in southern Michigan, I told her that we probably would not see much but we would give it a try. So one late winter morning we decided to go. She did not have a rifle so, wanting to impress her, I pulled out my Bushmaster AR-15 and handed it to her. As everyone knows, ARs have a built in CDI factor (chicks dig it). She has done some shooting but was not really very experienced. She had shot the AR a few times, mostly just emptying a few 30-round magazines as fast as she could so she was somewhat familiar with the gun. Thinking that Gail would be the shooter and I would not be getting a shot, I just grabbed a CZ 17 HMR that I had sitting out in my shop. I should have known better.
We went out behind my house.
The area is really thick with some wooded ridges, some thick swamps with a creek splitting the property. The snow had recently melted, flooding the creek bottom. The water had receded, leaving the lowland really muddy. With all the mud we did not want to sit down in it so we just stood next to a couple of the larger trees. I called for about five or six minutes when I caught movement
about 80 yards away. A little red fox was working its way toward us. Fox season was closed so I whispered to Gail not to shoot. Well, this little fox came into about 20 yards or so and hung around for three or four minutes. It was cool as heck. Could have smoked him a dozen times. It’s funny how critters act when you have no intention of shooting them. It is almost as if they know they are in no danger.
No coyote showed up so after the fox left we did the same. We went to another piece of property I owned at the time. This place was an open field, may- be six acres with large oak and cherry trees around the perimeter. Around the high ground was hundreds of acres of cattails, swamp brush, soft maples, just a thick mess. Years prior, I had built an 8’x8’ deck 16’ off the ground. I had built it to watch deer from. Located just inside the trees, I could sneak in, walk up the stairs to the deck, and watch deer out in the field, then sneak out. They rarely knew I was there. Well, Gail and I slipped in and sat down on the plastic lawn chairs that were on the deck. Gail rested the rifle
on the railing and we got ready. Not really expecting much, I laid into the Crit’R•Call, blowing only two short series of screams. In about a minute, out bounds a coyote. I could not believe it. It loped to the center of the field and
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