I headed out of Williston at 7:35 a.m. Traffic wasn’t too bad and all four lanes of Highway 2 & 85 west of town were open, for once. I arrived at the spot I wanted to park my pickup at 8:08 a.m. I got out my tight neck .17 Remington for which I have worked up a load of N-540 for use with the 30 gr. T-000 Nagel flat base hollow point bullets coated with hBN. I got out my silencer and screwed it onto the barrel and left the pickup at 8:28 a.m. It was about 37º and there was hardly a breath of wind. I planned on calling in three spots in this big valley I was heading into.
As I got close to my first calling stand I noticed a magpie fly off toward the SW. I slowed way down and began creeping along at a snail’s pace in case there was a coyote where that magpie had come from. I moved my backpack over to my left shoulder, took my rifle off my shoulder, opened the rear cover on my scope and inched forward. Sure enough, a coyote came into view walking along a bank to the WSW of me. He seemed to know something was amiss, but wasn’t running. He was just walking and looking back as he moved along. I stopped, put my backpack down on the ground, kneeled down and rested my left elbow on my knee, pushed the safety off and got the coyote in the scope and did some lip squeaks. The coyote stopped broadside to me and looked my way as I squeezed off the shot. He spun around one complete circle which took him off the top of the bank and then started up the bank and keeled over—dead right there. He had moved about 10 feet from the spot he was standing at when I shot him. I got so excited I didn’t bother to do any wounded coyote yelps, but didn’t see any other coyotes either.
I snapped some photos from where I took the shot and got my range finder out to scope out the distance. It was 115 yards from me to the coyote.
With a 26" heavy barrel on the rifle and the silencer on the end of the barrel, it isn’t exactly easy to get a steady hold. I was lucky I went to one knee and rested my elbow on that knee because that gave me a very steady hold. The bullet hit right behind his left front shoulder and when I picked him up I could hear sloshing sounds. The bullet did not exit and must have created massive damage in his heart and lungs. The entrance hole looked even smaller than the .172" diameter of the 30 gr. T-000 Nagel bullet.
He was well furred and the guard hairs on his back were really nice. I’ll hang him up outside to cool him down and let him bleed out tonight and then pop him into my chest freezer for safe-keeping until the fur buyer comes to town.
Here’s the obligatory hero photo.
I stashed the coyote in the shade of a steep clay bank and some trees and headed west. I called in three places and got no takers. I was over two and a half miles from my pickup at my last stand and it was about 11:30 a.m. when I started walking back. The wind had picked up a little bit but it was still OK for calling. It took me 30 minutes to get back to where I had stashed the coyote and another 13 minutes to haul the big beast on an upward journey along a wooded draw. By the time I got him up to the top, I figured he must weigh 40 pounds, but he only tipped the scale at 30 pounds when I weighed him on my little hanging scale in my garage.
I drove to the rancher’s home who has land around here and has given me permission to call coyotes. I talked to him a bit and thanked him for giving me permission to hunt coyotes. Then I drove to the home of the rancher who owns the land I shot the coyote on this morning and thanked him for letting me hunt. His wife had baked fresh buns and he insisted that I have one. He didn’t have to ask me twice!!! A freshly baked bun, a little butter, some grape jelly, and a piece of summer sausage was what I needed after all the walking and the long haul pulling that big coyote up the hill.
I left the rancher’s house and headed SW of his place and stopped for lunch around 1:00. I needed a nap after lunch so I took a 45 minute snooze. I left the pickup at 2:36 to continue trying to call a coyote or two. Nothing came in on my next stand, but I noticed some dirt on the outer opening of my silencer. I had slipped on a muddy creek bank when walking into a calling stand in the morning and fell against a clay bank but didn’t realize the muzzle had hit the clay bank. I took the silencer off and there was some dirt in the end of the barrel too. I decided I needed to run a couple of clean patches through the barrel and considered myself lucky that I hadn’t called any coyote to shoot at or I might have had a split barrel or something worse!!!
I got the dirt cleaned out and got a drink of water and headed out to the west of the pickup. The wind had been blowing from the SW, but had switched so now it was coming from the WNW. I walked in to the NW about 3/4 of a mile and called, but there were no takers. I walked about 3/4 of a mile to the SW and called for about 25 minutes and called in a couple of magpies. I headed back to the pickup and drove about 3 miles east and 2 miles north of there to make one last stand. My last stand was dry too, except for four magpies that came swooping in and a couple of cows and two calves that seemed curious about what was making all the screaming rabbit and bird sounds.
It was a good day, even though I only bagged one coyote.
