Coyote Turkey Hunting
About thirty minutes after the sun came up, I heard something walking in my direction. As I looked in the direction of the sound, I noticed movement about forty yards out. At first I thought it was a dog, although I hadn’t ever seen a dog in the area before. As the animal came closer, I realized that I was looking at a coyote.
Now this was my first time of ever seeing a coyote in the wild. I had seen pictures before in magazines and on TV but never in the wild. As a matter of fact, I had never heard of anyone else having seen these creatures in the area. But there he or she was. To my amazement, the coyote passed by me within twenty yards and then went out of sight.
After the morning hunt, in which I didn’t see any turkeys, I drove over to a nearby wildlife station. I hunt three hundred acres of private land that adjoins a large acreage of state game land. I met with one of the wildlife officers. At first I felt a little funny in telling my story. I told the officer that I had seen something unusual that I had never seen before.
Before I could even say what I had seen, the officer smiled and said, “you saw a coyote didn’t you.” I laughed, almost in relief, and said yes. He then told me that the wildlife division had released several coyotes onto the game land the previous year. Apparently this was an experiment that was kept somewhat quiet. The officer advised that there was a press release issued on the state website but that the specific locations were not given at the time. After speaking with the officer, I did remember hearing something about it.
As I went home and told my hunting buddies about the sighting, of course I had to here the jokes about seeing something that wasn’t in our area. They wouldn’t let me live that one down for several months until another sighting was reported. There was also another press release issued on a local scale.
