So my first night out this month in search of a March Madness coyote went something like this. Get off work Sunday night. Check weather for my "new spot". Perfect NNW wind, cloud cover had it nice and dark and just about 32 degrees. Now "new spot" has been shaping up to be promising. Lots of sign during scouting and trail cams revealed a rather routine coyote visitor making appearances regularly between 5:00 and 6:00am and again between 8:30 and 10:30pm. My timing was going to be perfect. I arrive at spot, and begin making my way towards a ravine several hundred yards across a cut corn field. There are plenty of landscape features to mask my approach and the recent rain had left washouts that provided nice soft dirt to quietly walk in on. How perfect. As I continue to walk and scan, off in the distance, just off of the ravine in which I intend to sit in front of and call from, I spot eyes just over the horizon and moving towards said ravine. I stop to assess the situation and determine the eyes are too wide set to be anything I'm after and I hold up to let what I assume is a deer go about its way and also to not cause any undo commotion. Just like that, the eyes disappear and I continue on to my destination. A bit later I am now approaching the ravine and making my way around it when I hear a rustling to my right coming from just within the mouth of the ditch. I instinctively raise my light in the noises direction and notice a large black mass and almost instantly I realize I am staring at the face of a black bear! One good bluff charge and some jaw popping was all it took for me to vacate the scene rather quickly! Needless to say that concluded my activities for the night and I headed home. So much for my coyote-on-a-string...
