ISU Bengal

Issue date: 3/28/07 Section: Outdoor

Media Credit: Steve Deslich A coyote looks on from the August grass in Yellowstone National Park.

When I was twelve I bought a coyote call. It was a four-inch long wooden tube with a reed inside. It sounded like a screaming duck when I blew on it, but I trusted the package which said that the sound was that of a distressed rabbit. My good friend who lived next door had bought a similar coyote call after hearing another neighbor tell the story of casually blowing on such a call one night while sitting on the tailgate of his truck. He flipped on his flashlight and found himself surrounded by four or five coyotes. The call, as we saw it, was our ticket to a similar encounter.

I saw my first coyote near the Cape Horn lakes in central Idaho the summer before I bought the call. My father and I were escaping from scout camp to Stanley in order to call my little sister and wish her a happy birthday. Dad drove our brown mini-van down a Forest Service back road with the promise that we were sure to see some elk, deer, or at least some Sand Hill Cranes that from the right distance could look like either animal. We were surprised to see the coyote.

The road cut through a forest of Lodge Pole pine on the edge of a marshy meadow. The trees on our left perched on the edge of a dirt bank, and it was here that the coyote first appeared, overlooking its domain and its mechanical intruder. It ran alongside the car at what I imagined was 30 miles an hour until the bank sloped down to meet the road. Here, my father slowed down, and the coyote cut across and out onto the meadow. There he paused so that we could stop the car and "Wow" and holler about the experience.

It was bigger than I imagined a coyote should be. The canine had brown and white grizzled fur, an erect head, and a bushy tail that curved up and around over its back. I swore to my father that we had just seen a wolf, but in 1991 in Idaho, that was unlikely. My father swore back to me that it was just the most healthy, beautiful coyote he had ever seen.

Somehow I thought that buying a coyote call would provide me with another experience like that one. So my friend and I went out hunting. First his mother drove us south of Twin Falls into the hills where our neighbor had had his close encounter. For two hours or more we ranged the sagebrush and lava rock calling for the wild dogs. We took turns lying in the brush and blowing on the call while the other hid behind some boulders to get a clean shot. No success. Not even a sighting.

Continued...

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