EP 28: Coyote Hunting Success with John Bair

Coyotes are some of the smartest critters known to man and most likely they're going to be where they're covered where they feel comfortable you know sneaking in you blink your eyes and they're going to see if anything to do with western big game welcome to the epic outdoors podcast powered by under armor hey everybody jason carter and adam bronson here from epic outdoors with another epic podcast um got an awesome guest it's actually our first guest that we've ever had on twice and so anyway we've got the legendary john bear on the line um before we get started i did want to you know let everybody know that of course under armor sponsors these podcasts we're super appreciative of them and all their support over the years i've dealt with them for many years on a variety of different levels and they continue

to support the hunting industry and we're super proud to to be affiliated with them and uh and look forward to a lot of new products they've got coming out here shortly here at epic outdoors we publish a western hunting publication nine months a year the epic membership includes nine issues of the magazine where the first six months of the year are totally geared to breaking down all the western states draws their application process their deadlines units kill rates drawing odds everything that we feel is very important for you to make a calculated decision on whether you apply for that state or not and how you want to apply for trophy for more opportunity hunts but but do it from a current year perspective we also have um you know a bunch of different articles in there from biologists from

the states hunter next door articles uh what else jason yeah the hundred dollar subscription you know includes uh consulting so we deal with our clients on a regular basis over the phone help them develop their hunting plans and uh any anything to do with western big game once guys draw tags they can call in we'll put them on a list give you a list of members who've hunted in the past or help you find outfitters and so and and we've got a you know a lot of experience across the west and and it might be that you draw a unit that we've got experience in we have no problems helping you so anyway this is just a very interactive service hundred bucks a year try to be all inclusive on western big game and and of course on from a trophy perspective you know we we all like the big stuff and uh and so we really try to you

know capitalize on on the changes that are happening and some of the different great opportunities out there yep so if you're interested you can find us on the web at epicoutdoors.com or call us at 435-263-0777 anyway thank you to under armor thanks to john hey john you on the line you betcha hey we just want to you know tell you thanks for taking a hour or two out of your schedule and uh visiting with us over the phone um of course when we had john earlier we talked a lot about the wildlife board and conservation groups and the good things that come from selling tags and expo tags and different things um you've taken that hat off recently haven't you the wildlife board hat yeah they yeah my uh well my uh six-year term actually expires here i'll be officially off the board here in a few more weeks but as far as meetings and and whatnot it's all wrapped up so yeah you're still getting

hate mail hate emails and that for two weeks but nothing you can do about it no meetings or anything i've never seen anything no on facebook about john no or or instagram or the web or chat forums i'll send you some yeah it's good i tell you that's that's one thing you get involved like that you learn who your friends are pretty quick and especially your enemies john especially your enemies uh that's right well good well you know you're not doing uh much if you don't have hate you realize that oh yeah if you yeah if you don't get somebody mad at you somebody ain't doing their job so that's right well that's we've we've i know jason and all of us here as well as a ton of other people in utah appreciate your six years there on the board leaving there as the chairman and you know see i guess who's gonna who's gonna replace you so to speak but uh been great for utah wildlife

as far as i'm concerned yeah me too well well i really appreciate it it's been uh it's been an honor to be able to serve and uh you know it's a it's quite the uh experience you always sitting back watching those meetings i always thought man you know just do this and do that it's a it's an easy decision until it's your decision i mean we have a lot of passionate sportsmen and people love wildlife here and that's why they live here so it's all good yeah that's right well we're not just gonna let you sink back into the private sector and do nothing i mean just wondering like if you're like the lead candidate for the director for the state or what's your next uh gig gonna be yeah i don't i don't think that's uh i don't think that's in the governor's plans i uh the deputy director is uh stepping in to take over mike fowks and he's a great guy and so good he'll be the next director is

director she and he's on to the u.s fission wildlife service and utah won't skip a beat mike's a great guy and will do a great job and he's got a lot of good staff around him and i don't think they'll skip a beat so good well at least at least uh you know i guess you just go back to killing coyotes and uh turning them in for 50 bucks a piece and so anyway that's kind of why we wanted john here today we just want to visit about coyotes which uh you know i know adam and i kill them every time we see them or at least we shoot at them but uh yeah you know that's the that's the important part of the equation is uh is making it count when it comes time to pull the trigger so yeah you know we uh oh anyway we just have never had a podcast about dogs and and hunting them and calling them and different things and so just kind of getting to be that time of year in some regards too and

you know but i don't know you know we've known you for a long time i don't know i don't know you've always liked to hunt coyotes like it seems like you have been you know i'm gonna say in the last five years or so you probably always have hunted them like everybody but maybe tell us about like your background and ranching i mean we know where you come from you're proud of that sam pete country and and i know you've got an affinity for the woolly bugger the sheep you got really soft spot in your heart for woolly buggers and so maybe that's where yeah no i uh yeah i'm uh side in the wall i guess you might say i don't care before so i uh i grew up in manti on a on a sheep ranch my dad worked on a big sheep ranch for a family there and uh my grandpa and my great grandpa both ran sheep in colorado for a long time then moved out here to

utah and my great grandpa was actually a trapper on the desert land and livestock before uh the lds church owned it and he they ran a bunch of sheep up there and he my uncles worked there uh as sheep herders and my grandpa was a great grandpa actually was a trapper there and uh as long as i can remember when i was a little kid i knew my great grandpa really well and i grew up just down the street from him and every sunday afternoon he'd come over and have dinner with us and that was my favorite part of the week after that we'd go sit on the back porch or in the front room and he'd tell me stories about trapping and hunting and hunting coyotes and lions and all the bears and all the cool stuff he dealt with as a trapper and uh of course died growing up in the sheep business and that i mean killing coyotes was just part of life you're bred they hate coyotes basically

oh yeah i don't i don't ever remember not uh not loving to hunt coyotes i mean but i can remember the first time i ever shot one i was probably 11 or 12 years old we finally called one in and it was out across the big old uh big old safe fresh flat out on the sandrafeld desert and i seen it come in i told my dad there's a coyote right there you know i was trying to be quiet of course i was excited and uh i was trying to tell him where it was and i guess my instructions weren't very good he couldn't see it he told me to shoot it and then i leveled off on it and uh killed it i'd give it probably 150 yards it seemed like a thousand yards to me at that age the only the only gun i had at that time was an old 7mm remington mag i bet that opened him up i'm here to tell you that was the that was

a user-friendly predator gun i remember that bugger scope bit me and kicked me so hard i hope we didn't call anything in the rest of the day just because i didn't want to pull the trigger but you know that was uh from that time on walking up to that coyote there and we had one of our sheepdogs with us it was out there getting after him a little bit and man it was just addicting after that i just uh and we've hunted coyotes my whole life i mean there was a few years where we had uh a few years i guess about 12 years where we had lion hounds and so we spend most of the winter hunting lions and then we just had coyotes in the summer so we and we'd hunt them all year round so and so is it uh is it just with like whether you got on social media we got on social media i mean it seems like you're

crazy about them i mean have you always been crazy about them or is it just the last five years i mean or is it just that we're we know you a little better because we're following your posts and maybe you're using the dogs with them too maybe that's where we're seeing it probably the last six or seven years we've probably got a little more serious about it than we than we have been in the past i mean we've always done it but it seems like we uh we're a little more serious here around would your wife use the same word as you serious or would she use another word to describe your hunting addiction you know i don't i don't know i gotta you know i can tell you a story about my wife be careful no no let's have it she uh she gets home from the gym last year as i'm loading up this loading up a dogster run up on the hill and i says you want to go with me i said i'm

