Jose Wales took care of the red legs, I saw the movie……about 100 times!
Ramblings and Such From Hunting Coyote
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Straight Shooter
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I think the red legs he is talking about might be artillery soldiers.
In the summer of 1986 I had just bought me a new Remington 788 chambered in 223 . I mounted a new Redfield full view scope on it in 4-12 the old steel tube scope that had a rectangular field of view that was pretty good area coverage at full power . The clarity was good and it had a duplex reticle . At that time I worked mostly up on the mountain above the 8000 foot level mostly trapping and calling . I used the Bill Austin howler a lot and his calling methods . I had his instructional cassette tape that I bought from him when I stopped to visit him . The wind up there blows most of the time , except for when it's real hot , it was gusting that day . Coming out of the west as normal . I got set up and did a few howls . Out a few hundred yards I saw a coyote come out of a deep cut and stand on the top of a small hill . It came toward me then stopped out a couple of hundred yards standing broad side to me with it's back to the wind . Being young and inexperienced I got excited and rushed myself , not even trying to get it to come closer . I aimed at the chest and shot , I heard the bullet hit with the wop they make when they hit tissues . The coyote went down flopped around some jumped up and ran off back the way it had come from . I went out to where it had been found some blood and went the way it had but never recovered it . A few weeks latter I was up there early in the morning and heard the coyote start their morning serenade one of them sounded real bad not much like a coyote at all . I hunted them several times calling to them but most of the time I would see them come up to a hill top out a long ways and they would just watch my way and stay out a long way from me . I caught several in traps from that area . then one morning I got one in a trap that had a torn up and scared neck . The weird sounding one . To this day I think it was the one I had shot and didn't recover , and that my bullet had drifted with a wind gust and hit her in the neck instead of the chest where I had aimed . I will never know for sure .
I have always walked quietly even when I was a kid I didn't make much noise when I moved around . I noticed that I saw a lot of things that the other people didn't seem to , partly because I actually looked for them but also because I was quieter then them . As time went on I learned even more about not making much noise as I moved around , not letting limbs and things like that rub on me and not just letting go of them if I needed to move them out of my path of travel . I watched where I put my feet and stepped over or around things like vines or weeds brush ect. , that others would just push through letting them drag across their feet and legs . I don't drag my feet along the ground or floor but I don't pick them up real high either and I try not to set them down hard so they don't make sound when I'm walking along . It just came natural for me . In 1988 I got called by a guy that had some bum lambs that he was raising and had a pair of coyote eating on them . It was hot and dry in July the grass was dry and crunchy the ground was dusty and hard packed with cracks opening up in it . I got out to his place and set some snares out as every way I looked there were homes or roads so I didn't think calling and shooting was much of a good idea . It was late in the day and close to 95 degrees the place had a small stream running through it that had sharp banks nearly straight down to the creek . I walked over to the edge of it and looked down right below my feet was a coyote curled up laying on a small ledge in the shade by the water on some moist ground only about 5 feet from me staying cool . I always wore my gun belt with a 22 cal. 9 shot revolver , a knife and pliers on it . I started to pull the gun when she jumped up and ran for it . We both were surprised by each other I didn't get her shot but did have her and the male in snares the next morning . It still pays to walk softly for me .
D
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Bill (338 dude) and I went out a little this weekend in the mornings on some new amazing property that he was able to secure, and we had an odd experience. It was absolutely the last straw for me with match ammo. In the past couple of years I've used hornady eld-m ammo with great success on whitetail, and have killed a few yotes with them too, but only when you hit bone. We set up Saturday morning in a beautiful rolling pasture and started calling just before daylight. Almost exclusively non-confrontational vocalizations, and primarily pup sounds. On our second set, after about 35 mins, I was losing hope and hit a fawn distress. I normally avoid it when there are cows in the enclosure because it is the best cow call I've ever seen, but it's the right time of year so I went with it. Sure enough, here came the herd. They surrounded my call so I turned it off. We figured the stand was over, so we sat there in the silence for about 10 mins whispering quietly about our next move. Just before we were about to stand up, I spotted a short haired, large dog slinking through the herd about 150y, quartering away from us. Bill was gracious enough to offer me the first shot, and it was at that moment that I realized that I had either already begun readying to fold up my position, or had never properly set up, because my Swagger bipod legs were setting me wayyyyy too high. The dog was noticing that something wasn't right, but it stopped broadside at 168y and gave me a perfect shot. I had gotten my Swagger adjusted by then and squeezed off a good shot. I have tested this, and I can hold a minute or better off of that rest with my elbows resting on my knees, and I got a clean trigger break and everything felt good. We saw it stumble, spin, and then run. Bill and I both sent a few follow up shots after it, but it was in the cows, so the safe opportunities where few. We couldn't find any blood, but it was green grass, soaked with recent rain about 18" tall, and as some of you know, with a small hole, they often won't put any blood on the ground for hundreds of yards. Needless to say, I'm 100% irrevocably done with match bullets for coyotes. I believe that animal is dead, but I cannot be sure. We followed it's likely path for several hundred yards, but the terrain made any attempt at tracking or finding blood virtually impossible. Later we stopped and talked to a farmer and locked up thousands of acres of amazing new ground. So, it was a great day..
