MRUTVOL
Well-Known Member
I have a friend who has bugged me for a couple years to take him yote hunting and was willing to drive me to and from the place to hunt in Giles County and even buy my breakfast and lunch if need be along the way. Knowing how difficult it sometimes can be to call up yotes I figured after a couple trips he would see that they can be a challenge at times and lose his drive to go so much....WRONG! He is now worse than ever. We make the 2 hour trek down there and he only could hunt half a day. We were hunting on his uncles land which was only about 60 acres so I really was not to confident of our success being I had not even seen the property. Fortunately there is a TVA power line that goes right down the middle of the property with thickets on either side of the cut through. Offering a good open viewing area I decided that would be where we would set up. The wind was not perfect but we could work with it . All the way down he was talking about a black yote that was seen crossing through there around Christmas. I tried to temper his excitement by telling him that in almost 30 years of hunting yotes I had only seen 2 and never had got to kill one so the odds of us seeing one were slim at best....WRONG AGAIN! WE get set up and I had my mojo decoy out front about 15 yards due to our limited weapons because of the centerfire rule. He had a 22 mag and I had my 12 ga turkey shotgun knowing we would need to get a relative close shot. There was still quiet a bit of snow still on the ground so you could see movement a long ways out. I started calling softly with the distressed rabbit sound for about 5 minutes and then just stopped to see if anything close by checked us out. No response so I started in again with just a little louder and harder action and my friend slapped me on the leg and said he seen something move about 500 yards down the powerline cut. I did not see it so I thought he might just have imagined it due to his excitement so I started a more desperate sequence of calling and he slapped me again and this time I seen what he saw. Low and behold it was the Black Yote and it was coming hard at about 300 yards. It got to about a 150 yds and then froze up and after a couple mins turned and angled into the thicket. My buddy was really let down but I told him it was not over yet that I felt the yote was circling down wind and to keep an eye out because with the mojo jerking around the yote could bust out in front of us at any point. I did another short sequence and just as I stopped out trotted the yote at 17 steps in front of us. My friend got all shook up and had his scope turned up to high and had to quickly adjust it but the yote picked up the movemnt and froze for a second and then bolted down the middle of the powerline cut. I told my friend to get on him and I was going to try and stop it. I started making loud dog yelps and sure enough it stopped at about a 100 yds out to take a look and my friend fired off a shot. The yote made the classic whirling move when being hit and then bolted about another 50 yards and then fell thrashing and finally died. The guy was so pumped he jumped up and ran all the way out to the yote before I could even manage to get up . I told him he was very lucky not only to get a yote on his first sit but for it to be a Black one was even luckier. We done another setup on the other end of the property and seen 2 more normal yotes out of range but they circled downwind and busted out. It was a 4 hour trip counting down and back but to see how excited he was made it all worth while. Only problem is now he thinks it is a piece of cake so boy is he in for a surprise! 
Here are a couple pics of him with his yote.
Here are a couple pics of him with his yote.