just gonna go up and look around and of course she had her gym clothes on and she's like yeah i'll ride with you we get up there and i fire up the siren and the howler and have some coyotes answer just to go off the canyon i says well let's just walk over there she says well you know i don't know i says here i got a camo jacket you can put on so she's got bright orange shoes on bright orange gym pants and a bright orange tank top basically blaze orange everything you know ammo coat i let her wear and we go over there and call in a pair and she thought it was great watching them come in and just thought it was all it was all nice and and uh we kill these coyotes and drag them back the truck take pictures with them and she acted like she really liked it and then the next time i said you want to go again uh that's all right she says you can go sit in the brush that's what she calls it

you can go uh show this but uh you know it's it's uh it's just i don't know it's just something that i grew up doing and uh i think the more you do it the better you get at it i guess the more you'll like it and the more you do it more so and of course social media kind of spreads the word a little bit so yeah i mean i didn't i didn't know i didn't know jason was the big buck master until i started on social media i didn't know how to great sheep guide until i started following him on social media so i guess that kind of tells our secret that one is a little surprising yeah it catches everybody off guard yeah oh shoot well uh well cool that's awesome uh maybe talk to us a little bit about since you've been so involved with utah and the division and and all of that i know we've got we're fairly anti-predator here in the state generally speaking but tell us about kind of utah's efforts to

control these populations and you know if you've seen a difference in the deer populations and the overall you know health of the herds here across the state well you know that over at uh byu we got some great young biologists over there uh randy larson's one of them and he's done a very extensive study on uh on mule deer and on uh the effects of coyotes on mule deer and he came to the wildlife board last year and showed us that on the areas where we really concentrate on uh fawning ground predator control our fawns or our fawn recruitment's actually up the first couple years it was up quite a bit and then it kind of leveled off a little bit of course those numbers go up and down biology and and back science but uh the first couple years where we really hammered coyotes on some of these units

the fawn recruitment really really showed and utah has really made a concerted effort to get after predators specifically the coyotes uh we got a bounty on them here fifty dollars and uh a coyote now i i don't think all the coyotes that get killed are actual pawn killers i mean a lot of guys go out in the winter out on the desert and shoot coyotes and i do too i mean it's it's a great time to hunt them and and it's when they're you know the pups are starting to get out on their own early in the fall and early winter and uh it's a great time to hunt but i don't think a lot of those coyotes are real fawn killers but the ones we concentrate on on the fawning grounds maybe the higher country coyotes the ones around the foothills and that i think those definitely have an impact on our on our deer population and the you know in the uh the deer study has shown that a lot of the fawns you know

a huge percentage of the fawn mortality comes from coyotes and so if you can get out in the fawning grounds and uh and get those breeding pairs you know you can yeah you can definitely definitely help out the deer herd and the studies at byu that they've done have definitely definitely shown that and utah's like you said we're pretty mean to our predators here especially the coyotes i i know some of those same studies back when i was at utah state um so it's been 10 or 12 years ago 15 i don't know how old i'm getting but anyway they were doing some on deseret and other parts of the state uh and the you got a lap dog dog there with you okay just checking that's my wife's guy okay i'm just checking well anyway uh these same studies um i remember reading them and that dead uh they'd do implants on the coyotes and and and track them

year-round obviously and look at the peaks when prey base would switch from say small mammals you know mice rabbits all that to when you had a breeding pair that had an active den how the prey size obviously the demands for protein meat would go up because they got six to ten mouths to feed and i'm sure randy's been involved in that too and and how that if you can disrupt that breeding pair after they bred or right before right as they're popping or right after they do you can have a much bigger bang for the buck so to speak by just killing like you said coyotes in november and december and you know hey we're all shooting coyotes in november and december but um april may june you get a lot more bang for the buck and and that's a little bit unconventional but it might lead us into some of the strategies you're

going to get into here in a minute in terms of you know types of calls and types of year you know different times a year and things like that you know that's uh you bring up a great point you go find a coyote then this time of year and they are just littered with falling legs i mean there's there'll be on way laying all over the place they'll eat everything down to about the knee and i guess that leg bone ain't ain't much there but the pups will chew on them a little bit but there is fawn legs laying all over the place and i i guess they're uh you know that's just a great prey base for them because man they really really turn up the heat on the deer it's you know the fawns i guess are easier to catch and you know it's a good it's a good uh meal for the pups and easier for the parents because you know i think a coyote living off of mice and tweety birds

has a hard time feeding like you said all those pups yeah they can feed themselves they can feed one yeah you know you'll catch a fawn and like you said this time of year uh when they're out in the in the fawning grounds and that yeah they can definitely definitely put a hurting on the deer but if you know what you're doing you can kind of turn the tables on you can really build the old pair coyotes the old adults the breeding pairs that have listened to the dying rabbits all winter long and had the planes after them the government traffic here there's if you know what you're doing you can really put the hurt on them so let's talk about that i know you want some more pressure out there with you and you'd like to compete against some of these guys so let's let's talk about that a little bit like let's say right now you're going to go out today let's start with today and basically we've

got fawns just about to hit the ground yeah right now i know in wyoming we're just right there the last of of may first part of june and and uh you're right about the fawn legs it's unbelievable i spent a lot of time up there doing it but let's talk about that like let's say you were going to go out and kill some dogs today i mean versus you know this fall versus this winter versus next early you know late winter early spring like uh it's not just about dying rabbits i know of course but we we aren't john bear we don't know you know maybe explain that like what do you what do you what would you do going out tonight well there's there's a few things that there's a few things that uh i think a lot of people overlook hunting coyotes and it's just like when you guys go deer hunting when you're after a

big buck or a big ram or something you spend a lot of time scouting and this time of year i spend two or three nights a week scouting and uh i'll scout for three or four days and then go hunt for one day and the thing about this time of year is you only get maybe two or three stands in in the morning and then it's pretty hot and they kind of shut down and then you may get two stands in in the evening before it gets dark when it's cool enough and the coyotes are active enough to respawn so i'll go out and uh find the place that i think will hold some coyotes a lot of times this time of year i have sheep ranchers calling uh this past week i've had two or three different sheep ranchers calling saying that didn't hit and want me to go get after them and uh so i'll go out and just at dark i'll go out and play the siren uh play some howls or howl on my diaphragm or my mouth call

and i'll sit there a lot of times they'll answer right off the bat but i'll usually sit there for at least 10 minutes and uh you'll get them answering and talking to you and once they'll give their location away to you then they're in trouble and uh because this time of year if you can hear them and they're barking and howling you can bet they're pretty close to a pan and they're going to be around there you know the next morning or the next evening they're going to be fairly close and you can kind of gauge the wind if i'm there in the evening i take notice what direction the wind's going and you know in the morning that's probably going to be a little different but it kind of helps you make a game plan because you only got one shot at these coyotes if you go in and and screw it up and

