Last week was one of those weeks at work when you just can’t wait for Friday. I felt like I couldn’t do anything right, and to make matters worse, my inbox was filling much faster than my outbox was emptying. It was one of those weeks when you just have to get away, if only for a couple of hours.
I called some friends who have a 40-acre chunk of land and asked if it would be alright if I came out for an evening of predator calling. They were more than happy to grant me permission, because the coyotes in their neck of the prairie have been getting a little too bold. The lady of the house had run into a pair of ‘yotes that didn’t back down when she yelled at them while she was feeding the livestock one morning. She said it was time to do something about it, so I drove out to her place after knocking off work a little early.
I didn’t have much hope of actually getting a coyote that night, but it was a perfect opportunity to scout out the area. There are several other houses around my friends’ place, so it’s not like a lot of the open land where I usually hunt. That was a bit of a challenge, but the nice thing about a setup like this is that the dogs are usually less call-savvy when you find ‘em around a bunch of houses. It’s not the sort of place that gets hammered by weekend warriors and their calls.
I spent a couple hours out there in the wind and cold, but I didn’t see any coyotes. That was OK, though, because at least I got out of the home office. I had to go back in when I finished my unsuccessful hunt, and I ended up working well into the evening. The strange thing was with that hunt sandwiched between all those hours of work, it felt like I’d only been in the office a couple hours.
That’s the other beauty of a close place to hunt – you can break up an otherwise nearly unbearable day.
