Song dogs...

A couple of weeks ago I dropped Ben off with a friend and went to join Tim in the woods to try to call in a turkey for him. As we were sitting on the ground in our camo hoping for a tom to respond to our calls, Tim suddenly told me to stop calling. "Coyote." I listened, expecting to hear the coyotes howling as I so often do at that farm. Nothing. Instead Tim pointed to his left and there was this coyote watching us intently from just 20 yards away:

Coyotes have been epidemic in that area the last few years. The landowner is uneasy about letting her young children out to play in the backyard because of them. Although it briefly crossed our minds to pull the trigger, we weren't sure that the turkey load would get the job done humanely so we pulled out the camera instead. The songdog was quite brazen - didn't seem the least bit shy even as we were whispering and taking photos. It was probably thinking it was going to score an easy meal of turkey and because of our camo and positions on the ground it didn't recognize us as humans. We've since found out from others that the turkey load at 20 yards would have been enough, but that day we just enjoyed watching it watch us.

I love dogs, I love hearing coyotes, wolves, foxes yipping and howling... but it's gotten out of hand these last few years. I think some population control measures are in order.

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Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.

~Author Unknown