don't uh don't get them dead and they see your wind gear getting a fight with the dogs and and uh get out of there without you killing them you're probably not going to see them again so move their den or what are they doing yeah they'll move their den or they just won't respond i mean they'll they uh they won't respond anymore they'll and that's another thing about uh this time of year when i go out locating as soon as they talk to me i don't say another word to them i don't how back at them i don't uh yeah i don't i don't challenge them i don't want them to feel threatened because then they'll move and uh i just want them to show me where they're at and i don't say another word and uh and then you don't then you don't sleep all night long right wait until daylight just dreaming about dogs

once in a while i mean i've been known to just sleep in the truck and stay right there till the next morning come on come on i mean sometimes you go out locating i mean and it might be two in the morning when you get them to answer you and it's going to be light three and a half hours so you so you'd locate i mean you'll drive stop and drive stop and drive stop and drive you know till midnight two in the morning okay yep oh yeah just and uh i mean if you got work the next morning i don't know that you guys know about that this podcast is spiraling downhill already that was below the belt oh geez well yeah locate locate locate that's the thing if you like i tell guys i scout for a week to hunt for a day and then uh this time of year you know we talked a lot about dying rabbits i haven't played a dying rabbit sound in six weeks and i probably won't

play another one until end of september first october so you say you say now that you located one tomorrow morning comes i mean talk us through what you're going to do to well i'm gonna this time this time of year i like to i have a couple of uh mountain curves that i like to take with me that are uh coyote dogs and they'll they're real fun to hunt with it's a little bit different strategy but uh you don't always sometimes i don't take the dogs you don't have to have the dogs to be successful this time of year if i if i get them to uh to talk to me i'll get in the next morning or the next evening get the wind right because this time of year especially when you've been locating and they're expecting another coyote they're going to try to circle downwindow you to get wind and see exactly what they're dealing with and the dogs the dogs kind of help with that if they can see a dog

it kind of trips their crazy trigger and they're not as apt to try to wind you but if you're just sitting there and there's no dog and you're just trying to call them in they're going to try to wind you and they'll swing downwind you know sometimes you're trying to when you're trying to challenge bark and act like another coyote yeah anytime you're calling them they're going to try to wind you but we'll go in and set up and if there's two of you it's nice because you can set somebody looking downwind and try to catch them circling downwind and uh but get just get where you can see and i'll sit down and uh and uh my favorite sound to start a standoff with is just a just kind of a wimpy howl that doesn't sound too threatening and uh or a female submissive which is just kind of some yips and howls and uh just kind of let them know hey there's you know

there's a coyote over here kind of in your territory and uh just kind of get their attention you don't want to go in there and crank your call up that 40 you're going there and just sound like you're going to tear the place apart because they might just pack up there you know you don't want to see a big other dog i tell people all the time you know when i was a little kid and i went to grandpa's house when grandpa walked in he was the boss and he had that voice he had that big old gruff voice you didn't challenge him you didn't talk back to him you did whatever he said and you were just glad that he was allowing you to breathe the air you were breathing he was the boss okay you don't want to sound like grandpa whereas on the other hand my cousin joe he just had that voice that he didn't intimidate you he didn't scare you and as soon as he started

talking you wanted to smack it that's what you want to sound like you just want to just enough to be to sound like a coyote but not you don't want to sound threatening you don't want to sound like you're cutting them out just kind of annoying and squeaky like maybe a young coyote that's in their territory yeah as much as anything they're if they're a pair they're they just don't want any competition to kill and eat and anything in there they don't eat anything in my country and run you out right well not only that but if you know if they got a densite there they got them up there oh they're gonna be yeah they just are psycho about protecting those pups so i'll do a little howl like that i'll do some uh do some barks maybe like some female barks like something's going on that she's worried about and

then i'll play some pup distress on the on the fox pro or i can if uh and you guys can use the diaphragm call i'm sure if you take an elk diaphragm and flip it upside down so the long reeds on the bottom you can make any coyote sound on the planet and you uh you get some wine yeah that's good news well you're gonna have to now that's something you can practice while you're riding around the trip yeah is there home you know is there is there people oh yeah yeah your kids will love you for it your wife will love you for it there's a business i did just buy elk diaphragms flip them over and charge double and tell people their coyote diaphragms that's right that's right charge them double epic diaphragms here we go the bear version yeah hey we got our first we got our first pro staffer right there that's a 500 idea right there buddy somebody's gonna get paid you go throw some

pup howls at one of them and some puff wines and then them coyotes will come boiling in on you and sometimes it takes a little while to trip their trigger they'll sit out there and bark at you and howl at you a little while that's another thing about this time of the year is i like to sit a lot longer in the winter 13 14 minutes we're up and moving if we haven't seen anything this time of year i'll sit at half hour just for some reason it seems like it takes a little while once in a while so when do you so so you know they're there when you're when you're thinking of going back the next morning why would you why would you take your dogs and why would you just go and try to call them in what under what scenarios or or do you always like to try this day and age use your dogs because like you said if you do a howl and your dogs are out there running around they see them their guards down

as far as looking for john bear and a cowboy hat and a ghillie suit they're not looking for you you know they're looking they're looking for the dogs deal adam when we go home if you show up in a ghillie suit it's over well what about skinny jeans that wouldn't surprise me but that's going to end the trip too okay any jeans buckle jeans all that stuff's on the non-approved list so okay so no ghillie suits so just basic pants and shirt camouflage all right yes their camouflage works flat rimmed hats flatties yeah what so why would you guys are just you know you guys are just i don't know hey we're in the south we're country boys you're from the city so let's don't get things confused here you're from the big city up north well you're you're a little further north than that now so yeah will any old dog work john like can i take one i got a dog but it's not trained on

coyotes but i mean just sitting a dog by it does that help or is it yes it can i mean i i see people people post uh videos all the time of uh like their cow dogs coyotes chasing their cow dogs or their labs while they're out i had a kid the other day that i know real well tell me that uh they were up working their bird dogs in some chucker country and coyotes come boiling out of their rocks and we're chasing their springers all over you know so yeah but they so why would you and i mean if you yeah back to that question why why would you if i had a if i had a couple trained dogs like you're not not just family dogs that you know might get you in trouble or might get themselves killed if they go start running around with the pair of coyotes that grabs their throat why wouldn't you what's the benefits or when would you use just to go try to call them in versus hey i'm going to use the dogs

in the morning well the dogs can be a huge asset once in a while they can work against you so the uh sometimes you'll call in a coyote especially if it's a single they'll come in and see the dogs and maybe not you know it might be a young coyote intimidated yeah and just not want to deal with them and once in a while they'll run one off like that but uh you go in you find a you find a thin sight you get as close as you as you dare get and a lot of times i'll give some female submissive or a female yodel howl on the fox pro and then coyotes will start barking start threat barking like you know what are you doing you're not welcome that's when a good trained coyote dog that starts to shine those dogs of mine uh they'll they hear a coyote they perk right up oh she'll take off like a rocket my older dog he's

getting out so he kind of looks at me like you want me to go you want me to really go over there put on my put on my collar yeah i'm that's right and put on my kevlar and they'll run over there and you'll kind of listen for the fight to start and you'll hear them coyotes screaming and the dogs barking and uh here they come and those dogs will go over there and pick a fight with those coyotes and as soon as the coyotes start chasing them or chewing on them the dogs will turn and come back to you and uh they'll reel them right in and here a few days ago i was uh here not too far from where i live and uh went out and and set up on some that i'd located a couple nights before and they answered right back and the dogs took off and the dogs went out uh the last mark on the gps i got from the dogs

