Weekend- Hunting Prep and first Coyote hunt

Friday night, I drove down to 45er's compound so we could do some hunting season prep on the lease and try our hands at trying to call in some coyotes.

Friday night, we tried a couple of good beers.  45er had a couple that I'll let him intro, and I brought this  new-to-our-area brew:

Sixpoint 'Resin' Double IPA

If you like floral and very hopped IPAs, and you can get this in your area, try it.  I had tried Sixpoint's 'Sweet Action' cream ale on one of my all-too-frequest trips to New York, and was impressed.  This one lives up to the expectation.

Saturday morning, we went to stock up on corn for the feeders.

Needs sugar and a still.

In this area, hunting from blinds over feeders is the way to hunt.  Spot and stalk is almost impossible due to the terrain and local flora.  It's just too dense to sneak up on anything.  There are cleared areas that you can do it on, but the deer are VERY wary of getting in the open.  They stay in the dense cedar and scrub oak.

Ever wondered what 900lbs of corn in a truck bed looks like?

After we were done with clearing out the blinds, feeding the cows, we set up the game cameras.   I was pretty impressed that the Solar setup I had in my blind was still fully operational.  My brother had left his camera hooked up at his blind throughout the spring and summer.  Caught this cool pic:

pretty impressed the batteries lasted till June

Even though it was the middle of the day, 45er and I decided to camo up and try to call in some coyotes.

I took the new AR-10, and 45er took his old reliable Savage 110 in .243, which is scary accurate and has probably killed more deer than most people have ever seen.

A well armed shrubbery

'I don't see any either'

We tried a mix of recorded calls off of Varmint Al's website played through my phone hooked to a GoalZero speaker and 45er blowing on a wounded rabbit call.  The only thing we were able to call in was a very stupid whitetail doe.  If it had been the right season, there would be more bones added to the boneyard, and jerky in the smoker

So we got completely skunked on coyotes.  The only thing anyone caught was 45er caught a really good nap while I was running the calls.  Either there were no coyotes in the area, or we just suck at calling 'yotes.

It was good to be out of the city, out in the woods and just having a good time with guns out in nature.

EDIT:  Forgot to add this.  45er's dad decided to up the redneck skill at his blind, and added an automatic watering trough for the deer.  Check this out:

A huge water reservoir with a float valve filling up a torch cut water heater tank.  This is what ranch engineering is all about