Where I hunt here in west central Indiana we have large open corn and soybean fields dotted with small wooded thickets and wooded drainage ditches or creek bottoms. I set up in fencerows downwind of these pockets of cover. I try to get open ground between my stand and the cover. Ideally I can get within 100 yards of the cover but there are some spots that I can only get within 2 or 3 hundred yards of the cover. Often times coyotes will appear along the edges of the thickets and just stand there looking. They will either commit to the call and come into the open fields or they will turn and leave. When I see one offering a standing shot I'll take it. I don't have the time to be adjusting scopes and such, I have to shoot now or risk the coyote leaving. Though most of the time I'm getting shots of just over 100 yards, I often get shots of over 200 yards. Because of that I hunt with a .22-250 or a .243 most of the time.
It's also common for me to see a coyote coming across open fields from a thicket or fencerow I'm not even calling toward. In those cases I'll have shot oppurtunities out to over 500 yards. Seldom do these coyotes hang up way out there so I just let them come. They'll usually come to the edge of the cover I'm targeting and stop and look. I'll try to kill them there rather than wait on them to commit to the call. When they stop way out there and act disinterested though I'll take that long poke. Again I don't want to be screwing around with target knobs on a scope or be adjusting my holdover. A .223 rifle is just too marginal powerwise to depend on for these longrange oppurtunities. I've tried them, and they just produce spinners and run offs. I enjoy punching groundhogs and paper with my .223's but give me a .22-250 or a .243 for coyotes..
Coyote 6974
Coyote 6974