were about 800 yards before they started back and i never did hear a fight and i never did hear anything barking but i got my glasses out started looking and here uh my old dog come trotting down the road there's a little two track there he come trotting down the road and about 100 yards behind him he had a female coyote just following him in wow and he come over the site right down to me and she come out in the flat and then my pup decided she was going to get in on it and ran her up through the brush a little ways and they were up there running around and here come another coyote in and uh tried to get in on it and he big bugger i shot him out in the flat is that that one you sent me that giant yeah he's 45 pounds i've never seen a coyote that big before around here so and he was a skinny 45 pounds but the dogs ran out and jumped on that coyote and started chewing on him well then

here the female come out of the dog in to defend her dead buddy and she just sat there and barked at the dogs while they were chewing on the bed and then i shot her so that's when they can really be a benefit on the bears is you get a pair all men shoot one oh yeah you call one in and shoot it and the dogs are out there on it and the other one a lot of times will hang around to defend their dead buddy and uh wow you know and so just be patient yeah it's not like normal when you're rabbit calling and you calling a double and that first one hits the ground it's like run your action and slap the trigger as fast as you can on that other one because there's nothing stopping it basically no there's nothing stopping it but when you got a dog out there running around a lot of times they'll bring it back and yeah you know sometimes it works out perfect one dog will take the dead coyote and

start chewing on it and the other one will chase the other coyote a little ways and then come back and it'll just reel them right in i mean and it's it's a lot of dang phone there oh yeah it's a lot of using dogs that you're only watching the dogs work just like any other just like lions or anything you know so now there's a lot of times you can go out and just sit down and call the coyotes in and uh you know and maybe the dogs don't do you a lot of good but it's that's probably the funnest hunting i've ever done is is using my cur dogs on the coyotes so so if a guy wants to get into the dogs i mean is it something you i mean is there obviously people that train them breed them you know or do you'd have to do you know it's pretty tough to find a trained coyote dog anywhere for sale because it takes so much work

to get one to do what you want it to do that guys just don't get rid of them they just don't sell them and you know i've sold pups to people before and uh the hard part about coyote dogs is getting them on enough coyotes to teach them now if you live in texas or new mexico or someplace where they're just dogs loud coyotes yeah you know and guys are out hunting them every day but if you're going to have a coyote dog and you're only going to go out and get him on four or five coyotes a year you don't have a coyote you might as well have a family dog yeah yeah yeah that's what you got so that's the hard part about dogs is getting them on enough coyotes to train them so how long will you do this strategy is it basically the month of june june july i mean pretty soon those pups are off on their own

well yeah and and uh it seems like all the dog guys always want to start in april and it's usually a little early in april and uh they're not really aggressive may they start to warm up a little bit june's really good they're working really good right now july is really good august is really good and then september's kind of hit or miss usually by the end of september it starts to starts to kind of fade out and they're not as aggressive pups are big enough they can kind of fend for themselves a little bit and they're not as not defending them as much yeah and it's a crazy thing i've had pups come in in the end of august first of september that act just like the adults i mean they're just mean and tough and thinking they're they're ready to fight and uh then the coyote dogs gang up on one of them and they ain't so ready to fight anymore so

they uh but yeah the pups can get pretty mean pretty fast i don't know if they get that from watching mama or defending their dan or what but some of them pups they get pretty mean pretty quick tired and hungry and out there yeah i guess i don't know they're just ordinary teenagers i guess i don't know have your dogs ever had any i guess close calls or any oh yeah you get one you get ones over here and ones over here getting ganged up by four coyotes or something you're like oh this could go south fast or you know you're you got it yeah you got to realize that i mean when you go out there and turn those dogs you're using them for coyote bait live bait yeah you know and coyotes kill stuff for a living so there's they got to uh they got to kind of be tough sometimes one dog works real good but

you always run the risk of getting them picked up on and getting them chewed up on and and so that's kind of a kind of a challenge is knowing you know when to use one when to use two three seems to be a little bit much most of the time but uh so i always got one dog that's mad at me for leaving them in the box so oh geez but yeah they think up a little bit is it a year-round thing you you can use dogs whenever or i mean obviously really effective right now but yeah i mean i take a dog with me a lot in the winter i'll take my old dog and he'll just sit next to me and if you shoot one and wound it or something like that i mean he's good to go get it and that but they don't work you don't use them like like you do this yeah they're just not a nice thing they don't really work but during the spring and

summer is really the best for the used dog awesome and so uh and so when do you when do you really work on you know maybe back to the dying rabbit you know you know that works on these pups is september-ish or when are you doing you know usually by yeah towards the end of september is when uh we really start going back into the distress calls we still use vocals i use vocals all year long coyotes are extremely vocal animals they talk all year long you know but it changes up a little bit a lot of will you keep locating at night same thing oh yeah i mean they're territorial even if they don't even if they don't have a den they're still kind of territorial where you'll find them same basic place in the morning yeah you know and i don't know they're always i don't know that they always answer you to defend their territory i mean they're just vocal vocal animals and they'll just

answer you and a lot of times you go out and get one going and he'll start howling at you and then you'll hear him for you know you'll drive down the road a mile and there'll be another one howling and another one and another one and they just get each other going and i think they're just you know i don't i've never been able to figure out exactly what they're saying i don't know that anybody knows but when you get one howling uh you know they'll answer each other and a lot of them are just kind of easy going kind of i'm over here and i'm over there you know and you're over there and how are you but they'll answer you and they you know that's that's the thing that all is they'll give away their location so it's like hunting elk once you know where they are once you hear one you go in or hear cows talking you know you can really set a game strategize yeah so what are i

mean maybe i mean maybe this time of year i would guess this is maybe the time of year where you have some of your best days but i know you you always go down it seems like the world calling championships and things like that what are what are some of the best days you've ever had or best weekends you've ever had as far as killing in and calling and killing coyotes well we've had that's a pretty good one uh i went to nevada with a guy last year and from seven in the morning till about 11 at night we put 18 of them in the truck is that is that winter months so dying distressed stuff that was the i believe that was about the first october wow and so you have a lot a lot of pups and stuff yeah a lot of a lot of pups and a lot of coyotes out finally you know they're forgetting about the about the dan site yeah and worry roaming around and they just yeah they're

just out eating and in a situation like that we'd go out and set up you might howl a little bit just to get their attention and then we're playing pup distress sounds just because they work all year long you know any kind of distress sounds uh rabbits woodpeckers all those things yeah it's got some really good distress sounds up stress lightning jack is one of the most famous distress sounds ever we use a lot of that we use a lot of cottontail woodpecker and you know you go out and you you find a good spot that looks like it's got some coyotes and you you just let the old distress sounds play and and yeah we put 18 in the in the truck that day at the world coyote calling contest this last year me and my buddy from over in price that i hunted with uh we played the same sound all day and anytime we try anything else it wasn't working it was just a little scottontail

on the fox pro it's called and we uh we killed nine that day and we thought we we were tied for third went in and uh thought we were going to have a great second day and be right in the running for the world title and our good spots dried up and we couldn't buy one the next day but we still placed pretty good ended up taking the big dog pot we won about 1500 bucks for shooting a 35-pound coyote which is the biggest one of the contest and that whole contest all we did is play a cottontail and that's what that was down in arizona wasn't it or down yeah it was down in arizona so do you uh you know not to give away all your secrets on championship stuff but are you pre-locating uh you know setting up maybe a week oh yeah before yep before yeah with uh and the guys that uh my buddy al morris that uh

