“He’s somewhere in the green,” my hunting partner whispered in a low, gravely voice. We were sitting along a creek bed in the middle of summer, calling coyotes.  

I tightened my shotgun closer to my shoulder and scanned everything in my field of view. There was one problem, though — everything in front of me was green!  

Through the years I’ve made it my goal to try and understand and speak the language of the quarry I’m hunting. I’ll never win any competitions, but I work really hard at it. From yelps to grunts, and honks to howls, I’ve tried to interpret and duplicate them all.  

Just when I thought I was on top of my game, I was thrown a curve ball. I drove down to southern Arkansas to hunt coyotes with my good buddy, Torry Cook. Now, the difficult part wasn’t speaking to the coyotes, but understanding anything my hunting partner said. Between Torry’s thick drawl and regional vernacular, our conversations were peppered with a lot of me saying, “I’m sorry, could you repeat that? 

It was difficult enough to understand him at normal conversation volume but when we were on stand it was impossible to decipher his comments when he spoke in a hushed voice.  

“He’s somewhere in the green!” Torry said again, this time with more urgency.  

I spun around and looked at him to see if I could get any visual cues of what he was trying to say to me. Just then Torry threw his hands up in defeat. “Right at the moment you looked back at me the coyote popped up in front of us not 10 yards away!” 

Torry wasn’t speaking in a hushed voice anymore, and now I could understand him clearly. 

“What part of, ‘He’s coming down the creek!’ did you not understand?”  

I replied, “Honestly? None of it.”