Wind is the subject of intense debate among coyote callers, for the simple reason that it carries scent (your scent) and that scent can spook a coyote who gets a noseful. Man, the ever-inventive creature that he is, has confronted this problem directly, and as a direct result thousands of hunters spend tens of thousands of dollars every year for "cover scents" that presumably fool the wily coyote.

This, like so many other things that hunters believe and talk about, is bullshit pure and simple. There is an element of foolery going on here, to be sure, but it involves people paying good money to buy various kinds of piss and other unmentionables, which they then happily pour over their heads before sallying forth into the field. Now, lest you think that I am being unnecessarily harsh, consider the following.

First, coyotes are seldom hunted in the same places that are frequented by Dall sheep. Coyotes hang around back yards snacking on cats and scraps from the garbage can, they prowl the edges of fields full of migrant laborers picking lettuce, they frequent campgrounds in order to scavenge the hot dogs that roll off the grill... You get the idea. Coyotes have a nose full of people all the time, at least in the places that I call, and if the mere scent of a human sent them into a frenzy of fear they would have all run themselves to death, and we'd be discussing bowling.

Secondly, anyone who has ever watched a trail hound work realizes that the nose on a canine works a lot like our eyes; they perceive lots of things simultaneously. In other words, a coyote's nose looks at the world like you look at a bookshelf. The coyote "sees" rabbit/sage/dead cow/human/diesel/alfalfa whatever with his nose all at once, and I've always believed that when a coyote winds a caller with his skunk musk in his hair that coyote must wonder about the man's sexual proclivities, but I doubt that he trots blythely on his way, totally fooled by the "cover scent" that some idiot just paid $10.00 for at the gun shop.

Which is not to say that I don't pay attention to the wind when I call. I differentiate between what I call a "breeze" and a "wind". On a breeze, especially one that is holding to one point on the compass, I try to orient my stand with the wind squarely in my face, relative to the direction from which I expect the coyote to come. Vic and I have talked about this a lot, and we believe that scent follows a hydrodynamic theory; in simpler terms it acts and flows like water. On a gentle breeze we believe that scent hugs the ground and spreads in a gradually widening fan down-wind, pooling and puddling like water, and a coyote that trots through one of those pools is probably going to have an idea that something is up besides lunch.

A wind, on the other hand, drives scent like spray from the top of a wave, and scatters it far and wide. We usually set up crosswind with the electronic call and let the sound blow down-wind, and I've seen coyotes loping toward that sound from literally a mile away when they skyline themselves on ridges. I've called plenty of coyotes with a mouth call from directly downwind, as well; whatever human odor there is seems to disperse like smoke in the wind.

Before I became old and wise, I was calling in the high sage in New Mexico on a windy day, and per "the book" I was facing into the 20 mph wind and blowing on a Circe when a coyote (a damned hungry one, too, by the way that he acted) ran around the mesquite that I had my back against and literally into my lap.

I discovered that I was suddenly using urine as a cover scent, too, but it didn't fool that coyote one bit. He left the country before I had scrambled 20 feet on my belly, and I was MOVING.