is with fox bro and they won him and his buddy garvin young his partner garvin have won the world's four times now and al lives just a little ways from here at springville they'll go down i mean a couple weeks before and they spend every night out that's insane it's like low it's like it yeah you're scouting for a once a lifetime desert sheep they act like it's a 200 inch deer and it's just a coyote well i'm telling you man it's uh and i not to downplay it all frustrated when they can't when they don't kill coyotes but i'm telling you the guys that really are consistently killing coyotes putting their time in just like everything they put their time in they do a lot of scouting a lot of maps al and garb will go down and they'll figure out every stand they'll have you know 70 stands laid out that they can go to they know where they're going to park their truck they know where he

going to sit depending on what the wind's doing and they know exactly where they're going to go so you don't have to spend a lot of time guessing and thinking and what time you're going to know i know i know i'm never successful that's right this is what when we go out there the three four times a winter and we think we're gonna get her done we don't have a prayer well and i take my kid out there and and then we call one in and now i'm starting to realize after talking to you for a while which is a little depressing but i start talking to you and i realize how freaking lucky we were you know i mean jeez you know this is the most that contest is is in my opinion to another level contest in the yeah in the country i mean there's thousands of dollars at stake and gold buckles and custom guns and you're competing against the best callers in the world and you have basically a day and

a half to get it done and so anything you can do i mean one coyote we placed in the money by one coyote wow and if we would have you know that's one miss one screwed up stand i mean that costs you a couple thousand dollars so anything you can do to tip the odds in your favor you're doing but let's go back to what you talked about you know out hunting with your kids and getting lucky there's a there's a few things you can do that will really tip the odds in your favor and when you take your kids out if you'll teach them this you'll have more success okay first thing you got to do is pay attention to the wind because if you're calling with the wind to your back and you're watching you know you can only see 50 yards or something and the wind's hitting you in the back and blowing down the draw you're

watching you know you're wasting your time but yeah yeah just let you know just think about it just like sneaking up on a big deer you know you got it you got to be mindful of that wind the second thing and i my dad drilled this in me when i was a kid i mean i was scared to death to move on stand if dad could see me move i'm gonna catch that man he was just because you think those coyotes i mean they they're you're trying to out predator a predator yeah they got the eyes they got a great nose they got great hearing and if you're out there moving around first off they can see you second off it makes noise and you're just totally giving away your position so teach your kids to hold still if you got to move a little bit yeah i mean you got it it is teach your 10 8 to 10 year olds to hold still tell your kids to hold you know my daughter when i take her with me and she's about 14 i mean she

holds still to the point where i'll tell her look over there you know and she'll be like she don't want to move she don't want to look she's afraid she'll move too much so and i was kind of that same way so teach them to hold still and teach them to look i mean i my kids when i take them i'll look over and they'll be you know looking at their looking at the ground or twiddling their shoelaces or some dang thing a lot of times those coyotes are sneaking up and they're peeking around to push at you they don't all come blazing in like you know the video show yeah like i'm for takers and that you know that's always the good video when they come flying in a lot of times those coyotes peek up on peek over the ridge at you and you only see one ear and one eyeball peeking around to push at you and you've got

to consciously just discipline yourself to look and look and look just tear that place apart just convince yourself that there's a coyote there and you've got a seam because they are hard to see they don't always come running in you know a lot of times they'll come sneaking in and just peek through the brush at you if they're only you know 18 inches tall and it doesn't take much to hide one so hold still play the wind and just really really really look close i use binoculars on every stand before i get up and leave i glass every ridge line and uh every bush and just just tear the place apart and it'll surprise you how many coyotes just sneak in try to get a peek at what's going on and don't really come running in you know are you using are you glassing during the calling or just at the end i am glassing the whole time i get my glasses out and and uh first thing i do if it's a great big

area i'll range a couple places out there because kyle's not a very big target if you're going to shoot him at 300 yards you know it's good to know he's 300 yards so i'll range tree or rock or something out of the bars i think one might show up and then when i start calling i mean i'll give it a few minutes and then i'll start glassing i'll glass for a minute and then i'll sit and then i'll tip them down and just look and look and look and then i'll blast out a little ways and uh a lot of times you'll catch them long ways out coming over the ridge sneaking in and so you know where to watch you know there's one coming in and they just i tell you it's just like uh just like hunting deer if you put glasses up and use them you're going to see a lot more stuff if you didn't take your glasses with you out scouting deer sheep or you know whatever you big shots hunt the rest of the

year you know you're not you're not going to see as many of them but you also got to remember that there might be one sneaking right up next to you 10 feet away and you got to you got to be watching for him too so i'll blast for 10 or 15 seconds and then look away from my glasses and just keep it going like that how long do you sit on a stand normally a normal stand you know you you don't have to be back to work you're just you're going out all day long you're calling from daylight till dark how long do you normally stand if you don't know there's a coyote there in a normal situation i like to stay between 15 and 20 minutes some guys are 10 minutes and they're up and going that'd be me i i've had i've had good luck you know between uh staying a little longer it seems like seven minutes for me no matter what time of year seven minutes is kind of the witching hour it seems

like if you know i've killed more coyotes right on seven minutes than than any other amount of time but i've killed a lot of them at 15 minutes i've killed a lot of them at 25 minutes and if if you go out say you just run out after work out in the brush and you know it's almost dark and you got 45 minutes takes 10 minutes to walk into your stand just sit up there till it's dark yeah i mean you can't there's no such thing as too long on the stand some guys just don't like to do it because you know they're impatient that's fine yeah but i've had good luck you know at the 15 20 25 minute mark and a lot of times that's when you'll get the ones that are just sneaking in maybe they're a little educated maybe they're just not very hungry you know maybe they're just naturally a little leery but they'll

you know you'll see one walk in and sit 200 yards or you'll see him just sneaking down the draw maybe he's come in and seen you and sneaking out but if you'll stay just a little bit longer on stand i think you'll have more success and uh you mentioned you know your gun a minute ago but tell us about what do you use what your rifle scope set up and then you know most coyote guys everybody's you know carries a shotgun and i know a lot of times when when i've used those it kind of depends on how many guys you got going with you if it's me alone i'm not going to do a shotgun you well this time of year two or three you might when they're barreling in on you maybe yeah you have one in your lap at least but this time of year i've i'm carrying the call i got the dogs i got my 22 250 with me i usually take a chair with me and i don't this time here i just don't carry a shotgun

because i just got too much stuff in the winter when i don't have to worry about the dogs and getting them through the fence and getting them out of the truck and they're not jumping all over you and stuff then i'll carry a shotgun especially during the contest but my favorite gun that i have is a 22 250 i've got a couple of them and it's just to me it's just the perfect balance of i mean user-friendly it doesn't kick shoots light out they're just very inherently accurate i shoot a 55 grain bullet depending on the gun i shoot several different 55 grain bullets but it's just deadly on them it you know i've killed i shot a coyote the other day at about 250 yards i watched my buddy big al morris shoot one the other day and i'm not saying this is skill so if he listens to this i don't want him