I learned the hard way on match ammo also . It is very accurate but the hollow point is kind of small so it opens slowly and makes a pass through on smaller thinner animals , the jackets are a little thicker on most of them and the lead core is a different alloy intentionally so that they don't open up on the paper targets so it takes a little more for them to work well on a coyote or fox sized animal but they may work ok on deer and larger animals . A few weeks ago I sent Reemty a picture of some different 223 bullets that showed this well I don't have that photo as they shut down that phone but will set those bullets up and send a photo to Butterbean to see if he will post it here . The hornady line of ammo that they sell for us to shoot at a less costly amount of money is mostly loaded with their match grade of bullets and at a lower velocity they are pretty accurate and fun to plink with but I don't much like them for coyote . I will use my 30-06 with some 125 grain winchester ammo and some 125 grain nosler ammo but for my main fur and killing bullets I load 55 sierra game king bullets , they are a boat tail hollow point bullet , in my 223 running them at around 2900 fps mv . From 50 - 500 yards they are accurate and expand seldom making an exit hole the coyote and fox just go stiff legged and tip over from the hydraulic shock . I normally don't like to shoot farther then 200 yards here due to the wind and gusts we have but have taken coyote out at 550 yards with this load and rifle . It isn't just a factory out of the box rifle either . I bought a Winchester model 70 on sale for 225.00 took it and pillar bedded it put a good timney trigger in it , cut the barrel to 20 inch's that isn't a light barrel but isn't a bull barrel either and put a target crown on it . The stock is fit to me with a 13 inch pull length . I have used this rifle since 1989 and it carries a 1/2 moa out to 400 yards with the mods and reloads that I run in it .
I tried a lot of different rifles and ammo when I got to the ammo I use mostly I stayed with it . I got to the sierra 55 grain boat tail hollow points because the 52 and 53 grain bullets were match grade bullets and didn't preform to what I wanted from them . ( When I got the ammo to open up and not explode out the back side of jack rabbits I tried them on fox and coyote ) I tried the 55 grain game king bullets because the 223 and 5.56 x45 ammo with the 55 grain bullets were designed to be used in the M-16 or rather the M-16 was designed to use the 55 grain bullets at that time . They have since changed the rifling so that heaver bullets can be effectively used with the 223 and 5.56 x 45 rounds .
It's not the best picture that I've taken thank You ButterBean for posting it for me . The top bullet and the bottom bullets are hunting bullets you can kind of make out that the hollow points are larger the middle two are match bullets and have smaller holes in the tip . Top to bottom 50 gr 52 gr 53 gr and 55 gr all in 223 cal . It shows the different hole diameter ok and so to me it just made sense to use the bigger holed ones to hunt with as what I wanted was dead coyote and not a lot of hunting them after I shot them .
D
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It is my intention to stick to bullets that are designed for that kind of rapid fragmentation in the future. And, I plan to adjust my point of aim for shoulder bone. I've made this mistake several times over the years, but I think I've finally learned my lesson. I have this strange tendency to use the same point of aim with all game animals that I use with edible big game. I shoot deer a few inches behind the shoulder to preserve meat, and in a rush, my reptile brain settles my crosshairs there naturally. Unfortunately, with a bullet that doesn't expand, that is a bad place to shoot a coyote. A coyote hit in the shoulders isn't going far, even if the bullet doesn't perform optimally, so I will try to retrain my brain for that point of impact. One problem that I have is that I use a dozen different rifles in some nonsensical rotation for predator hunting. I'd like to say that that will stop, but it won't. I left a safe full of rifles at home that were zeroed with v-max and varmageddon ammo and took one zeroed with eld-m, just to keep it interesting. I wish I had the dedication to one rifle and bullet combo, but I don't.
Don't feel bad HeCould, I did the same thing about a month ago. Caught one crossing the field by my house one evening at aboug 500yd. I'm quite confident with my 7RM at that rsnge if I can get steady and have rolled several in same spot with it. This time I grabbed some factory Wins but knes the POI was the same as my pet load. Rolled it on the shot, it flopped a few seconds, got up and ran to levee and rolled/crashed literally head over heels and flopped again then up and over out of site. Had blood trail like a stuck deer but after about 50yd it quit and I couldn't find it. Sure it's dead, even if the shot didn't do it the heat, blow flies, and infection most likely would in short order. Not that I want any animal to suffer but better it than a fawn.
I have a couple of rifles that are only occasionally used on coyote , fox or other problem animals of that size or smaller . I have a 22-250 , 6.5x284 and mostly use the 223 on coyote fox or other problems . I have used it on a ram once that I was ask to take care of I found him and got to with in 100 yards of him broad sided it still took 6 rounds to put him down but after the first shot he jus humped up and stood there . A lot of my coyote are shot behind the shoulder and they just go stiff legged and fall over with it . But then I have taught myself to rely on and trust it because I carried it in my truck all of the time and didn't bring it in the house every day as I didn't with all the other things that I used every day . It saved time both at the beginning and end of the day and I didn't forget some thing I might need .
In the service we didn't get a lot of different rifles to choose from and when I was a kid I only had two to choose from a 22 long rifle Remington and an old Winchester 30-06 . I still have and use a model 70 30-06 but have other bullets then the issued 175 grain bullets . When I first started control work I used my 30-06 and a 223 . I tried the Remington 17 cal and found it not to be to my liking . I tried the 22-250 and it really wasn't what I wanted nor was the 243 , the 300 savage wasn't it either . I have used even the 7.62x39 AK 47 not what I wanted but worked . I even shot a 25-06 till the barrel wouldn't group well . A lot of them could be made accurate but just didn't do what I wanted them to . When I got to loading for the 223 and found that I was happy with what it did for me I pretty much just stayed with it . When your paid per coyote you don't want to have to hunt them down again after the first time . Yep it's fun to shoot other calibers and a lot of them kill coyote just fine I just got comfortable with trusted and enjoyed my 223 as well as loading for it . As well as dragging the coyote back and putting it in my truck I nor my truck got as messy as with some of the other calibers .
