the impactzone
New member
Went down to visit my friend Diedra (name official changed to DEAD-RA for the killer that she is) for a night of coyote and hog hunting. The wind was blowing 17-25 but I had driven 2 hrs so what the [beeep], give it a shot I have done bad on perfect nights and we did have a ¼ moon and cool temps Ideal for top end NV gear and thermal. My D760 on a 223 and thermal handheld, her with a D740 on a 6.8 both with torch pro IR’s
First stand around 9PM behind the house where mom says the coyote are keeping he awake at night, we get nothing , second stand behind the house all we get is an armadillo that DEAD-RA takes out with the suppressed 223 DRT at 75 yards then off to the other property we go with the idea we will return and finish the night close to home , the reason she took the shot with my suppressed223 over her 6.8
We figure with the wind we would call on our way in to the property instead of driving to the back spooking anything and again making stands back calling up wind and out, first stand we had a possible coyote back door us with the wind but never showed more than eyes at 150 yards through brush and a slight rise in the land . Second stand nothing,, wind ripping and we are calling wide open property, we make another couple of stands in the open , and switch up the sounds on the alpha dog and hand calls then change up to some of the areas with more cover and again switch up the calls and sequence. Nothing but a skunk that I took a shot at around 200 and had to vibrate the dog off before she found him, (did that once)
On the way out we passed a pipe line right away and I thought we might put the call out 100 yards or so deep in the right away and pull something out in the open from hiding in the brush, it was only 60 yards wide and miles long, I didn’t bother to move the truck and we set up next to it. With both IR’s we could ID anything out to several hundred yards so I left the thermal in the truck. I get back from placing the call down the right away cross wind from us 100 yards. Dead-ra ask where is the thermal?, in the truck I say, she says get it! I have black objects way out there, in the thermal and with the 6x NV we can tell its hogs at 500 + yards, I ask her if she wants to try a sneak on them as we have the wind to our advantage, she says lets call and see what happens.
I start with some pig distress,, “ they are gone shortly after”, I change to rabbit distress and all of a sudden we have coyotes barking and yipping at our back door not 300 yards away, we turn and set up in the other direction again cross wind over the truck that I’m now wising Id had parked 100 yards down the road in the brush line. I switch to TT decoy dog coyote fight, and within 2 minutes Dead-Ra says “ game one” or “here it go’s” I turn to see she has a coyote in full spot of the IR at 150 yards just at the top of a rise in the road, I tell her “I’m on him”, he turns and get a few fast steps when her shot breaks I believe I hear a hit (thump), because if she had shot high I would have heard a crack from the bullet and if she had hit low Id’ have seen dust from the caliche road. The coyote go’s 10 yards and then a 180* never giving me a backup shot (without a suppressor even high end NV will bloom out from the muzzle blast and not allow for a fast second shot) we give it another 10 minutes and go give it a look, all we and the dog find is some signs of intestinal damage. The dog tracks a 100 yards and We figured it best if we will come back in the morning and look in the daylight don’t want her to tangle with a wounded coyote at night.
Well the night is getting long and we had back to the house for a few stands, feeling a little down about the wind and the lack of action for the night
Its close to 3:30 am on our last stand , we are going to call cross wind across a large freshly plowed field of black dirt with heavy woods to the upwind as well as the downwind side 500 yards out, we set up on a corner post with good back cover and with a view upwind along the fence line into the woods with the wind at our back. after about 5 minutes of rabbit and pup distress we pick up a couple of coyotes 300 yards directly downwind of us, they get a quick peek and smell and are gone, never giving us a shot. I tell dead-ra to keep checking our 6: for any cats as they don’t read the wind as much, she ask me if I saw the ringtail cat 20’ behind me, I said no why didn’t you shoot it? She reply’s I thought we were hunting coyotes and bobcats!, I’m thinking fur is fur about now
Man this is starting to look like a bad night of wind, and never getting a brake when all of a sudden the wind dies down to 5mph or less like you had turned a switch off , we had stopped calling and giving it a 15 minute brake , and about ready to call it a night as the house with a warm bed and cold beer are only 500 yards away. When I spot eyes and movment out around 400 + yards, on the black dirt it looks and acts like a coyote in the D760, I alert dead-ra to it and we both get on it with the Ir lights, it sure looks and acted coyote to me but it has now stopped on a patch of caliche (white stone) in the pasture and its really hard to ID but I go with my first instincts and tell dead-ra I’m going to take the shot (her mother had told me when we don’t kill a coyote I can’t come back and options are running out) she says I on him, go for it. Ifigure it to be 400 using the mill dot ret to range, i hold about 1.7 mills high from a 100 yard zero 60 gr V-max out of a 223 and no correction for wind as it has slowed down (or just forgot to hold for wind), and break the shot. Dead-ra says or I should say barks “PHILIP (incert last name) I don’t believe you just did that” ( I felt like a 3rd grade school kid being yelled at by my teacher, the last time I was ever called by my full name) as the coyote falls over like a target in an arcade! I have to look again and see it flat on the ground not a twitch from it. I don’t believe it myself that booger was out there!, we give it a few minutes and I tell her to get on it with her IR and NV and I’ll walk out with the dog to recover, and she can guide me to it.
