Being an equal opportunity hunter I thought it was time to take a closer look at my idea of “The dogs of the war.” 

What hunter that has sat a deer stand in the pre dawn hours half asleep trying to manage excitement, temperatures, and equipment hasn’t felt a little anxious when the howling begins.

No matter how hard the wind blows or the rain pours your soul can feel his call and you realize; when the coyote starts you’re not alone in the field.  We reach out and touch the rifle as if this somehow protects us, not from the coyote but from the eerie character of his howl.  

Experts tell us these feelings are some kind of throwback to prehistory when we were the hunted, not the hunter.  I don’t know about all of that, but I do know the call of the coyote invokes a certain level of fear, anxiety, and is mesmerizing all at the same time. 

Funny thing, the coyote’s howl only invokes these feelings in the dark.  Once the sun comes up our demons flee to the far reaches of our minds and waits there for dark to return.  Once there’s light we’re ready to play the deadly game of hunter and hunted. 

Every rancher and farmer I know tells you to take a coyote when you see one.  I, for one, all ways do as the rancher or farmer says.   In fact I go out of my way to harvest coyotes whenever I get the chance.  Maybe it’s payback for a distant past where the coyote looked on a furless bipedal mammal as a food source.  Or maybe it’s some kind of good over evil kinda thing.   Either way these arguments are better left to scholars in some dimly lit, cloistered office far away from the hunting field.  I just know I like hunting coyotes. 

We hunt bear, deer, moose, elk, hogs, doves, quail, raccoon, alligators, turkey, and any number of other animals.  We hunt all of them with a healthy zeal produced over thousands of years of being a hunter, but we’ve declared war on the coyote and its cousins.  A shooting war that is meant to clear our minds and empty our fields of that one group of animals that threatens, if only in our minds, our dominion over the entire animal world.   

Part of the problem is that the mere sight of a coyote invokes such hated in most people.   I don’t think this hatred comes from losses suffered, instead I think it comes from deep within our genetic history.  The sight of any dog bearing his teeth frightens us, as well it should.   I’ve not heard of many people being attacked by a coyote yet the fear is real.  The coyote’s howl lets us know we’re not the only hunter in the woods and in the distant past on any given day we might have even been the prey. 

The howl that permeates our mind, body, and soul is not sent to the wind to let us know a coyotes is sharing our hunting fields, all though I’m pretty sure the coyote doesn’t care if we know he’s out and about.  It’s simply to communicate with other night stalkers.

The one thing that we should’ve developed, when we were still living in the trees, to help us with our fear of all things that go bump in the night like the coyote and most other night dwellers is good night vision.  In stead we have eyes that can barely see five feet in the dark and that’s only if the moon is shinning.  We gave up a lot to develop a big brain.  Big brains are good things but would a little night vision hurt?

There are some people that like the coyote, why I haven’t a clue, but these people do exist.  Mostly you see them on magazine covers with out any cloths with a caption about not wearing fur or hugging a tree.  I could suggest a tree for them to hug but that’s best left for another time. 

Some people look at the coyote as a delinquent dog acting the way they do because they must have been abused as pups.  Still others think of the coyote as a mystical character out of myth and folk lore.  Some Indian tribes even say the coyote is a joker that helped create the world, stole the moon, and ate the sun or something like that. 

The coyote does have an honored place in my world.  Just to the right of the bob cat mount.   I too have mythical stories about coyotes, how I reached out and touched one at 350 yards.  I’m sure most ranchers and farmers have great stories about how the coyote visited there ranch or farm about day light for a chicken, piglet, or pet dinner. 

There’s a state, that I won’t name, that actually re-introduced the coyote because they’d been eliminated by hunters and farmers.  Talk about dumb and dumber.  Could I make this up?  That’s putting our tax dollars in the right hands.  These are the same people that re-introduced the wolf.  How’d that work for you?

I suppose at some point I should mention the good that my favorite hunted dog does.  They are great mousers.  So are cats if not eaten by coyotes.  There you have it the best that can be said about the after midnight crowd.  

The coyote’s howl is eerie just before dawn and it does set you on edge; however, there are many ammunitions manufactures that can help you with those feelings.  The only thing you need is a call that sounds like a wounded puppy and a rifle of choice.  Maybe you can put an eerie howl in a coyote’s ear?