Subject: [Tweeters] Wenas-Coyote night hunting
Date: Jun 1 19:12:40 2014
From: J. Acker - owler at sounddsl.com


Tweeters,

Saturday evening while scouting out the habitat for an upcoming WOS owling
field trip to Wenas, my wife and I experienced a rather scary night.



We set up a campsite on the ridge to the north of the Wenas gathering
campground, as it was quieter and there and we had relocated after enjoying
some motorcycle activity in the campground that we didn't want to assume
would end at nightfall. There was no one camping anywhere near us.



Sometime after I had given up listening for owls (heard a lot of poorwills),
my wife asked me "Did you hear that?" I had, but listened to see if I could
hear what she heard again. The call was repeated, and a minute or so later,
repeated again. It's a coyote, I told her, but the call seemed strange. It
was then that she mentioned that a vehicle had gone past us earlier (Hog
Ranch Road?). Several minutes later, a strange, prolonged call came, and
lasted for a long while. It was repeated for several times before I
admitted that I didn't know what it was, though it was very loud. Finally,
it registered in my head that it was a distress call, ramped up in volume.
Putting the pieces together, I concluded that the vehicle that had passed by
contained coyote hunters. Sophisticated hunters with a sound broadcasting
system that put the one I use to attract saw-whets to my banding nets to
shame. There was no way either of us could sleep with this going on.



After half an hour of broadcast distress calls, with intermittent pauses,
the sound stopped. Twenty minutes later I hear the sound of a vehicle moving
on rocks. Half an hour after that were the calls of coyotes for several
minutes, same as before, followed by the same distress broadcast for a long
time. Only this time there was a gunshot, followed with a yelp, and then
silence, for the rest of the night (with the exception of the poorwills and
a common nighthawk).



Just so you know that there are other users of DNR land out there..



J. Acker

owler at sounddsl.com <mailto:owler at sounddsl.com>