# The 21st a good day.



## alleyyooper (Feb 26, 2017)

John came and picked me up Monday night about 8:00 PM. Drove back to his place the sugar shack and stoked up the fire good then sat around talking and emptying the coffee pot till about mid night when we filled the fire box again and went off to the lounge area to sleep. I hope my snoring didn’t bother John too much, I told him he might want to go up to the house to sleep. Any way we were both awake at 5:00 AM, got ready to tend the fire and stir the sap again and have breakfast. I had brought a dozen eggs some cheese and pan fried bisket dough for breakfast and my big griddle even though John said I didn’t need to be doing that. I just like contributing more than throwing a few logs on a fire. Cheryl came with the big coffee pot refill about 6:00 AM. 

After a quick cup of coffee and Filling the thermoses we took off for the Jonas farm about a hour away so it would just be light enough when we walked in not to fall over anything. This has been a good productive coyote farm for us over the years. But this morning we got no response of any kind and only saw a few deer feeding out in a 2016 corn field as we walked back out. Once back at the truck we decide another farm about 15 20 minutes away should have better results. At one time back when farmers broke their backs with manual labor proved to be a real back breaker for a farmer who liked things neat. Every field had a 3 to 4 foot stone wall around them; I had seen farms like that in upstate New York when on vacation one year. I do believe every rock ever picked up was placed as a fence.


This was the Rice family farm, who raised beef about 500 head of Herford’s, many having won blue ribbons over the years for the family members at the county fair. We walk back to the edge of a big hay field near the woods and set up. About 10 minutes in we see movement thru the woods so we figured we had coyote coming in. As they broke out of the brushy woods edge we see it is 4 of them. I watch John to see him signal it is time to fire and at which I should try to take. They come to the wall where we cannot see them any longer then they are on the wall looking about and see the decoy. John signals I should take #1 and try for # 3, as his finger does the trigger twitch I squeeze off a shot and quickly swing to # 3 as it goes back over the wall out of sight. Turn back to where # 1 was and nothing there either. 


John signals his coyote is down and thinks another fell over the wall. We keep the call going with a even lower volume for the remainder of the 2o minute set. We go and look at where the coyotes had been and find mine on the other side of the wall. It is a real nice colored female as is both of Johns. We are both surprised females showed up for the female in heat sound. Maybe wanting to defend their territory, don’t know. We drag them to the drive lane then gather our gear. John drives back and we load up the coyotes just after 8:00 AM.


We drive about 30 minutes to the Gillis dairy farm. I was telling John about Kare’s garage cats coming into heat during this warm spell and telling him I want to record that sound and put it on a SD card for my caller. We walk back across a hay field and set up along the fence line. There is a vacant farm next door starting to be very over grown with autumn olive and other brushy stuff. We call one coyote from that stuff which John got, this one a male. 


Decide it was time to return to Johns and build the fire back up and collect the sap. John also figured it was time to check the boiled syrup and drain it off if it was OK. It turned out to be OK so it was drained off into a big vat waiting for bottlings. John said He had no idea how much syrup he would end up with from his trees being his first year but he was pushing 20 gallons since they had started just over a week ago. The warm days and cool nights sure had the sap a flowing to the point he had started collecting twice a day when he found some pails near over flowing. We skinned out the coyotes, fleshed and sewed them up. John took me home getting there about 2:30 PM. Said he would seem me at Sundays meeting for sure and knew where to call to get help again. 





Al


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## Jed1124 (Feb 26, 2017)

alleyyooper said:


> John came and picked me up Monday night about 8:00 PM. Drove back to his place the sugar shack and stoked up the fire good then sat around talking and emptying the coffee pot till about mid night when we filled the fire box again and went off to the lounge area to sleep. I hope my snoring didn’t bother John too much, I told him he might want to go up to the house to sleep. Any way we were both awake at 5:00 AM, got ready to tend the fire and stir the sap again and have breakfast. I had brought a dozen eggs some cheese and pan fried bisket dough for breakfast and my big griddle even though John said I didn’t need to be doing that. I just like contributing more than throwing a few logs on a fire. Cheryl came with the big coffee pot refill about 6:00 AM.
> 
> After a quick cup of coffee and Filling the thermoses we took off for the Jonas farm about a hour away so it would just be light enough when we walked in not to fall over anything. This has been a good productive coyote farm for us over the years. But this morning we got no response of any kind and only saw a few deer feeding out in a 2016 corn field as we walked back out. Once back at the truck we decide another farm about 15 20 minutes away should have better results. At one time back when farmers broke their backs with manual labor proved to be a real back breaker for a farmer who liked things neat. Every field had a 3 to 4 foot stone wall around them; I had seen farms like that in upstate New York when on vacation one year. I do believe every rock ever picked up was placed as a fence.
> 
> ...


Always enjoy your posts Al. Keep em coming!


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