Yotarunner
Custom Call Maker
For the last few weeks my wife and I have been planning to take our 3 year old daughter remi on her first coyote hunt. The plan was to go early so it wasn't too cold and miserable for her.
Well last weekend was blisteringly hot and this weekend it's already starting to cool down pretty quick. So despite her mother being too sick to come I decided to take Remi out anyways by myself.
For most this would be fairly simple. But for us it's not quite as easy. Remi was born with spastic cerebral palsy which affects her legs from the waist down.( For anyone interested in the finer points of her condition just look up bilateral spastic cerebral palsy). She can stand, crawl and walk with a walker but for coyote hunts I need to carry her in.
Turns out when you factor in walking an extra 40lbs in your arms a whole lot of "close" stands don't seem that close.
Finally I settled on a new to me location that has had coyotes just about every time the farmer or I drive by.
As we arrived the good news was there was coyotes. Bad news was 2 coyotes were already in the field watching us.
With no other options nearby we rolled in anyways.
With coyotes in the field I opted to sneak up against a straw bale instead of going further.
Knowing there is at least 2 more coyotes in the area I ran through a bunch of sounds and despite return howls and a coyote milling around in the distance nothing came into range.
Knowing how 3 year olds patience levels are I was discouraged as I thought she would be getting bored until she leaned over and whispered "this is pretty fun dad"
We tried a little longer and finally at the 20 min mark we admitted defeat.
With no real backup plan we headed home. On the way out I recalled an old spot we could try. When asked if she wanted to try again. "Uhmm okay! We can try"
We hiked in and plopped down in a hollow of the hillside. with a large bush in front of us any coyote going for wind would pop up on the left side making for a good 100 yard shot. She picked grass while I let out a few howls. The answer back was close so after telling Rem to get ready I started up some kiyi's
After the first series "louder dad! Do it louder" so I called louder. After looking back up from watching her reaction I noticed there was a coyote not 70 yards away coming hard from the right. It took a moment to show rem where it was and by the time she saw it and I got the gun into position the coyote had made it into 50 yards and had seen us and was making his way out. Despite my efforts the coyote didn't stop but as I followed it in my scope I spied another set of ears. So when I lost the first one behind the bush I swung on the second and sent a 40gr VMAX from the 222 through the grass.
Lots of excited high fives and hoorays she asked "can we go see it?"
Sadly as we got up to it it was a sickly looking little pup so no close examinations but she still had a pile of fun.
A simple explanation of why we shoot coyotes and some candy on the drive home finished off the awesome evening.
When we got home. "Mom! We shooted a coyote! He's just a little guy! He eats daddies baby cows"
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