The jackrabbit population has crashed in my little corner of the Great Basin, so the hawking is poor. I'm also seeing fewer coyotes than last year, no doubt a direct result of the jackrabbit decline. Still, it was a pleasant 36F this morning, clear and calm, so I decided to leave the hawks at home and try my luck with the FOXPRO.
My first stand came up empty -- not even a howl or a bark to acknowledge my efforts. The second stand was almost as bad, with one lonesome howl in response to the caller. Leaving my second stand on a rocky, juniper-clad hillside, I turned up my Leupold to 10x to glass the adjacent alfalfa pivot whose nearest edge was perhaps 1/4 mile from me. The alfalfa was around a foot tall, ready for the second cutting of the year.
My eye caught a dark shape moving slowly in the field. I thought it was a badger, because it looked low and flat. I walked down the hill towards the pivot to get a better look. When I was 200 yards from the edge of the pivot I looked again, and saw that it was a coyote. Only its back was visible because it was walking with its head down in the wheel track of the pivot. The depth of the wheel rut combined with the height of the alfalfa hid the coyote almost completely.
Since his head was down I walked quickly to the edge of the pivot and set up my Bog-Pod. Presently he lifted his head (probably gulping a sage rat) and began to walk towards me, completely oblivious. He would disappear and reappear as he traversed the hollows and rises within the pivot. Eventually he turned parallel to me, and so wasn't going to get any closer. I tracked him in my scope (still at 10x) until he stopped, quartering towards me with his right side visible.
I judged that he was at least 250 yards away, and perhaps a good bit farther than that, so I held on his back hairline. My 22BR (40gr NBT @ 4100fps) is zeroed at 240 yards (maximum midrange trajectory = 1.5"), and is down 2.8" at 300 yards, and only 6" low at 340 yards, so it's possible to hold on hair to well over 300 yards on a full-grown coyote.
I didn't hear the bullet impact, but the coyote sprang straight up in the air with all 4 feet clearing the tops of the alfalfa, and then hit the ground running. The recoil of a 22BR with 40gr bullets is minimal, so I was able to follow him in the scope after the shot. After about 30 yards at full throttle he stumbled, went another 10 yards, and collapsed.
I carefully marked a point on the opposite side of the pivot to give me a line to walk, knowing that he would be hard to find in the tall alfalfa. My boots and pant legs got soaked from the dew on the alfalfa, but the dew turned out to be a blessing because when I got close to the coyote -- 319 long paces from my Bog-Pod -- I could see his "track" in the wet foliage. He was lying at the end of the track, fur soaked and looking bedraggled.
I hauled him back to the 2-track to check out the damage. The bullet had entered a little far back and a few inches below the spine, breaking the third rib in front of the diaphragm, taking out the back half of the right lung and angling rearward through part of the liver to produce a 2" exit wound.
A young male with questionable summer fur, but at least he won't be eating any more of my jackrabbits!
) has been turned blue by the flood of less-sensible emigrants. The stench of "progress" is in the air.
As soon as he cut my track he spun on his back foot and went straight back up the hill. Rather than take a running shot in heavy cover I just kept the FOXPRO going. Sure enough, 5 minutes later a female pup came down the same trail that the big male had used. When she cut my track she knew something wasn't right, but rather than run, she paused, and that was her undoing.