thinking don't want to get him a big head or nothing no but he killed one the other day about 690 yards and the 250 come on got a turret on that gun yeah is he doing a turret or a reticles or what's he doing i well i think he's just really lucky on that one just held over i'm not giving him any skill credit whatsoever on that yeah that's a hell mary the point is that 55 grain bullet gets it done i mean it you know it's going fast and it carries good so i really like 22 250 uh i use several different scopes i got a zeiss uh got a nice zeiss scope that works really good the scope that i use most is uh is a u.s optics 5 to 25 it's got the moa reticle in it that's nice if they're out there four or five hundred yards but i mean for years and years i shot a little pole three to not and that's a you know

great scope and i don't don't know why i get so wound up having a high powered scope because it kind of runs in at 10 yards and you're on 20 power you don't see anything but a blurry mass and it screws you up so that's another thing i'd say make sure when you sit down on the back get your scope it'll screw you up yeah because you if you get one coming in your lap you don't got time to dial it down if you got one hanging up you don't always got time to dial up on the one hanging out yeah you got you got a lot more time to dial up than you do dial down and one thing i started doing the last couple years is shooting a suppressor and there's a couple benefits of that it's easier on my dogs if i you know if my dog's right in front of me or something and you're shooting suppressed a lot easier on the dogs and a lot of times on stand you're hunting with your buddies and you know

sometimes even as hard as you try and you think all right i'm not going to muzzle blast adam sitting over there and you touch one off and these ears ring for a week you know suppressors are just a lot easier on everybody so i really like a suppressor and a lot of guys use a you know a 223 at 243 and new 65 treed motors are super popular seven seven mms i've heard of people use seven deer guns growing up in rednecks ampere county when that's all you got you know you got two or three guns one of the seven mms that's what you use they still kill them how do you uh how do you decide on your stand locations like what do you i mean obviously you want to be able to see winds are going to be good but yeah what do you wind and whatnot but well if i've been out locating and i know where there's coyotes of you know then you kind of go to them and and take what you can

what you can get obviously you want to be where you can see but you got to think also what does a coyote eat most of a coyote especially you know kind of in the winter fall and winter most of a coyote's diet that time of year is mice rabbits and birds so you got to be in a place where they're going to have plenty of mice rabbits and birds which usually means sagebrush uh a field the grass you know a grassy edge along the field along the ditch uh some edge where there's maybe some uh some cedar trees uh you know where it kind of translates out into a uh a big flat and that's that's good coyote habitat and if you see you know a lot of rabbits is is very good if you're running driving down the road in the middle of winter and all of a sudden the road just gets hammered to death with rabbit tracks you know you want to start thinking about making a stand because they will

be where the food is most of most of the year that's the only thing they're worried about is where their next meal is coming from when i was younger i used to want to be where i could see you know five miles just flat open and for some reason i thought i was going to call coyotes up out of the ground loud call everything yeah yeah you know and so but now i look at it a lot different there's got to be some cover broken you know yeah especially in in daylight you'll see them out in the flats and you'll see them out in the fields in the daylight but most likely they're going to be where there's some cover where they feel comfortable you know sneaking in a little bit of sagebrush some grass something where there's something for them to eat where they get some cover where they can shade up so you know southern utah you get a lot of that country where uh you know you got sagebrush you got

rabbit brush you got bitter brush it's you know it's awesome coyote habitat and i i've kind of learned if it looks like good deer habitat it's probably good coyote habitat yeah because there's you know the deer are there not not because of the deer so much but because there's that's a place where you can also find a lot of mice rabbits yeah and birds if you go out and i mean some of them coyotes up in wyoming and that they'll live out in some of that country i have no idea why the coyotes even live there some of that stuff stuff yeah but you gotta yeah yeah you gotta travel a lot farther between coyotes to find them so good cover and you want to find a place where you can see sometimes you have to set up a little tighter to cover and it's a little close quarters shooting but but that's all right but get where you can see

you know as much as you can get where there's some backdrop against you you don't want to sit skyline you want to ideally a little place where you can just hop over a little uh little ridge or a little lip and sit down in front of a bush or against a fence post or something to kind of hide your outline and where you can see and uh because i tell you i think i think it would probably make us all a little bit nauseous if we knew how many coyotes we called in that walked in we never saw walked out and we never seen them yeah i don't want to know that so you you got to think while you're setting up you want to set where you turn the odds as much in your favor as possible so you want to sit where you can see uh where you got the wind you know as favorable as possible and one thing that uh also helps you stand out quite a bit is whether the sun is in your face or to your back because if the

sun's in your face especially later in the evening uh you know it's blocking out about half your stand you're shining so well and every move if you get a coyote coming that way you've you blink your eyes and they're going to see you from three so you're right it's got it works against you in two ways you shine like a light bulb and uh and you know the guy's got the sun at his back and it makes it harder for you to see so if you can set up with the sun to your back ideal stand sun to your back when you're face and you can see you know as much around cover yep yeah you got you know put a little bit of cover don't be afraid to call in a little bit tighter cover that's one thing i've i've learned over the years is it's okay you got to look a little closer and your your window to shoot might be a little smaller but you're going to call in more coyotes and get more opportunities so it seems

like especially later in the day too when a coyote's probably in that kind of stuff laying down or sleeping just like any other dog you know you're not going to be out in the flat wide open stuff in the middle of the day very often tighter cover and the tighter cover also is when the shotgun comes in handy you ask about a shotgun if you're sitting in tight cover where you can only see 40 or 50 yards and he's going to come in running and you got a 20 foot window to get him dead that's when a shotgun comes in very handy so i don't always carry a shotgun to every stand in the in the winter in the fall but there's there's one in your truck yeah you you know stand to stand you're like all right this is where i better usually when i need one it's in the truck so yeah when you call in a triple and one jams you yep tell us about your thoughts i guess on

educated call shy coyotes i mean it happens with elk it happens with turkeys we all know what happens with coyotes especially you get a factors involved like a a 50 bill bounty on every coyote in utah i mean there's been more coyote calls sold at walmart and every tom bick and harry sporting goods store in the last three four years in utah than probably the last 25 years before that combined so well how do you know come that type of that that's what's stacked against the most people that are not going to hunt it like you or or you know do it as often as you or have all the tricks how do you what are some tips or things you've tried to do to call in dogs that you know have had stuff thrown at them before well most people think when and i mean and especially a lot of people still use hand calls

we use hand calls all the time my dad still wrote hand call with for years we grew up using hand calls most hand calls sound like a dying rabbit yeah you know and so that's what that's what the coyotes we're used to and that's what the people use and and uh but kind of getting your point one thing you got to understand is every coyote hunter thinks they are the one not wise enough coyotes and that it's every other coyote hunter that's out there screwing up the coyotes and educating them so you got to kind you got to kind of know when you talk to guys like oh yeah all these guys are out there educating coyotes every single one of us educate coyotes every single one of us one of them comes in behind you you don't see him he smells you he's educated you're missing yeah or if one just heals

your here's your call from a mile away and doesn't come in you educated him to some you know even though he didn't even come oh yeah yep and and so you know we all educate coyotes so the thing i kind of like to do is that's that's why i like to vocalize a lot you know i think it adds a level of realism to the stand and uh you know you think well there's something going on over there but well i hear another coyote over there you know maybe it's not maybe it's not so dangerous or you know or maybe geez i wonder what they're doing i'll go have a look i think it just you know i don't know exactly what they're thinking but it seems to work so in the same in the same stand would you do a kind of some a little bit of light howling or something and then go into a distress as well yeah just give a light you know just give a light howl nothing to nothing don't want to sound like grandpa i won't

