Huachuca Caller
Active member
Called and took this young male coyote Friday evening after work. Did it with a hand call rather than my usual Ecaller.
After moving into position and starting to set up for a stand, several coyotes started howling a few hundred yards away. I was going to set my Shockwave up but after hearing coyotes not far from me I opted to just use the hand call that I keep on the same lanyard as my controller.
After a few minutes of calling I saw movement on the ridge in front of me. I called some more and soon saw a coyote moving towards me. Every time it stopped it was always behind a bush, but it kept coming closer. Eventually it came into the clear about 50 yards in front of me and started moving to the right. I made a yup noise which caused it to stop broad side and look at me.
I hit it with a 50gr Vmax which put it down. Then to my dismay it got up an ran to the left and disappeared into a draw. After looking for blood and finding none I walked down into the draw the coyote disappeared into. Still finding no blood I caught a whiff of skunky coyote smell as I passed down wind of a bush. This led me to find the coyote dead under the bush. It would have been a lot harder to find him if he didn’t smell so bad.
It looks like the bullet hit him high in the lungs but didn’t exit. I suspect the high velocity of the close range hit caused the bullet to over expand and break up without exiting. I was shooting Hornady Superformance which has an advertised muzzle velocity of 4000 fps. It usually drops them in their tracks at 100 plus yards, but I think it might be a little too fast for closer work. It is very accurate out of this rifle though. It’s a Tikka T3 in 22-250 with a 1:14 twist, and it seems to like lighter bullets.
Anyway it all worked out well and it felt pretty good to be able to do it with a simple hand call.
After moving into position and starting to set up for a stand, several coyotes started howling a few hundred yards away. I was going to set my Shockwave up but after hearing coyotes not far from me I opted to just use the hand call that I keep on the same lanyard as my controller.
After a few minutes of calling I saw movement on the ridge in front of me. I called some more and soon saw a coyote moving towards me. Every time it stopped it was always behind a bush, but it kept coming closer. Eventually it came into the clear about 50 yards in front of me and started moving to the right. I made a yup noise which caused it to stop broad side and look at me.
I hit it with a 50gr Vmax which put it down. Then to my dismay it got up an ran to the left and disappeared into a draw. After looking for blood and finding none I walked down into the draw the coyote disappeared into. Still finding no blood I caught a whiff of skunky coyote smell as I passed down wind of a bush. This led me to find the coyote dead under the bush. It would have been a lot harder to find him if he didn’t smell so bad.
It looks like the bullet hit him high in the lungs but didn’t exit. I suspect the high velocity of the close range hit caused the bullet to over expand and break up without exiting. I was shooting Hornady Superformance which has an advertised muzzle velocity of 4000 fps. It usually drops them in their tracks at 100 plus yards, but I think it might be a little too fast for closer work. It is very accurate out of this rifle though. It’s a Tikka T3 in 22-250 with a 1:14 twist, and it seems to like lighter bullets.
Anyway it all worked out well and it felt pretty good to be able to do it with a simple hand call.
