September 14, 2018 – AN UNCOMFORTABLY CLOSE CALL

I’ve seen countless coyotes when bird hunting. Even though, at 35 pounds, my French Brittany is small enough to be killed by a coyote, he’s never shown the slightest concern about them, and the ones we encounter have always loped or sprinted away. Until today. We were looking for sharptail grouse in rolling prairie, with a strong wind whipping down from the Rocky Mountain Front, and Edo was quartering through tall grass about 80 yards ahead of me. Suddenly a coyote came into my field of view, 30 yards from Edo and racing toward him at full speed. Though the animal was out of shotgun range I shot towards it (with an H. Holland sidelever 16 bore) and it slowed. I fired again and it stopped, then turned and loped off about 100 yards, from where it continued to monitor us. At the shots, Edo, thinking I’d killed a bird, came running back. Strangely, he neither saw nor got wind of the coyote. For the next 20 minutes or so, the animal watched us as we hunted, alternately walking and trotting, sometimes lying in the grass, always remaining out of gun range, but clearly frustrated at missing a chance for a meal and ready to dart in again if the chance presented itself. When I finally lost sight of the coyote I became nervous, thinking it might be lying in ambush somewhere. I called Edo to me, and we headed back to the car, the dog annoyed at our truncated hunt, me glancing nervously over my shoulder.