CoyoteCanada is by and large a site dedicated to the black art of predator calling. My name is Jason de Jong, and I am the administrator and author of the site. I live in Calgary, Alberta, the surrounding country where I do the bulk of my predator hunting. Having started calling in the winter of 2002, this whole predator hunting thing is pretty new to me. It has been a frustrating yet fascinating learning process and this site is an attempt to document some of the things that I have learned in the hopes that others might learn from my mistakes.  
 
 
 

Danger! This site contains what some would consider to be graphic photographs of dead animals. Continue at your own volition.

I freely admit that there is a lot I have yet to learn about predator hunting...my learning experience is ongoing and the curve is currently steep (just the way I love it!). Two resources have been of particular use to me and might warrant a peek by you:

• John-Henry's house of the CoyoteGods
• Varmint-Al's eclectic website.

I have also been extremely lucky with respect to having the opportunity to learn from a particularly gifted hunting partner. He knows who he is, and as I am not sure if he would be too keen on being drug into the infamy that I believe I might be inviting with the gradual upload of this site, I will leave him to lurk in the shadows.  
 
 
 

Hi! Here I am parked in my basement "office", fresh home from work, and just itching for the days to get a little longer such that a guy might for a post-work squawk or two. *Sigh*...I guess I will have to be content to type away with two fingers while dreaming about predator hunting.

Do bear in mind that the site is a work in progress, and as such there are currently many parts of the site that ae incomplete. I will finish them off as I have time, and once the static content is complete, I am hoping to start to post some of the details of my ongoing adventure experiencing this perfect north-american predator!

Anyway...enough of all this administrative BS. Let's tally-ho into the fascinating world of predator hunting.  
 
 
 
Predator/Prey Relationships  
 

Predator/prey relationships have recently grown into a subject I am fascinated with. I grew up in a relatively anti-hunting environment, and it was not until I was in my late twenties that I began to give some serious though towards predator/prey types of relationships and where homo-sapiens fit into the whole equation. As I began to explore, I became aware of a growing desire to experience this relationship directly. It was not enough to witness my cat stalking a bird or a mouse out in a patch of grass behind the house...I needed to participate in a much more tangable fashion. This entire experience was extremely difficult for me at first, right up to the moment that I killed my first animal: a black bear with my longbow.

Language is an interesting thing. Many times as I have been doing readings or research of one sort or another, I look up words I already think I know the definitions of. This is often an interesting exercise, and it frequently adds depth and breadth to my mission as well as honing a sort of focal point around which to frame an investigation. My Predator Hunting Mission was no different:  
 
 

As defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary:  
 
 

Predator: n. 1: one that preys, destroys or devours. 2: an animal that lives by predation.

Prey: n. 1: an animal taken by a predator as food. 2: one that is helpless or unable to resist attack : victim .

Prey: v. 1: to seize and devour prey. 2: to commit violence or robbery or fraud. 3: to have injurious, destructive, or wasting effect.

Instinct: n. 1: a natural or inherent aptitude, impulse, or capacity . 2a: a largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason. b: behavior that is mediated by reactions below the conscious level.  
 
 

As I read these definitions over and over, I wondered whether or not the hunting instinct was a characteristic that our socio-political environment strongly discouraged. I began to harbor a strong desire to explore some of my latent-yet-seemingly-dormant instincts; namely those directly related to predators and prey.  
 
 

Sometimes it is difficult to know that I am responsible for extinguishing this life...yet this unique exploration of the hunting instinct is something that has become precious to me.