January 11 marked my first real competition hunt as I teamed up with my good buddy to try and win some cash and prizes in the Midwest Calling Competition. As I wrote about previously, he had some great ground along with some really cool toys that gave us all of the potential in the world to be in the money. We checked in Friday afternoon with plans of knocking down double digit counts of fur with the possibility of winning a plethora of door prizes, big dog, small dog, and even possibly winning the professional Frontier class. We knew we would have to be on our A game, as this hunt only gave a full day on Saturday and a half day on Sunday for hunting before the 2 p.m. check in. As the calcutta dinner finished up, and guys purchased their raffle tickets, bought new calls, and heard the rules, we headed home with victory on our minds.
Saturday morning was perfect. The air was cold and still, and we set out for our big day. Two minutes into the first set overlooking some CRP grass, here he come. We quietly counted to three and let our AR's lay him down at about 50 yards. We decided to keep calling, and shortly after breaking the silence with our first successful shots, we spun around and dropped another pup on the same set. 2 for 2 and not even seven a.m.! We knew it was gonna be a good day. By noon we had seen ten yotes and shot at seven. Two of these dogs drew blood, but we couldn't find them. These two dogs were the difference of about five hundred bucks. One dog pulled a sneaky move working her way behind us and I took a tough shot that possibly missed the sweet spot. As we watched one come in from 800 yards we saw him hold up as suddenly he was attacked by a more dominant dog and we never saw either of them again. I knew this happens in the wild, but I had never experienced it first hand. On one double that we called in, we shot one coyote, and the other disappeared before we ever re-set. We decided this was due to poor communication on our part and that it wouldn't happen again. Well, it didn't because we didn't see another yote the rest of the day until dark. We went home with four dogs in the truck thinking if we could snag a few more on Sunday morning, we would still be in the running.
Sunday brought winds close to 40 mph, and it made for very rough calling. By 1 pm we decided to check in with what we had and see if it would be enough to place. After the tallies were taken, we came in tied for 14th out of 57 teams in the professional class, and 21st out of 112 total teams. This left us one coyote out of winning our money back, and two from making a little cash. We didn't win any door prizes, but we decided this was God's way of making us pay our dues so we can clean up next year. What an intense weekend, we will definitely be back next year with a vengeance! I wanted to post the summary while it was fresh on my mind, but I will post some video I made after a few of our successes and some pictures of the total fur gathered at the hunt here shortly. Bobcat season continues for another week, so I plan to go out a few more mornings and see if I can't land kitty #1. Stay tuned for pictures and video.... Happy New Year!
