TheBanyanTree: **A Hunting Story**

[Sheri Baity]

**If this is not your cup of tea... please, DON'T read any further!  I pictured you with me yesterday Cee's!**
   
  It was the last day of the three day bear season for the area. The morning greeted us with a thick frost. Everything looked like it had a fresh coating of snow on until around noon. But chores and tasks kept me from basking in probably what would have been a perfect bear hunting morning. I knew that I would still have an opportunity next week in our area to hunt for bear during the first week of buck and doe if I wanted to, so all was not lost.
   
  My plans were, to go up to my hunting shack around 3 p.m. and glass over the deer situation for next mondays opening day of deer. Since it was absolutely beautiful outside with temps in the upper 30's, the clear blue sky kept on nagging at me to go up earlier. Before I knew it, I found myself dawning my silk long johns and my new Berne Gunflint insulated bids around 12:30 p.m. With a quick thought of "why not?" I was out the door on my four wheeler.
   
  Picture perfect day as I putted my way up towards my shack. I decided to park my four wheeler in a hedge row and walk the other 125 yards in. I was about 20 yards from the door when I looked out at the field in front of me. A coyote was busy out mousing. The hay beneath my feet was still crusted between dead grass and some frost left over from the morning. So sneaking in to get my gun from inside was going to be very tedious and slow, all while trying to be quiet.
   
  By the time I got inside and put a couple rounds in my .243 and got back outside, the coyote was gone. He went to my left where there is a steep drop off of hayfield. This field is 275 yards long. But you only have about the first 125 yards of good shooting, then you miss around 75-100 yards because of a huge knoll in the middle which has given many coyotes a sort of safety zone to hide while traveling across that field. If you are setting high enough, like in my hunting shack, you can then see the balance of the field that meets up with an old stone wall. If you are setting down in the field, you have just the first 125 yards of shooting available.
   
  So, with the coyote out of sight, I turned left and walked as quietly as I could about 150 yards so that I could see down over to the corn field, in hopes that he was going to circle around that knoll and head for the neighbors. Nothing as I waited for about 5 minutes. I was then going to walk straight out in the field to the top of the knoll and look down in the drop off, but something inside just told me to go back to the cabin.
   
  By the time I got back to the shack, I saw two doe way out at the end of the field. They were on guard. I thought maybe they had seen me and that is what they were looking at to watch for movement. But their heads weren't turned quite enough in my direction. So I pulled out my circe closed reed and blew just three soft squawls of a rabbit distress. The doe's were still standing firm as I started to see a head coming up from the backside of the knoll, then the body. He was curiously loping towards the sound that he just heard. Then he stopped to look. I still didn't have his entire body in full site, but I had enough of it to take a shot.
   
  As I took the gun off safety and slowly moved into position, I got him into my sites. One squeeze of the trigger, down he went. 26lb male coyote but he had what I believe to be a touch of mange. What I coudln't figure out was it looked like part of his hair was growing back. So I called up my friend in Arizonia and asked him. There was about a patch of hair 3x3 inches next to the scabby bare patch that was about 3/4" long, looking like it was new growth. He said that there have been some reported cases where they have recovered from mange but many cases where they do not.
   
  I didn't want to mess with him much other than a quick picture with the help of G. After that, I slipped a rope around his neck, drug him to a rock pile and covered him with lime. I tossed my rubber gloves that I put on, to hold his neck up for the pic, right beside him and covered them with lime as well. After the freezing rain melts off here this morning, I think I'll go back up and encase him in a pile of rocks. This is only the second coyote that had mange since I've been hunting. I hope this is not a sign of what's ahead for the coyote population. Either way, another coyote is down on the farm. 

 
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