This fatally injured woman was making that very sound and did not stop until she died on the stretcher in the ambulance. She said that sound still rings in her ears and runs chills up her spine every time she hears it.
These distress cries strike an ancient cord that probably goes way back in evolutionary time. I visited some friends in a southern state who had a severely retarded son. The unfortunate kid was born with no brain above the cerebellum, so he breathed and had essential bodily functions, but he could do absolutely nothing else—no sight, no speech, no control over any muscles, and no awareness to respond. He was about 12 years old and about 60 pounds, in diapers, and was handled like a baby. It took an admirable amount of guts, patience, love, and sacrifice to deal with him. He rarely moved and required many hours daily of physically moving his limbs and body to keep any muscle tone in his body.
My friend had a gathering of trappers at his house to meet me. My friend asked me to demonstrate the Crit’R·Call. As I began making the coarse cottontail call, the retarded boy started moving and making similar sounds like some long dormant critter finally coming to life. I stopped, wondering if the sound was hurting him. My friend’s wife asked me to continue because she thought the sound was pleasurable to the boy. She wanted to buy a call so she could make those sounds for him. I continued for ten minutes or so, while the boy writhed and grimaced like he was trying to speak and reach out to the sound. It was an interesting experience. I gave her my call.
Prey death-cries reach out from the dawn of time, sounds that make dogs and cats—which have never been out of a house—jump. These are sounds that they could not have heard before. I have watched 50,000 people turn around and look at me in Time Square in New York City when I blew a loud rabbit squall.
In Africa in 1987, on the Hshshiluwe River, in an eerie early morning fog, I was sitting in a boat, calling to see what would respond along the bank. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a ripple in the glass-still water. A pair of golf ball sized eyes emerged, which were about a foot apart and 8 feet out from the boat. I pointed my finger at it so the two wildlife officers with me could see it. When they saw it, they hit the starter on the boat and we quickly moved. The crocodile, a modern dinosaur, was scoping out a meal—us. It was quite capable of jumping in and pulling us out of the boat. It was 17 feet long and weighed approximately 1200 pounds.
There is magic in predator calling with origins from the foggy gloom of the dinosaur age. It is fun to know and be able to repeat those sounds to trick the ultimate tricksters—the predator.
When you get the hang of it, there is no comparison between fixed-reed calls, electronics, or open-reed calls. Open-reeds have it. The most important key to successful calling is having a call that works in all kinds of weather, is simple to use and to carry, and produces the variety of sounds needed for tripping the hearing threshold of the predator and makes it want to come.