scare anything away just you know just kind of a hey i'm a you know i'm a sissy coyote over here i got a rabbit crunching you know come over and have lunch with me right and uh i mean you know and it works and it works another thing i think uh and this is a this is kind of a a secret that some of my buddies might not like me giving out but i'm gonna do it all right my pencils a lot of these calls have crow sounds raven sounds and magpie sounds you mean these electronic calls you mean you're talking yes yes yeah if you if you you go buy fox pro it's gonna have crow sounds on it and if it doesn't you can download crow sounds on it sure or ravens or magpies okay these corvids crows ravens and magpies are some of the leariest smartest birds absolutely yep okay so if you go out and play some crow sounds

and then play a rabbit or a woodpecker or a pup distress and they hear that crow that's kind of works as uh kind of a confidence call because a lot of times you'll see then crows and then magpies hanging around with coyotes on the kill absolutely yeah they kind of i think they kind of trust each other yeah they kind of key off each other if you got a little time i see crows i look for a coyote under them yeah you got to kill a dead deer or something and you know it it's there and you drive up and if birds are sitting there you're like okay birds are waiting for the coyote to kill something so they can piece off it too sometimes so that's right that's right and you know because they're both kind of living off the same thing so and it you know there's kind of an old wives tale not every magpie has a coyote but every coyote has a magpie and so you uh you know

you play some of those sounds and it kind of adds a little bit of confidence and don't be afraid to mix sounds up i mean i can't remember the last time i sat down on a stand and only made one sound i mean i change up sounds i'll howl i'll play puck distress i'll play rabbit distress i'll play woodpecker distress i'll go back to the rabbit i'll play different rabbit and i probably make a lot more noise than a lot of people i mean i don't the coyote can't come if you don't hear you yeah i don't let the call around all the time but i make a lot of noise how loud i mean there's obviously well i don't start out really loud i'll start out kind of mid-ball you just something that if they're you know because you don't want a coyote if he's out there at 300 yards thinking you've got a 500 pound cocktail

coming after him you know you don't they don't need to think that all you want to do is get their attention you want to get their attention you know it's just like your wife walks up behind you in the kitchen and whispers in your ear if you don't know she's there it doesn't matter how loud she's it's gonna scare the crap out of you i'm gonna startle you yeah you don't want that you want just to get your attention yeah and then start talking them in so if you if you go out there and just hit you know lightning jack on 40 right off the bat those some of them will come charging in and it doesn't matter but some of them you'll see them just turn tail and run it's very educational to go to a place where there's a lot of coyotes like we did in alberta here we've been there a couple times and you'll see those coyotes out in that field you'll hit the call and some of them act like they

can't hear you some of them will run you over and some of them will turn and run the other way and try to get their attention timing yeah what what's going on in that coyote out ahead at the time they hear you and then call them in so takes us to another segment here but just maybe one of the craziest stories you've got i mean of course you've hunted them long enough you've probably had them in your lap at times but anything just come to mind that's just one of the craziest stories ever oh yeah i got it i mean we were sitting on stand in alberta and uh the well the wind was so bad that day that it was blowing our cameras over we were up there filming an episode of fur takers that uh aired here a couple years ago and we uh we the wind was blowing so bad we went back to the little ranch house we were staying in that evening right before dark the wind stopped and so we just

thought well let's just walk out in the field we'd heard some coyotes howling a couple nights before we just walk out in the field sit down howled one time and this was in october howled one time and the whole river bottom just exploded i mean it sounded like there was a hundred coyotes of course two of them sound like 20 so it's hard to know no well then one coyote popped out of the river and headed our way and another and another and another we're sitting there on a hill there's two there's me and al and then uh there's two cameramen with it so there's four of us we ain't got nothing to hide behind we're just sitting there on the hill with two big cameras you know two big old springville rednecks sitting there and then coyotes run out in the field and they just kept coming and kept coming and kept coming and i stopped counting at five but the cameraman sitting behind me it's like

there's eight of them he kept telling me there's eight of them don't screw this up there's eight of them so uh of course we're sitting out there in the open moving cameras around and i had to move just a little bit get my gun up where i wanted it and the big the big male and the bunch jumped up on a little dirt and all up there and looked at me and kind of leaned a little bit to one side and when they kind of give stop and give you that lean you know you're busted so i shot him and coyotes just scattered everywhere they were running all around us and we were shooting and throwing lead like it was the war and and it's a good thing i killed the first one because out of eight of them that's the only one we got oh my god so it was uh or like cameraman's ribbed you the rest of the trip oh yeah it was i mean he was he was rising the rest of the time he's like well you know at least

out of eight of them you managed to get one those odds are very you know those odds are definitely in the kind of favor just ask him how many that's all you wanted is how i know he was good he was he was a great cameraman he had really good eyes that's one thing about him he kept spot like crazy so it was good to have him there but and then uh another time here a couple years ago dog and i uh had a pair located and went up as soon as i got out of my truck i could hear the coyotes just on the hill right above me and so i just turned my dog loose and walked uphill a little ways and sat down there's a herd of moo cows right there they start chasing the dog around and uh the dog barked at the cows which got the coyote going the coyote comes down and gets in the prey and they pretty soon it's just a big circus of dogs and coyotes chasing cows and the cows chasing the dog and the coyote

so i turned my collar hip up to stress and down through the bunch i could see something coming i thought well geez that's my dog then my dog's got a short tail well that's that's a coyote that's got a long tail that's not my dog and by the time he was about 200 yards away from the time i seen him and i tried to turn my sticks and get a good set and i thought well he'll see me move and stop and give me a good standing shot well by the time i even thought about turning sideways and and get lined up with him he was jumping over the call and still coming and he seen me move just a little bit and he obviously didn't realize it was a person sitting there but he seen that movement and he laid his ears back and opened his mouth and he was all teeth and that burger jumped right at me and i just had to drop my sticks and spin the gun on him and i shot him right across the

nose and when he dropped that i could reach out and touch him with a gun barrel come on awesome oh that's serious that was i couldn't believe it i mean that was that was the craziest stand ever and then about 20 seconds later another and come right behind you but i whistled at him when it was about 50 yards away and it stopped looked up and i shot it yeah and then the cows all had to come down and check everything out check it all out and stomped on my call and that was that was the wildest stand ever but that was the only coyote i've ever called in that i actually felt like might hurt you yeah but yeah but i honestly don't think that coyote knew it was the person there it just hurt that pup distress it was this time of year he was locked and it hurt that pup distress and it was going to come in and take care of business and it just saw that movement and just jumped at it

i'm glad i was just turned that direction as much as i was because if i'd have been a half second lower i'd have had that air slower i'd have had that coyote right in my lap so how those are the kind of stands that you go hunting for because that every hundred thing you have something crazy like that i'm not a real decoy fan i don't it's i mean fox pro makes a great decoy uh that some people swear by i have enough stuff i have to carry out there and worry about a lot of times i have the dogs with me you know in this time of year for to decoy with and in the winter i always kind of figure i want them coming in looking i don't want to give them something to look at while they're 200 yards away they might decide they don't like it and leave i want to get them in as close as they can before they decide that so i'm not a real decoy man but some guys really like them but um

