Urruty, Oral History

INT: Did you hunt a lot?
INF: Yes. Yeah, I love hunt and fish. And trap coyotes, mountain lions. And if I saw some tracks in the snow or anywhere, next day or so, I had it in my little trap. It usually was there!
INT: Did you ever use bow and arrow to hunt with?
INF: No. No, in Basque country, we didn’t have bow and arrow. But, I was a very sharp, very sharpshooter, I was trained in the in the Army. And just for instance, one time I was working for the Overton, I saw coyote coming up a little draw. And I hide myself behind the bushes. And there was a little lake, and he was coming there to drink water. Toungue sticking out, he was coming right in the water hole. I waited long enough, and I hit him right between the eyes with the 30/30. And to hit coyote like that, you got to be pretty damn sharp, I’m telling you. Mr. Robert, he was very glad. We had a lot of losses, you know.
INT: I was going to ask you if you had a lot of losses.
INF: A lot of losses, yeah.
INT: From coyotes.
INF: Oh yeah. Lot of losses.
INT: And at that time you could only shoot them. They didn’t put out any of this poison.
INF: No. Those days, that thing, there was no thing they could eat, no poison at all. And we trap them. And I caught a lot of them trapping. And you have to learn how to make the scent to fool them, you know. It’s, it’s a very artistic system because coyotes are very, very smart.