Predators may shy away from some calls because of what they don’t hear

When I asked about hunting coyotes, my Mexican host replied, "Aqui hemos hecho mucho control de depradadores en la propiedad usando una llamada electronica. Hemos disparado a muchos. Ya no responden a las llamadas! Pero puedes intentaria."

 Like many Texans, I speak Spanish about as well as English and had no trouble gathering the gist of what he was telling me. They had already called many predators with electronic callers, and they no longer responded to calling.

It was a deer hunt, but I had already taken a trophy Coues and wanted to call coyotes with the time I had left. They were trying to thin all of the predators on the ranch to hopefully improve the whitetail and mule deer hunting, as well as too protect a small but growing number of desert bighorn sheep on the ranch.

I planned to use a mouth-blown call, and over the years I had taken many a predator with that call, including on land that had been heavily hunted with electronic calls.

I listened carefully as the rancher described the hunting they had done with the electronic call. He said coyotes had initially responded very well to a variety of prey distress sounds but were no longer responding to anything at all. He said if I wanted to try I was more than welcome, but added that my efforts would likely be "viaje turistico que cazar." Or more like a sight-seeing tourist than hunting.

I handed him the Burnham Brothers C-3 Long Range Predator mouth-blown. call I planned to use, a call I carry with me whenever and wherever I am hunting. He examined it quickly, raised an eyebrow skeptically and handed it back saying nothing more than, "Mmmmm." No need to translate that.

The next morning, my guide and I were set up with a rocky bluff at our backs looking over a hundred yards of sparse grassy area in front of us. In addition to looking for fresh tracks with crisp edges in the dusty trails, I also look for setups like this one, stands with open shooting lanes but relatively near cover, be it dense brush or a ravine. This patch of grass had it all, ending at a brushy draw.