i'm not that guy crazy well good well right on anything else i mean coyotes are some of the smartest critters known to man and and uh just you know with a lot of your experience and stuff is there anything super interesting you know that people may not know about that don't hunt them like you guys well you know there's they are they're an amazing animal uh there's 19 different subspecies of coyotes what yeah that's yeah there's 19 subspecies i'm pretty sure is that just because they've got in with a red healer a blue healer a lab i mean all the different dog breeds over the years to that i could be off on that number but it's a lot is it like is it the eastern mexico canada what is it yeah yeah i mean there's there's a bunch of different subspecies i could be i could be off on that number but i'm pretty sure that's it but there's you know i'm sure adam's googling it

right no i'm not no i'm not trust me i'm not i'm just racing what i yeah i'm already thinking i i'm pretty sure you tell me i'm pretty sure the most sought after kind of like stone sheep when it comes there's desert sheep when it comes to sheep they're probably the two right now they're like the most sought after lucive i think i think the henry mountain coyotes are probably the top of that list so i think we need to get you down there with us in about 30 days so we'll have to make a trip down there but you know they speaking of sought after coyotes you go up to canada and those coyotes up there and they're really really blonde i mean they're really pale and they're they're really sought after and then you go back east and they have black coyotes jeez and uh you know and those are really sought after so you know they're they really are an amazing animal you know they're very

very smart they're very very intelligent and leery and and it's it's hard to hunt them with with consistent success but i will tell you this there's only one way to learn how to do it and you can listen to to a ton of seminars and podcasts and read all the the articles and that but unless you go out and do it you're not going to have success you're not going to you're not going to kill them and i'll tell you the hardest thing for me was to learn how to kind of seal the deal on the stand and uh and not get so excited that i missed them all because even now i mean i miss if you're going to have coyotes you're going to miss but it seems to take a while to kind of build the mindset that all right don't panic you know know when to shoot and squeeze off and make a good shot every time i take somebody coyote hunting guarantee the first coyote they shoot out they're going to shoot a foot high

i don't care if it's 30 yards or 300 yards well it's just and it's just like deer and you know you guys are spending so much time pre-locating you're spending so much time and energy you know dealing with it all to get to that one final moment and to miss is just brutal it's not just like i went out and made a stand and i missed i know i've got two or three days into this till two in the morning locating and stuff it's it's important to make that shot count that's the same way adam and i feel about deer and sheep and anything else we're hunting you know and especially when you're like if you're doing a contest one coyote can can be the difference between winning a contest and being out of the money yeah and uh you know that making the shot count is in my opinion probably as hard of the as hard a part of the equation is calling one getting one coming in the first place that

yeah because it's and i i always think you know once i see one coming in i you know you kind of switch your mind said all right don't panic and he's dead you know do i have a bullet in my gun what make sure your safety's on because you know you get excited and sometimes you have to move your gun around you don't want to be bumping your trigger and the gun going off or you're looking at the coyote or something like that and it and then when that coyote gives you that that shot you know you got to be thinking how far is he and and uh you know what position is he going to come closer is it am i going to be able to see him if he comes closer sometimes you know because there's such a thing it's too close and you you want to make sure you get a get a good shot on him and uh you know you got to spend a lot of time with your gun you got to practice guys would only shoot once a year

and then go out calling a coyote you know you don't want to you don't want to be on stand with those guys because they're not going to hit him so well uh you're obviously you mentioned contests quite a bit and of course you know sheep hunters have goals and deer and elk hunters they all kind of have their goals what they like whether they want to slam or certain size or whatnot but like what are your goals are you wanting to win certain contests are you wanting to i mean what are your goals with it or is it just just yeah i mean i i want to win every contest i am it we won the youth contest with my daughter a few years ago that was pretty fun she thought that was pretty good deal but the most competitive contests you know there's one back east the eastern championship that they have like 400 teams go to it's just huge and uh one of the guys

that's on fox pro staff with me won that last year and and did a great job and uh i can't remember how many of that kills but i mean he just beat a bunch of guys but to win a big contest like that or the world championship uh that in fact i think the world championship's going to be here in utah this fall really on the henry's oh yeah let's get them somewhere and grow some deer yeah that's you know so to win a to win a big contest like that and know that you've beat some of the best callers in the world that have just prepared and scouted and worked their tail off you know so that's a lot of fun and even when you don't win and and that you go to go hang out with guys like that you can't help but learn from them and just to be with the you know that caliber of hunters is it's a lot of fun so

contests are definitely a lot of fun but it's a lot of fun to get up in the morning and just take your dog and go out on the hill and and call one in and uh and watch it all come together so you know as people are thinking about getting into coyote hunting that don't don't overthink it i mean we've talked a lot about a lot of different stuff today you know stick to the basics the wind the sun make sure there's some cover look around find some tracks and scat in the road so you know there's some coyotes there and uh look look look and hold still and you'll have success have a gun that can shoot and be able to shoot it that's right that's right and if you'll go out and you know it'll it's it's so much fun once you once you go out and have a little success you won't be able to stop doing it yeah well i've always

joked and it's not probably really a joke but you know that the last two animals on earth would be an elk and a coyote and i'm sure the coyote would be last but they're true they can be everywhere that's the thing about them there's no seasons and they literally are from 14 000 feet to sea level and everywhere in between and varying densities and whatnot so you uh we all we talk about draw tags and how to get good tags and planter hunts and all that and um coyotes are something you can do any time of year anytime you want it so yeah we appreciate your time today and and learned a lot you know it's just uh it's always good to talk to you guys i appreciate you having me back on i love what you're doing there at epic and uh it's good to see you guys success and uh you know we have a there's always a hunting opportunity that's a great thing about living here in the west there's

always something to hunt and you can hunt coyotes 365 days a year in most states so you know if you're bored you want to get your kid off the xbox and and get them out in the outdoors you know you don't have to have a 500 electronic call go get a 10 dollar mouth call at walmart or sportsman's warehouse and uh take them out and get them introduced to coyote hunting and uh you know there's no excuse not to be out in the hills hunting that's right well hopefully it doesn't turn into like these shed seasons where we end up having a coyote season and well i'm here to tell you i will go to my grave fighting the coyote all right well uh all right john well like adam said we sure appreciate you man you you're a wealth of knowledge you've you've uh walked the walk and for many years on a variety of

different levels uh including the wildlife board and a lot of different conservation groups and efforts as well as uh you know your personal hunting and and we just sure appreciate you spending some time with us and uh i know there's going to be a ton of listeners going to learn a lot from this and and hopefully you're not seeing them out in the hills competing against you but we do appreciate you lending some of your knowledge today that's no problem guys i mean we all learned from somebody i've got a lot of great hunters that have that have helped me out you know hopefully somebody can pick up something from our conversation today that helps them have some success and enjoy the outdoors a little bit so i really appreciate you having me on okay thanks a lot man we'll be in touch those henry mountain ones are i think the 20th identified subspecies is what i've been told

all right buddy we'll do it we'll do it all right all right appreciate you all right as we close this podcast we do want to thank under armor for sponsoring this podcast and working with us here at epic outdoors adam and i chris john jeff and the crew are super appreciative of them and and their efforts to support what we're doing and and of course supporting the hunting community so till next time awesome it's a great podcast