Your coyote hunting club would be very welcome here in Maine, where they are kicking the business out of the deer herd and have been for years. There are even guides who specialize in coyotes.
And as to range estimation - I find myself in the course of walking the woods with my sxs (what I call "hunting") picking a spot, putting a number on it, and then pacing it off as I hunt. More often than I like to admit, I get a paced distance that winds up being somewhere around twice the distance I thought it was. I'm getting better, if only because I now know I've been way off and adjust my guesstimate in response. I want to know how much acreage I can consider within fair shooting range, which I arbitrarily peg at around 30 yards and actually doing it on the ground and learning is the only way I can think of.
As to estimating ranges for waterfowl, it would seem obvious (to me, anyway) that the way to go is to set the outermost of your decoys at known ranges. It might be hard to pace it off over water (I can't, but maybe one of the guys in your party can), but I can see this being a good place to use that bowhunter's rangefinder or some other measure. Think of it as making a range card - which many of you surely learned when putting on a uniform. But, if you know your outermost decoy is 50 yards away, you both know when birds are in range and, more importantly, what a duck looks like at that range. Of course, the last time I hunted geese, the word was to wait until you could hear the wind between their feathers, and then wait a little more.
Just saying....
Last edited by Dave in Maine; 10/30/11 02:02 PM.
