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Coyote from the past.

Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2011 5:29 am
by Melvin Eades
I recently found some pictures from the past and came across some of a coyote I had shot back in Dec. of 2001.

It was the three day muzzle loader deer season and I was sitting in a stand over looking a new wheat field when I saw a pair of coyotes come through the field entrance and walk down the field road. They did this three mornings in a row just as it was getting light. I had the following day off so I took my Ruger M77 in .220 Swift and set up well before first light in a brush pile about 50 yards from the field entrance.

Just as it was starting to get light enough to see, the coyotes walked down the main road and turned into the field entrance. They looked right at me and started running. I lead the first coyote and took a shot at about 80 yards to see the coyote go rolling. The other coyote took off in the direction of a house so I let it go. I looked back at the first coyote and it lay dead, I thought. I looked back in the direction from where they came from to see if any more were coming and when I looked back at the dead coyote, it was gone.

I walked over to where the coyote had laid and found where blood had soaked the ground. I measured 21 feet from where the coyote laid to where it's knee had hit the ground when I shot it.

I tracked the coyote about 100 yards to a CRP field and found very little blood. The blood I did find was on the weed stems and I had to look hard to find that because the sun was now up and the frost on the weeds was melting. I lost the trail and went home. I was telling my son Lucas about the hunt and said let's go back out there and I'll show you where it took place.

We were looking the area over when Lucas said "look dad" and was holding up the front part of the coyote's bottom jaw.

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Seeing that, I told Lucas we were going to track down this coyote and put him out of his misery. We went back home and I got my 12 ga. loaded with #4 buck and Lucas got his .243. We went back and I had Lucas go to the lower end on the draw that the coyote had been heading and I was going to see if I could pick up the blood trail now that the weeds had dried off.

I gave Lucas time to get in position and started tracking where I left off earlier. I found very little blood and it took about a half hour to go about 100 yards. I slowly worked my way up to where I could see into the draw when I caught some movement about 40 yards away. It was the coyote laying in the grass and his head was swaying side to side. I shot and finished him off. I felt sorry for the coyote when I saw the jaw shot off and his tounge hanging out of his throat about six inches. I dragged it back to show Lucas and then took a few pictures. I had hit the coyote at the hinge of it's jaw, the picture shows the exit side.

The time stamp on the pictures is not correct.

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Re: Coyote from the past.

Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2011 6:29 pm
by ryutzy
Wow! That's an interesting story--thanks for sharing. I also shot part of the jaw off a coyote with my 7MM in 09. It was an angled to me head on shot. The bullet hit the jaw and proceeded on to take a good portion of her lower left shoulder off. I had to shoot her the 2nd time as my first shot didn't hit any vitals, although she wouldnt have lasted long due to massive blood loss.

Re: Coyote from the past.

Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 2:04 pm
by Silverfox
Melvin--GREAT STORY!!! I'm sure glad you went back out and dispatched that coyote.

I hit a coyote in the bottom jaw one time, but it didn't run away, it began howling and spinning in circles. I was able to put a shot through the heart/lung area and put it down so I didn't have to do any tracking.

Re: Coyote from the past.

Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 3:51 pm
by Rick in Oregon
+ One on the great story Melvin! You did a good deed by following up on that boy.

I've got a few pics of a similar incident when I was driving out of an alfalfa patch after a day of shooting ground squirrels, and we spotted a young juvinile coyote peeking straight at us at his 'eye-level' over the crop at about 225 yards. He actually was curious enough to give me time to stop the truck, get into the back to retrieve my M700 223 Acklely, dig out ammo and load a single round of 50gr BT at 3,700 fps, aim off the rear quarter of the truck and smack the silly dog right square in the nose!

It was not pretty. :wink: