I decided to head to the north of his ranch buildings and try calling into the maze of coulees to the north of his ranch. I set up and called for about 20 minutes in that spot. I used the Lightening Jack sound and didn’t crank the volume up very much because sound was traveling real good this morning. The rancher came up by where I was parked after I finished my first set and I told him I wasn’t doing any good for him today. I drove my pickup a ways further west in hopes the mangy coyotes were out that direction. The rancher picked up a big round hay bale and headed back up to the hay yard. As I was walking to the west to find a calling spot, I looked off to the south towards the hay yard and spotted two coyotes running to the south. I reached into my inner pocket to get a mouth call, but had my butt pack strap up so high I couldn’t get a call out. I dropped the butt pack off and got out my Tally Ho call. Before I could blow a sound or two, I spotted one mangy coyote running to the west from the hay yard. I guess I didn’t look carefully enough and now it was getting away. I crossed the fence, sat down, put my rifle up on my shooting sticks hoping to get a decent shot at the mangy coyote, but the weeds in the field I was in were so tall they were in the road of my vision and any bullet that would come out of my barrelâ€â€no shot. The two coyotes that had headed south were out of sight and the mangy coyote was heading west and disappeared over the rise. I watched for him to come out of the low spot he was in, but he never came back out.
I gathered my butt pack, shooting sticks and rifle, and began to walk toward where I had last seen the mangy coyote. There he was, about 400 yards off to the SW of me, and watching my approach. I sat down again with my shooting sticks and again the weeds were too tall for me to be able to get off a shot. This time the coyote started heading off to the NNW, and disappeared into the pasture that goes to the north. I headed over that way and was determined to get on his tracks and try to walk him down or at least get close enough to get a killing shot on him. I must have followed his tracks for over a half mile without seeing him. Just then, I saw a mule deer run out of the coulee to the SE of me and after watching the mule deer a little bit, I scanned to the north of there and spotted two coyotes just wandering around in the snow.
I dropped off the top of the ridge and sneaked further north until I found a spot on the side hill where I could set up and call from. This was a pretty steep hill. I sit on a plastic trash compactor bag to keep my rear end dry and I could just visualize myself sliding out of control down this steep hill on my plastic bag!! So, I got myself anchored as best I could, took out my Tally Ho call and gave a few dying rabbit squalls. The one coyote I could see, turned around, stood for a little while and when I gave him a couple more squalls he started coming my way on the run and then I spotted the other coyote following him. I had nothing but dense vegetation below me for about 130 yards, but there was an open ridge about 200 yards to the ESE of me and a nice big opening about 180 yards straight east of me and that’s where the first coyote showed up! Lucky me! Only one thing wrong, the coyote didn’t stop in the opening he just put it in high gear and disappeared into the dense junipers and hardwoods right below me. No shot on him for now.
I turned and looked for the other coyote and there she was, up on the ridge about 200 yards away. The last time I shot this rifle was on August 20, 2010, and I had thoroughly cleaned the barrel afterwards and used Greg Tannel’s Graphoil treatment before putting it in the soft case. The first shot out of the barrel is usually right on the money, but it was about 75º the last time I adjusted the scope and today the temperature was sitting at 2 below zero. I just had to trust the rifle because there would be no second chance on this coyote. I steadied my Savage 12VLP in .204 Ruger on my shooting sticks. This rifle has a 1 in 11 twist super match grade 3 groove stainless steel Pac-Nor barrel and it was a superbly accurate shooter on prairie dogs this summer using 40 gr. V-Max bullets coated with hBN, pushed by 27.2 gr. of H4895 which was ignited by Remington 7½ primers. Muzzle velocity of this load is 3,841 fps. Anyway, the coyote on the ridge sat down facing me. I only had the zoom up on 12x (I should have had it on 20x for my old eyes), got the crosshairs centered on her chest and squeezed off the shot. I could hear the WHAP of the bullet hitting her, I heard her scream and she tipped over sideways, got back to her feet and stumbled out of sight over the edge of the ridge.