200 yards later I stop and ask which way? Dead-ra says farther out, another 100 and again I ask she says keep going, I see the dog on the coyote and look back at dead-ra and think crap this is a long shot, by far my longest at night. I pace it off calling out every 100 yards back to her, final count was 410 yards with less than a ¼ moon and it was setting behind the trees. My longest shot ever on a coyote and at night to boot! Man I love my D760 it turned out to be a developed female with a weight of 35 lbs, (the land owner was very happy to have it taken out before the pups hit the ground) we couldn’t find the hit till the next morning, a small entrance right at the base of the neck
Lots of high fives and fist bumping as well as giggles and laughter when I look over with the NV and see a bobcat walking across the pasture 250 yards away just below the fence line, Dead-ra locates it and we are both on it, she tells me to make it stop! I give a blast of rabbit with a hand call it pause and she breaks the shot, the cat jumps and finds the only cover for 300 yards behind the only tree in the pasture, about 5 minutes later it comes out (not to our calling) and continues on its original path and just about as it is to passes out of sight below a rise in the fence line I touch a shot off , we see nothing, and again I had left the thermal in the truck, so off I go to recover it and a few beers as I figure the night is over, we have a toast and more high fives and I go and look for the bobcat, (nothing) butt rabbits in the thermal and the dog has noting
As we sit and discuss the night and our mistakes and set ups I scan the field again , and what do I see but another coyote following the first one’s path, we both have to set our drinks down and scramble for our gear and it makes it off in the deep cover before we can get on it, it is by now 4:30am .
So what do we do? but turn the call on again, scanning the pasture in front and to the sides, after about 10 minutes I look to my far left along the fence line and see a gray fox 25 yards away, and out of a bad habit I developed at some point I hold low and put a round right between his legs as he jumps for the tree line.
Well that ends the night 6 dry stands and 7 on one, 4 coyotes called, one bobcat, a fox and a ringtail cat, we may never leave the yard again!
The next morning after looking for Deidra’s coyote and filling hog feeders we come across a large flock of turkeys in the road
pic taken from out stand under slight zoom, the white pot in the upper left is where the coyote died, the large tree at the fence line is where we spoted the cat
First stand around 9PM behind the house where mom says the coyote are keeping he awake at night, we get nothing , second stand behind the house all we get is an armadillo that DEAD-RA takes out with the suppressed 223 DRT at 75 yards then off to the other property we go with the idea we will return and finish the night close to home , the reason she took the shot with my suppressed223 over her 6.8
We figure with the wind we would call on our way in to the property instead of driving to the back spooking anything and again making stands back calling up wind and out, first stand we had a possible coyote back door us with the wind but never showed more than eyes at 150 yards through brush and a slight rise in the land . Second stand nothing,, wind ripping and we are calling wide open property, we make another couple of stands in the open , and switch up the sounds on the alpha dog and hand calls then change up to some of the areas with more cover and again switch up the calls and sequence. Nothing but a skunk that I took a shot at around 200 and had to vibrate the dog off before she found him, (did that once)
On the way out we passed a pipe line right away and I thought we might put the call out 100 yards or so deep in the right away and pull something out in the open from hiding in the brush, it was only 60 yards wide and miles long, I didn’t bother to move the truck and we set up next to it. With both IR’s we could ID anything out to several hundred yards so I left the thermal in the truck. I get back from placing the call down the right away cross wind from us 100 yards. Dead-ra ask where is the thermal?, in the truck I say, she says get it! I have black objects way out there, in the thermal and with the 6x NV we can tell its hogs at 500 + yards, I ask her if she wants to try a sneak on them as we have the wind to our advantage, she says lets call and see what happens.
I start with some pig distress,, “ they are gone shortly after”, I change to rabbit distress and all of a sudden we have coyotes barking and yipping at our back door not 300 yards away, we turn and set up in the other direction again cross wind over the truck that I’m now wising Id had parked 100 yards down the road in the brush line. I switch to TT decoy dog coyote fight, and within 2 minutes Dead-Ra says “ game one” or “here it go’s” I turn to see she has a coyote in full spot of the IR at 150 yards just at the top of a rise in the road, I tell her “I’m on him”, he turns and get a few fast steps when her shot breaks I believe I hear a hit (thump), because if she had shot high I would have heard a crack from the bullet and if she had hit low Id’ have seen dust from the caliche road. The coyote go’s 10 yards and then a 180* never giving me a backup shot (without a suppressor even high end NV will bloom out from the muzzle blast and not allow for a fast second shot) we give it another 10 minutes and go give it a look, all we and the dog find is some signs of intestinal damage. The dog tracks a 100 yards and We figured it best if we will come back in the morning and look in the daylight don’t want her to tangle with a wounded coyote at night.
