Larry Weishuhn
It’s no secret I really like hunting with handguns.
Three black hogs ran into the food plot I was sitting watching. They immediately began to feed on the lush triticale and turnips. The trio was made up of two-hundred-pound sows and a boar about half again as big as the sows. I studied them through my Stealth Vision 10x42 binoculars. I was seriously tempted to take one of the dry sows. But, I was really hoping to take one more whitetail doe before our Texas Managed Land Deer Permit season came to an end the following day, February 28. Shooting a hog might spook any nearby deer…
To my far left, I spotted a whitetail doe crossing a narrow sendero. She disappeared into the wall of trees seemingly headed toward the food plot. I raised my .454 Casull Taurus Raging Hunter to my tripod shooting sticks, pointing it in the direction where I hoped the doe would appear.
Just then I heard several coyotes sound off in the woods just beyond where I had seen the doe. They were relatively close. I leaned back against my pulled-together ground blind and waited, hoping the doe would momentarily appear in the food plot. I glanced back at the hogs. All three were staring in the direction of the yapping coyotes.
Suddenly the doe burst out of the brush running toward the three hogs. They spooked and ran as she got close to them. As I started to reposition my tripod and handgun, a large, fully haired coyote erupted out of the line of trees following the same path the doe had taken. Moments later the doe again ran across the food plot, the coyote not far behind. Unfortunately, he was there and gone before I could get my crosshairs on his and pull the trigger.
Hopefully another doe would appear, and hopefully too the doe could evade the coyote. I settled back against my log ground blind. My intention was to stay in my blind until near noon, then head back to camp for about thirty minutes and then return to spend the rest of the day hunting.
At 11:30, I was ready to stretch my legs, grab a bite to eat and then come right back to my ground blind. I started to get up, then remembered the Burnham Brothers C-3 Long Range Predator call in my pack. Actually, and frankly, I do not go afield without one.
I pulled the mouth blown call out of the pack, took several deep breaths, raised it to my lips and did my best to sound like a dying rabbit, or at least one in distress. I had blown into the call possibly 15 or 20 seconds when I spotted movement in knee-high bluestem grass one-hundred-fifty yards distant. It was coming my way. A heartbeat later a large coyotes stepped clear on the grass, stopped and stared in my direction.
I had previously ranged the grass at 127-yards using my Stealth Vision Rangefinder binocular. I also knew, thanks to spending much time at a range, my .454 Casull Taurus Raging Hunter revolver, topped with a vintage 2.5x7x28 Thompson/Center long-eye relief scope, shooting Hornady Handgun Hunter, 200-grain MonoFlex was possibly one-inch low at that distance.
I blew one more plaintive call, then cranked the scope’s magnification up to 6x, then settled the crosshairs on the now broadside coyote’s vitals. I cocked the hammer of my double-action revolver, crosshairs, thanks to a solid rest using my tripod shooting sticks, planted exactly where I wanted to place my bullet. I started squeezing the trigger.
The shot sounded, the coyote dropped in its tracks. Even so I quickly again cocked the hammer and brought my crosshairs to bear on my target. No movement, but I kept watching for another minute before standing up and walking to where my coyote lay.
At its side I could not have been more pleased, particularly with my shot and taking a predator that likely a little while before had been chasing a whitetail doe. Closer inspection revealed my coyote was a mature male. When David Cotton arrived, I asked him to take some photos. Then later I back at camp I weighed my coyote on our “deer scales”. He weighed 39 pounds.
Calling and shooting coyotes with handgun is something I truly enjoy. I have long enjoyed calling coyotes and other predators. I have done so not only through much of North America but also in England, Austria, Sweden, Australia and several African countries. Unfortunately, most places do not allow hunting with handguns. Thankfully we can do so in Texas and Oklahoma.
Hunting coyotes with a handgun. I much prefer using my Taurus Raging Hunter double-action revolvers in .44 Mag and .454 Casull loaded with either Custom 240-grain XTP loads, or in the case of the .454 Casull 200-grain MonoFlex Handgun Hunter loads. In my Taurus handguns these loads are supremely accurate, capable of 1 MOA accuracy at 100-yards.
Accuracy when calling coyotes is a paramount requirement. Their vitals are essentially an area encompassing about 4-inches by 6-inches, when standing broadside, looking at one dead-on, those vitals shrink to about 3-inches by 4-inches. Such a rather small target requires excellent accuracy. My Taurus Raging Hunter, topped with my vintage (prior to 2000) Thompson/Center long-eye relief variable scope and Hornady ammo are always up to the task.
While some hunters prefer to call after dark, I really like calling during daylight hours so I can see the predator approaching and too watch its reaction to the call. I regularly use Burnham Brothers’ new FREQ electronic call duplicates and broadcasts the Hertz (how sound is measured) of the sounds made by prey species in distress. No other electronic game call on the market can do this. This is one of the reasons coyotes and bobcats respond to the FREQ call after they no longer respond to other electronic game calls on the market.
While I love using the FREQ, there are times when I am hunting where carrying an electronic call is impractical. For that reason, I always carry at least one of Burnham Brothers’ C-3 Long Range mouth blown calls with me whenever and wherever I am hunting. When I fail to see the game species I am after, I pull my mouth-blown predator call out of my pack and start blowing it to attract coyotes or bobcats. I have also used that particular call with great success luring in mule deer, and California’s Columbian blacktail deer, as well as javelina in South and West Texas.
When calling, while hunting with my Raging Hunter revolvers, I occasionally also hunt with my .357 Mag and .44 Mags, I set up so I can watch downwind, with shooting lanes to my left and right. Not always, but more often than not, when coyotes come a predator call they tend to come in or at least circle and approach from downwind or a quartering wind. I like to sit on the ground when calling so I am on the same level as the approaching predator, with my back against a log or tree trunk. This breaks the human form but also helps me steady my shot.
Meanwhile, back on the ranch. I spent the afternoon hunting back in the woods where there was still, amazingly, a few acorns. I did that afternoon take a doe with my .454 Casull at less than fifty yards. Unfortunately, I could only hunt the following and last morning of our deer hunting season, after which I had to leave for meeting at the DSC office to discuss our Summer Expo in July. But I would be back on the ranch with my predators calls and my Taurus Raging Hunters in two weeks, hoping to remove a few more coyotes to help save fawns which would be “hitting the ground” in May.