Coyote shakes off kill shot

I’ll preface this with the fact that I don’t hunt with thermal scopes (my state doesn’t allow it), but stuff like this is why I absolutely despise low magnification optics. It doesn’t matter if you’re hunting predators or big game, “hitting” an animal simply isn’t good enough. You need to be able to place the shot at a specific location on the animal, and when your crosshairs (or dot, in this situation) is as big as the entire animal, placing the shot on a specific spot is physically impossible.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those people who will look down on a hunter for making an animal suffer. I hunt coyotes to keep numbers in check for a couple of different ranchers. The coyotes I kill don’t think twice about making a calf suffer by eating the stomach out of it while the calf is still alive, so I don’t have a lot of sympathy for them. On the other hand, a coyote getting up and running off should be 100% expected when the dot in your scope covers 90% of the coyote you’re shooting at. Either run a higher magnification, or thank your lucky stars that you hit that coyote at all. Your mileage may vary…
 
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Everything that came off the coyote looked to only go upwards and it was violently, it also looked to all fly rearward so I would guess the coyote was at a bit of an angle. I still think the bullet came apart and most the fragments glanced up off the spine(little ramp area of bone from top of rips to top of spine) and carried pieces of coyote with it. I havent shot 22 Creed but that was explosive for .224.

Ive seen gut shots have nasty effects and exits but not throwing hide 20ft in the air kind of exit with .224 bullets, thats why I question that. Same with hit high over the spine, is that enough coyote to hit and throw pieces 20ft vertical? If I make bad shots its normally low, I have hit a fox very high before and a couple laying spinning coyotes and nothing flew off vertically. I think most of the bullet went vertical to get that effect from.224....

It would be interesting to know if the pieces of coyote that came off were far behind the coyote or more nearby and thrown straight up, they sure are flying but it doesnt look like they are flying away all that far.
 
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Jeremy P said:
I’ll preface this with the fact that I don’t hunt with thermal scopes (my state doesn’t allow it), but stuff like this is why I absolutely despise low magnification optics. It doesn’t matter if you’re hunting predators or big game, “hitting” and animal simply isn’t good enough. You need to be able to place the shot at a specific location on the animal, and when your crosshairs (or dot, in this situation) is as big as the entire animal, placing the shot on a specific spot is physically impossible.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those people who will look down on a hunter for making an animal suffer. I hunt coyotes to keep numbers in check for a couple of different ranchers. The coyotes I kill don’t think twice about making a calf suffer by eating the stomach out of a it while the calf is still alive, so I don’t have a lot of sympathy for them. On the other hand, a coyote getting up and running off should be 100% expected when the dot in your scope covers 90% of the coyote you’re shooting at. Either run a higher magnification, or thank your lucky stars that you hit that coyote at all. Your mileage may vary…
Click to expand...

Ever watched boar hunting in Europe? Low magnification and red dots are the norm.
 
Jeremy P said:
I’ll preface this with the fact that I don’t hunt with thermal scopes (my state doesn’t allow it), but stuff like this is why I absolutely despise low magnification optics. It doesn’t matter if you’re hunting predators or big game, “hitting” and animal simply isn’t good enough. You need to be able to place the shot at a specific location on the animal, and when your crosshairs (or dot, in this situation) is as big as the entire animal, placing the shot on a specific spot is physically impossible.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those people who will look down on a hunter for making an animal suffer. I hunt coyotes to keep numbers in check for a couple of different ranchers. The coyotes I kill don’t think twice about making a calf suffer by eating the stomach out of a it while the calf is still alive, so I don’t have a lot of sympathy for them. On the other hand, a coyote getting up and running off should be 100% expected when the dot in your scope covers 90% of the coyote you’re shooting at. Either run a higher magnification, or thank your lucky stars that you hit that coyote at all. Your mileage may vary…
Click to expand...
You're not wrong, but one thing the video doesn't show is that I run picture-in-picture (PIP). The PIP box is 2x whatever the main picture is and has a finer aiming crosshair, which unless they're really close, I almost always use for shooting. So while the video shows the aiming point to cover most of the coyote, the PIP I'm using to aim is more precise. However, I need to get better at zooming in for those longer shots. It's not easy on my scope because you have to find the right button in the dark with gloves on, and if you hit the button next to it, (which is the same size and shape), you get the menu in your face. The next thermal scope I buy will have an LRF and a more intuitive zoom control.
 
johral said:
Ever watched boar hunting in Europe? Low magnification and red dots are the norm.
Click to expand...
I have a love-hate relationship with my 1-4x VXR. Great scope but night coyote hunting is just not ideal, it really does take a lot of focus to keep a glowing dot centered on a small animal, especially a moving animal. It could even be more of a reticle issue, maybe a smaller finer aiming point would take care of the problem and magnification not be needed but focusing on a big reticle on small dog(especially at night) you arent just looking at the animal and reticle but focusing on the top of the coyote, then bottom and front and rear trying to make sure that dot is centered on the animal and not just the dot covering part of the animal.

Hogs are a bit larger and if youre in the daylight your eyes and brain have more to work with, you can see better and make more sense of it.

Im eyeballing a VX6HD 3-18x, that would be an improvement and likely never even turned over 9x when hunting.
 
Yeah, I think you guys have figured it out. listen @suppressYourself, just because you kill more coyotes... on video.... than anyone else in the comments section, you really don't know what you're doing, and you should alter your methods. We don't care how many hundreds of videos of dead coyotes you produce, we have some advice for you.
 
When THOUSANDS of hunters shoot at coyote day and night in an endless variety of weather conditions and environmental habitats the outcome can result in success or failure. Failure can start conversations about equipment(scopes,firearms,clothing,etc.) cartridge, bullets. With increasing availability of recording devices(built into optics or not) more videos are presented for viewing, only adds to the conversations. Just the amount of threads on bullets used or shouldn't be used for coyote is incredible. EVERYONE will occasionally fail to recover an animal that was shot whether gun/bow/sling shot,air rifle, thrown rock/stick. The chance of it happening increases the more shots you take. It's a 4" target on coyote for best outcome, do your best.
 
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