Well the night is getting long and we had back to the house for a few stands, feeling a little down about the wind and the lack of action for the night
Its close to 3:30 am on our last stand , we are going to call cross wind across a large freshly plowed field of black dirt with heavy woods to the upwind as well as the downwind side 500 yards out, we set up on a corner post with good back cover and with a view upwind along the fence line into the woods with the wind at our back. after about 5 minutes of rabbit and pup distress we pick up a couple of coyotes 300 yards directly downwind of us, they get a quick peek and smell and are gone, never giving us a shot. I tell dead-ra to keep checking our 6: for any cats as they don’t read the wind as much, she ask me if I saw the ringtail cat 20’ behind me, I said no why didn’t you shoot it? She reply’s I thought we were hunting coyotes and bobcats!, I’m thinking fur is fur about now
Man this is starting to look like a bad night of wind, and never getting a brake when all of a sudden the wind dies down to 5mph or less like you had turned a switch off , we had stopped calling and giving it a 15 minute brake , and about ready to call it a night as the house with a warm bed and cold beer are only 500 yards away. When I spot eyes and movment out around 400 + yards, on the black dirt it looks and acts like a coyote in the D760, I alert dead-ra to it and we both get on it with the Ir lights, it sure looks and acted coyote to me but it has now stopped on a patch of caliche (white stone) in the pasture and its really hard to ID but I go with my first instincts and tell dead-ra I’m going to take the shot (her mother had told me when we don’t kill a coyote I can’t come back and options are running out) she says I on him, go for it. Ifigure it to be 400 using the mill dot ret to range, i hold about 1.7 mills high from a 100 yard zero 60 gr V-max out of a 223 and no correction for wind as it has slowed down (or just forgot to hold for wind), and break the shot. Dead-ra says or I should say barks “PHILIP (incert last name) I don’t believe you just did that” ( I felt like a 3rd grade school kid being yelled at by my teacher, the last time I was ever called by my full name) as the coyote falls over like a target in an arcade! I have to look again and see it flat on the ground not a twitch from it. I don’t believe it myself that booger was out there!, we give it a few minutes and I tell her to get on it with her IR and NV and I’ll walk out with the dog to recover, and she can guide me to it.
200 yards later I stop and ask which way? Dead-ra says farther out, another 100 and again I ask she says keep going, I see the dog on the coyote and look back at dead-ra and think crap this is a long shot, by far my longest at night. I pace it off calling out every 100 yards back to her, final count was 410 yards with less than a ¼ moon and it was setting behind the trees. My longest shot ever on a coyote and at night to boot! Man I love my D760 it turned out to be a developed female with a weight of 35 lbs, (the land owner was very happy to have it taken out before the pups hit the ground) we couldn’t find the hit till the next morning, a small entrance right at the base of the neck
Lots of high fives and fist bumping as well as giggles and laughter when I look over with the NV and see a bobcat walking across the pasture 250 yards away just below the fence line, Dead-ra locates it and we are both on it, she tells me to make it stop! I give a blast of rabbit with a hand call it pause and she breaks the shot, the cat jumps and finds the only cover for 300 yards behind the only tree in the pasture, about 5 minutes later it comes out (not to our calling) and continues on its original path and just about as it is to passes out of sight below a rise in the fence line I touch a shot off , we see nothing, and again I had left the thermal in the truck, so off I go to recover it and a few beers as I figure the night is over, we have a toast and more high fives and I go and look for the bobcat, (nothing) butt rabbits in the thermal and the dog has noting
As we sit and discuss the night and our mistakes and set ups I scan the field again , and what do I see but another coyote following the first one’s path, we both have to set our drinks down and scramble for our gear and it makes it off in the deep cover before we can get on it, it is by now 4:30am .
So what do we do? but turn the call on again, scanning the pasture in front and to the sides, after about 10 minutes I look to my far left along the fence line and see a gray fox 25 yards away, and out of a bad habit I developed at some point I hold low and put a round right between his legs as he jumps for the tree line.
Well that ends the night 6 dry stands and 7 on one, 4 coyotes called, one bobcat, a fox and a ringtail cat, we may never leave the yard again!
The next morning after looking for Deidra’s coyote and filling hog feeders we come across a large flock of turkeys in the road
pic taken from out stand under slight zoom, the white pot in the upper left is where the coyote died, the large tree at the fence line is where we spoted the cat
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