12/2/10 Thursday
Today was the first day of our second deer firearms season here in IL. The forecast was predicting a few flurries which started about an hour before first light as I parked the truck. Today I decided I was going to carry my Rem. 1100 LT 20 gauge since I’ve never shot a deer with it and thought it would be different hunting with open sights instead of my scoped 12 gauge. I had to walk a little over ½ a mile to get to my stand and the snow was coming down harder the closer I got there. I got up in the stand and sat patiently waiting for first light and listened to the snow coming down as it hit on the trees. You know, just one of the neat things about being out in nature.
The stand faces a wooded hill side with a CRP field behind me that had been planted in trees and grown over with weeds and grass. Shortly after first light, a doe came into the woods to my front left on the other hill side about 90 yards away.
I just watched her thinking there might be another one and/or it my work its way closer. The wind was in my face and after about 15-20 minutes, something up over the hill in front of me made a noise that the doe also heard. She looked for a second or two and threw her tail up and ran off. I sat for a while and never did see what spooked her so I decided I would stand up for a bit and stretch my legs. I looked around to my left and right before I stood up, so not seeing anything, I slowly stood up and turned around to see a coyote mousing in the grass that was in my blind spot about 80 yards out.
I raised my gun and leaned against the tree and gave a couple soft lip squeaks. The coyote looked up and was listening so I gave one more squeak and it started slowly my way. I didn’t do anything till it stopped and looked around then gave one more squeak and it started coming again. I blew my breathe and saw it was blowing close to where the coyote was headed so decided to take the shot at 48 yards. When I looked down the sights, the front one was mostly covered with snow and I couldn’t move to clear it to take the shot or the coyote would see me.
I lined up on the coyote the best I could and shot, dropping it on the spot. I had hit it in the hips taking out both legs but didn’t kill it so gave it another shot to finish it off since the first shot knocked the snow off of the sight.
I didn’t see many deer that weekend or hear many shots around, though I did get a shot at a doe the second day and missed.
12/10/10 Friday
First day of our muzzle loader season and Lucas shot a nice doe that evening but didn’t get any pictures. The weather forecast was for rain to start Saturday and wind and snow to start sometime Saturday night. The rain stopped around 2-2:30 pm so Lucas and I headed out to try and get a deer before the cold and snow started. The wind was blowing pretty hard and as Lucas was sneaking up through the timber, he spotted a coyote going in a circle like a dog does just before it lies down in it's bed. Lucas pulled up to shoot and could only see the top half of the coyote and shot it at about 35 yards. He said the coyote dropped and didn’t move. I understand why it didn’t after seeing what the 295 grain Power Belt hollow point being pushed with 150 grains of powder did to it. The bullet literally blew out its spine.
The coyote had really thick fur already for this being early Dec.
Daylight was starting to fade as the wind was getting stronger and it was getting colder. When I left the house at 2:30, the temperature was 43*F and by 6:30 it was down to 24*F. Just as it was getting to last light, three doe came up along the field to my left and I shot the lead one at about 40 yards. They all ran off over the hill in the alfalfa field as I reloaded. I looked for blood but it was too dark now to see so I called Lucas on the radio and told him to come on over to the field and bring the lights. He found the first blood and we tracked the doe over the hill and found her near the bottom of the hill. I had double lunged her and she ran about 200 yards before going down. It was too dark to take pictures out there so we took them when we got back to the shop.
Got up this morning to high winds and snow.
And when nothing is going on while hunting, you can always take pictures of the squirrels.
he's good.