The trapper's truck was a late 80's model, 1-ton pickup truck with a horse rack in the bed. We were winding up a dirt road to examine the livestock damage that occurred the previous night. Upon entering the little meadow enclosed in the heavy oak brush, I saw 3 different dead lambs. Upon further inspection, we found at least a half dozen more lambs with battle scars around their necks and faces. Newell, pointing to the canine marks on throat of one of the dead ewes said, Coyotes for sure, from the looks of things there must have been a few of them.

The next morning found us in his truck again slowly moving towards the foothills in the pre-dawn morning. Newell edged his truck up to the base of a bunch of oak and said, Lets do it! This wasn't my first time calling coyotes but what Newell did next was a first for me. He opened the side to his horse rack and pulled a soft, white, fluffy poodle out. I must have had a stupefied look on my face because Newell simply said, fluffy will give us a distraction.

We eased over a little rise into a beautiful little valley covered in oak, big sage and rabbit brush. I eased into a clump of big sage and set up my Ruger .223. Newell shot a standard Ruger .243 that looked like it had come across the plains with the pioneers. He had a fixed 6X Leupold scope and shot factory loads. I was in full camouflage while he had a camo jacket over his tan DWR shirt with a sweat stained grey Stetson on his head. Not the setup I had expected for a professional trapper but I knew he must know what he was doing.

Little fluffy was about 30 yards below us on the hill busily nosing around the brush when Newell raised his hand to his mouth and let out what sounded to me like the worst coyote howl I had ever heard. Again I thought he is the expert here and settled in patiently to see what was going to happen next.

There was a slow moving stream winding its way through the little valley and I found myself mesmerized as the sun began to spurt its kaleidoscopic rays through the oak behind me. The sounds of the stream combined with the warm sun on my neck totally relaxed me to the point that I about jumped out of my skin when Newell said,There they are!

Sure enough, here came 4 grey dogs along our side of the stream. They looked completely at ease as they made their way toward us. No other sounds were made. Just a single lone howl had brought these 4 coyotes searching. Newell wasn't making a sound and he wasn�t moving. He was just content to lay back and watch the show. Of course, I was starting to panic as to which coyote I was going to shoot first.

At about 250 yards, the coyotes stopped. They saw little fluffy and were probably thinking to themselves that was the dumbest looking coyote they had ever seen. At that point, Newell kissed. Those coyotes must have loved that sound because the race began. They were actually racing to see who could get to fluffy first. Whether they were going to eat fluffy or not still remains a question in my mind because when the first coyote was about 25 yards off, Newell let him have it.