I was 50 yards from my hide when
I looked to my right and to the west as I saw him. He was less than 80 yards away. His head was in a bush and he was intent on something therein. I carefully took off my pack and as I put it down I went down with it. Slowly and smoothly the 6.5-284 settled on the pack and the safe was off. The cross hairs were on his right shoulder and that was when the pain entered my brain like a sledgeham- mer. It felt as though both my legs were on fire. That’s because in my hurry to knock the stuffings out of this coyote I had laid down in a huge, well-cultivated patch of cactus. Ouch, ouch, ouch and several other adjectives – those too were four letter words. I hurt so bad that I had to let the coyote go to try to save myself from the hundreds of cactus stickers now well embedded in both legs right up to my groin. As I righted myself large clumps of cactus were stuck to my pants, so I did what anyone would have done. I dropped down right there and spent the next two hours pulling cactus out of both legs and knees. Fortunately, in my pack I have one of those Swiss Army knives that has every tool known to man, including
a small tweezers. I was able to remove most of the stickers ... I thought. That was until I slid into my sleeping bag and all the ones that are so tiny and clear rubbed on the inside of the bag. Not the most restful night’s sleep I ever had. I hunted in the wind on the morn-
ing of the 26th and took down camp and started off the mountain at about 10:00 that morning. I was about four miles from my campsite driving along a creek bottom when he started across an open- ing at about a hundred yards. I had the Remington VSSF-II in the front seat with me and immediately exited the truck and ran around the front and got the Harris bipod on the hood. Keep in mind I am on a two-track road in the middle of nowhere, with no one else around. By now he was at about 200 yards go- ing up a very steep hillside at a dead run. I waited for him to stop, as coyotes often do. However, this big dog had not gotten that memo and wasn’t slowing down at all. My first shot missed him on the right side by 2 inches; a 20 mile per hour wind was not helping. The second shot was even farther right and a little low. Between those two shots the wind
had come up even more and a gust had blown through. By now he was about to go over a ridgeline into another gully. I fired my third shot and it impacted on the far hillside still to the right. I was having trouble getting far enough into the wind. I waited for him to appear on the far hillside and while I waited I looked closely at the grass on that hillside and gestimated the wind speed there at 30 miles an hour, as the grass was laid over. Still running straight away, he ap- peared on the far hillside at 422 yards. He rounded an evergreen bush and stopped. I fired and he was down, then up ... and he just sat there looking at me. The 22-250 was now out of shells. I left it sitting on the hood, ran to the back of the Suburban, and opened the back door. After what seemed an hour and a half I got the 6.5-284 out of its case and ran to the front of the truck. Without hesitation I laid it on the hood. Well, as Murphy would have it the
bipod on this gun wasn’t tall enough to get enough elevation to get a shot at the coyote, who by this time is not only wounded but laughing his tail off watch- ing me. I sprinted back to my trailer and
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