Was out yesterday with my Fox-pro looking for foxes and coyotes. Sitting on a hill, watching a large flat area. Started with soft calls, then increased the volume for two minutes then off for ten. After calling for about thirty minutes noticed a dog team coming straight at me. No musher, just the team. Sled was bouncing, but staying upright. I stopped and did not call any more. But the team had my location, and was coming on like a freight train. Knowing some teams are not friendly I decided to at least get to an area where I was not available to them. I went back up the hill to my truck and got inside. When they got to the truck they started milling around and got hopelessly tangled. Since none seemed to be aggressive, I opened the door and started talking to them. I saw a rope attached to the back of the sled, so a took it and dragged the sled over to the gate post near by. I hooked the sled to the post and putting my truck in 4 wheel drive started following the sled tracks across country. I started crossing the flat area and just before reaching the trail I knew to be on the other side I ran into the musher, walking his runaway teams trail. I told him I had found his team and had them tied to a post. He said he could not figure why they ran away, that they were running fine, then just suddenly turned off the trail and went cross country. He had managed to hang on for a while then lost his grip on the sled. He had injured his wrist, and had gotten his face all scratched up being drug through the brush. Since the snow is not more than four or five inches it did not slow the team down much to head cross country. I told him I was calling from top the hill and that his team must have heard the calls. At this point he got mad, I had to remind him that mushers were not the only ones using the area. That I had just as much right to call varmints in this area as he had to mush his dogs there. One more word and he could walk the rest of the way. He shut up. He did not say anything else till after he got out of the truck. Once he seen his team he apologized and got out to start untangling dogs. I told him he needed to work with his dogs using a squealing rabbit call so they would not go off chasing another caller. I then left.
