A Day Spent Tracking and Wandering

Small coyote track, my small hand for comparison.

On Wednesday I heard a lone howl of a coyote that would have sent shivers up my spine had I not been seeing this 'yote for a few months.  He/She has a trail that runs through my neighbor's cattle pasture and up into the woods.

I was hanging out laundry and caught sight of him trotting away.  I am assuming that it is a He because he is quite large and we watched him chase another coyote away just before deer hunting season.

I thought since we'd had a nice snowfall on Monday night, it would be fun to go out and see if I could track some coyotes and perhaps see what story the snow tracks would tell me.

I picked up the large coyote's tracks fairly close to our fence line and began to follow them.  Mr. Yote had a meandering track and it appeared that he was a lot more interested in rabbits than in any of my stock.

No, Morris did not go on this hike with me.  He gets pretty nervous when he smells coyote [smart dog] and he would run around and mess up the tracks I was looking at.

I followed several sets of tracks of 'yotes.  Most were smaller than this fellas tracks.

In some places the tracks were mingled with deer and rabbit tracks.  I lost the tracks in some of the heavier trafficked areas, but was able to pick them up again by carefully studying the snow.

Clever coyote walked right across this pile of downed limbs.

Interestingly enough, in some places, the tracks lead right across deer beds. I am sure they were not both there at the same time.

Nicely formed deer bed.

I didn't find any dens but I spent about two hours following tracks and I found a beautiful view of our place from the neighbor's pasture.

Our house and shed in the distance.  Coyote tracks in the middle of the photo.

I did a lot of looking and finally found The Big Boy Tracks!  He is huge, but he is not a wolf.

A wolf's tracks would be nearly as larger than my hand.

Big Boy Tracks

Wolf tracks for comparison

Later I did take Morris for his daily hike and he stuck pretty close to me in the creek bottom.

The trail we normally take was full of coyote tracks and places where the 'yotes had 'marked' their territory.

We are coming into the 'dogging' season for coyotes, so I imagine Morris will be spending less time with me in the woods and we'll do our daily walks on a leash on the gravel road.

'Yotes

The day after Christmas we had some surprise visitors.  First a young man with a red truck pulled down into our driveway and stopped.  He had a GPS tracker and a hound box on the back of his truck.

We immediately recognized him as a 'Yote hunter.  His dog and some others had been hot on the trail of a Coyote for a few miles.  My husband welcomed him and he radioed his hunting partners to 'come on down'.  
The dogs had gone into my neighbor's woods and soon we were all watching the dogs' progress on the GPS units.

The dogs did come blasting out of our woods and up the creek trail.  The hunters gathered up all but one dog.  That dog belonged to the young fella that had first pulled in.
We waited and listened to his dog bay and his voice echo off the valley hills.

Tyler asked if I could take him down to the creek and off we went.  He was watching his GPS and kept calling for his dog.
We hurried through the creek bottom and Tyler said his dog was headed straight up the creek.  I told him the dog was headed for the highway and we'd never catch him on foot.

Tyler then asked if there was a quicker way back to our house.  I grinned and told him to follow me.  I took the steep 'point' trail and we started up the slippery hillside.  Half way up Tyler asked if we could catch our breath.  I stopped and started to laugh.

Tyler looked at me and grinned when I asked him how old he was.  "24," he answered.  I winked at him. "59, going to be 60 in June." I laughed and he did too.
He smiled and said, "I've gotten a bit out of shape."  He explained how he'd broken his legs in a 4 wheeler accident and how he'd lost his love of hunting when his best dog died last winter.  We talked a bit while catching our breath.

He seemed to be a good 'kid'.  We headed the rest of the way up the hill and across the pasture to his truck.
The other hunters had seen his dog was headed to the highway and had caught him up.

We all shook hands and Tyler drove off.

I looked at hubby and smiled.  "Well, seems like I got my hike in today! We really had to hoof it!"

We talked about coyotes and where the dogs had probably holed the one they were chasing up.  The old den above the creek next to the rock wall.

We had enjoyed talking with the hunters, some of them had brought their kids along and you could tell it was a good family outing for them.

Coyote hunting is a difficult sport, I think the coyote is the most difficult animal to hunt as they are so incredibly smart and wary.  I have been catching them with my trail camera lately.

I've tracked them and hunted them with very little success.  But it is a good reason to get out in the woods especially in the winter.  I love seeing the story of what the animals have done in the snow.