World Predator Expo, Columbus Ohio
My wife and I had business up in Lexington, KY on Friday. It was very nice that we had some work to do up there and then could go on and enjoy ourselves. Part of the nice thing of this trip was leaving the little ones behind and just spending time together. I think she is getting hooked on this predator hunting idea as she watches the shows with me and seems to enjoy them.
After getting lost for a little bit we arrived at the venue. There was also a deer and turkey expo going on across the way. There was HUGE line for that event! I'll bet there were 3,000 people there! I was actually relieved that the Predator Expo had no line and after finding an ATM to pay for our tickets, we got to go in and look around.
All of the vendors we know and love from outdoors television were there. The firearms companies were well represented. CZ, Remington, DPMS, and Savage were all there. I was really struck by how nice the stocks were on the CZ rifles. Remington has a LOT of nice shotguns! My first shotgun was a Remington 1148 that my grandfather gave me; I later bought an 1100 myself, before selling it off in my divorce. After looking about and speaking with the attendees, I really want a 10 gauge for turkey, deer, and predators, but I may settle for a 12 because of ammo availability.
My wife and I went to a couple of seminars. The first one we attended was with Jeff Thomason, Todd Woodall, and Cal Ferguson. They are the stars from the TV show “Predator Pursuit”. Jeff and Todd, we found out are firemen in their “real” jobs. Cal is a full-time guide in the Texas Panhandle. They did a really good job of helping us “newbies” and answered a lot of good questions.
When the seminar was over, I spoke with Jeff about hunting with a shotgun under the restrictions from Tennessee. He said that he has used #4 shot on coyotes and has shot a lot of them. They use a 10 gauge with some sort of coyote choke on it. Jeff just says that he aims at their head and doesn’t have any trouble taking them down. In fact he thought that a shotgun would be his choice for the close quarters of Tennessee. I don’t know if he realizes there are some open areas around East Tennessee.
The second seminar was with Al Morris from Operation Predator. He had some really good videos showing coyotes howling and challenging. He also was demonstrating a lot of different calls. One of the most interesting ideas he brought forth was to split the coyote season into three phases. This time of year he uses howls a lot to as they coyotes have love on their mind a lot. In the summer, he uses more coyote distress stuff, and in the fall it is pretty much “normal”.
He did a really good job showing how to howl, but even he admitted that he wasn’t an expert on howling. Instead of trying to learn a bunch of howls, he just learned three of them. Most of the “experts” there didn’t use howling very much, but indicated that they use it when they are about done with their stand or when they get a challenge call.
I stopped by at Game Traks to look at their electronic calls. They did look really nice and one of the guys from the GTA Forum said he would be there in the booth. (buckehunter). Instead his wife had other plans for him, but I stopped and they did a demo for me anyway.
The highlight of the day for me was getting to meet Les Johnson. He was very cordial and I gave him the phone number of my brother-in-law in Kansas in case he ran out of places to hunt. Les signed my Predator Quest shirt and I got my picture with him.
Before we left we signed up for some nice raffles. I signed up for a Savage rifle raffle. They had a TON of prizes they were giving away. One product I really wanted was a pair of glasses with a camera built into them! I thought that would be such a cool thing for my outdoors show idea.
If I had to do it again, I’d go on Friday to look at all of the cool stuff. Saturday I’d just do seminars and looking at product demonstrations. Another interesting item was that local predator hunting clubs had booths there. That was pretty cool. All along the road up there and back there were dead coyotes in Ohio! That is a pretty good indication of the numbers of animals up there.