I watched intently to see if she would reappear, but she never came back into sight. I turned my head back in the direction the other coyote would probably be approaching me from and spotted him standing in the big opening 180 yards east of me. I’m sure he had been fairly close to me when I shot the other coyote and then started to get out of Dodge, but stopped for a look back. BIG MISTAKE!!! I got the crosshairs on him right at the heart/lung area and squeezed off the shot. WHAP!!! Down he went and he didn’t even twitch. I checked my chronograph and only 5 minutes had passed by since I made the first couple of rabbit squalls on the Tally Ho. That was some pretty fast action for an old man like me!!!
I took out my Leica 1200 laser range finder and ranged the distance to the dead coyoteâ€â€180 yards. I ranged the distance to where the first coyote had been sitting and that was 190 yards. Since the hills/buttes in this area are rather steep, I seriously considered just forgetting about going down to the dead coyote and forgetting about looking for the first one I shot too. I definitely wasn’t going to keep tracking the mangy coyote. I finally decided, against my better judgment, to carefully head down to the dead coyote and do a photo op and also check for blood splatter and the trail of the first coyote. It was about 10:45 a.m. when I headed down the hill and it took me a full 10 minutes to make the 180 yards to the coyote.
The second coyote I shot was a huge male. The bullet hit him just behind the left-front shoulder and did not exit. He had some pretty impressive canines.
This country I was hunting in is absolutely beautiful. Here’s a photo looking to the north where you can see the Missouri River in the background.
Here’s the view looking from the dead coyote back up to my hiding spot on the ridge to the WSW.
My next task was to pick up the trail of the first coyote and see if there was any blood splatter that would help me in tracking her. I struggled to make my way up the extremely slippery hillsides. It seemed as though for each step I took forward, I’d slide about two steps back. Treacherous going! I finally made it up to the spot where the coyote was sitting when I shot and there was lots of blood splatters. I could see where she had fallen over going down the back side of the ridge and found more blood splatters along her tracks. She was heading into some thick brush. About that time, I happened to look off to the NE and spotted a coyote on the other side of a creek bottom about 400 to 500 yards away. I sat down, got my rifle up on my shooting sticks, and barked to get her to stop. She stopped and I held about 2 feet high and flung a shot at her and missed. I could not see where the bullet hit. I could see that her left shoulder was all bloody and she was limping and not using her left front leg, but she was still moving out pretty good. I jacked in another shell and when she stopped to look back again, I shot once more and missed again. She limped on part way up the face of the butte and collapsed. She still had her head up, but I think she was about ready to expire. I hated to leave her suffering there, but I figured that if I tried to approach her she would just get up and disappear over the ridge and I would never catch up to her. I thought about driving my pickup over around to that side of the coulee from the east, but it is P.L.O.T.S. (Public Land Open to Sportsmen) and it is illegal to use a motorized vehicle on that land. It would have been about a one mile walk in to where she was from the nearest road. I decided to head back to my pickup, which was about a one mile walk to the south.
I got back to my pickup at about 12:20 p.m. and drove into the rancher’s yard to make my report. He had seen one of the two coyotes that ran over the hill to the south earlier, but hadn’t seen the mangy coyote leave his hay yard. I apologized for not being able to nail the mangy coyote and I offered to leave my .17 Tactical for him to use, but he’s not used to scopes on rifles and he thought it was too much gun for him to figure out! I told him I probably wouldn’t be able to drive out there every day to try to dispatch those coyotes, and begged him to use my .17 Tactical, but he figured he’d just stay with his .22 Magnum rimfire and his open sights.
Here’s the hero photo I’m sure you are all waiting to see.
The temperature got all the way up to about 9 degrees today and the wind wasn’t too bad, maybe 5 or 6 mph, so it was a good day, even though I almost killed myself going up and down those steep hills.
