22 January 2006, 03:11
boilerroomFirst date with FX3
After a morning of hand calling I stopped by the post office and there it was, my FX3. I sat in the truck playing with it to get familiar enough to use it right away. My truck sure was getting some funny looks.I headed to an area I had put aside for when my caller came in. It was everything I thought it would be. First set I had some yotes howling just over a KM away. I just kept repeating the interrogation howl and eventually, there was a yote about 500 yards across the meadow. He slowly worked his way over keeping an eye open for the intruder. I decided to give him a few seconds of Snowshoe hare in distress. He picked up the pace then. He decided to disappear into the marsh to cut across and that was the last I seen of him. Don't know what happened. I stayed on that set for an hour and when I left, nothing ran off. :?
Next set was on a lake. I hung the caller in a willow bush and set up about 75 yards from it. Right away 3 ravens decide to try and attack my caller as I played the baby snowshoe hare distress. They gave up eventually and headed down to the other end of the lake. It looked like they were harassing something so I glassed down that way for a minute. When I lowered the nocs I caught movement over at the caller. It caught my movement too. It was a yote just a few yards from it. Where the hell did he come from? He took off and I set up for the shot. By the time he stopped at my barks, he was 200 yards out on the lake. I pulled the trigger but the safety was on. Damn it!
ops: Had to woof him down a second time at 250 yards. This time I hit him. He rolled , got back up and rolled again.This is when yote # 2 came running across the lake. I switched over to him and tried a running shot. I missed.
I looked back at #1 and he was booting it up the hill with yote #3 with him. What the hell! Soooo, I tracked for what seemed like a mile or so until it got too thick and deep. I found about a 6 foot length of intestine so I'm pretty sure he's done for. Christ, I hate when this happens though.
It took me 45 minutes just to get back to my caller and the another 1/2 hour to the truck. I had one spot I wanted to check on the way home before it got dark.
As I set up on a long narrow lake I spotted something crossing at the other end around 400 yards. It saw me too. I dropped on my ass and took a look through the scope. It was a big lynx. It was moving again so I let out a woof. It stopped and I nailed him. I guess I hit a little low. He spun and bucked up. Not being sure how good the shot was, I let out another. This was a solid vital shot and he flipped about 5 feet high 4 times before he ran for shore and wiped out. I collected him at around 440 paces. Quite the afternoon. Called in 4 yotes and that lynx sure picked the wrong time to cross a lake. If he hadn't seen me and I started with the caller, he would of probably came in anyways.
Here's some pics of him.
