Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Coyote in the eye

My 95 year old uncle died about a month ago. I figured I might do a bit of coyote calling on his place and then see my aunt. He has a barn on the end of a field. It hasn't been used in 20 or more years, Overgrown with rusting equipment scattered around. I've nailed a few coyotes from that spot over the years and more than a few woodchucks.

So I sat in my spot there, back against a post for stability. Carrying my AR-15 with its Windham varmint exterminator barrel. I had chambered the rifle before I left the truck so I sat and folded down the bi-pod legs. I sat quiet for 20 minutes or so. I only had two mouth calls, a rabbit in distress and a howler.

On the far side of the field, looking down the edge, there is a fair size patch of foxtail. The field was winter wheat the sowed with late beans. So I gave the distress call a single short blast, just one. I saw movement in that foxtail. I eased the scope onto it and saw the head and neck of a coyote looking intensely in my direction. I know that field is 230 yards long in that direction, and the rifle is zero at 200 yards, so I laid the crosshair right on top of its head. Then I sent that 55 grain varmint nightmare on its way. That load with 24.8 grains of H335 does in the .5 region at 100 yards all day.

That coyote just disappeared. No thrashing or twitching, nothing. I really thought I missed, but I had to know. I walked to it. There in that foxtail lay the coyote. That bullet had hit it in the right eye and blew the back of the skull out. She was a surprisingly young looking female, didn't seem like much more than a half grown pup.

That's one that won't be chewing on deer fawns next spring.

Hahaha!

Dude...it's okay to just go ahead and say you like killing coyotes.


No need to rationalize it.


Nice shot anyway.

2+ change,nice poke on a yote

No education given!

Careful! yer gonna poke an eye out with that thing!

I wonder if it saw the bullet?

Great Campfire story.

Not a coyote but a jackrabbit. Back when I was still living in Nevada, my buddy and I use night hunt jackrabbits, bag them and freeze them, 10 to a bag. Local trappers would pay $10 a bag during the winter.

One night we were out and we caught a rabbit in the headlights. The truck was at just the right angle for me to take the shot. The rabbits eye glowed like diamond in the headlights. Told my buddy I'd take him in that eye. He said five bucks says you don't. Gun was a Super Blackhawk running 22.0 gr. 2400 and Elmer's bullet. I'd ben shooting it a lot for a while and knew I could at least make a head shot at 100 yards as long as I had a steady rest. Buddy turns off the motor and I take the shot.That bunny started flopping around all over the place and finally stopped. We went over to pick up the rabbit to ad to the bag and damned if that bullet did not only hit the eye, it took out the other eye on the way out. Told my buddy I got both eye and you owe me ten bucks for both eyes. Probably the best shot I've ever taken with a handgun. Buddy did pay the fiver but wouldn't go for the ten.
PJ

Nice shooting, Armednfree.

PJ, Ole Elmer would have been proud....that's akin to his killing five running Jackrabbits with one shot at 100 yards! LOL

Yep, that guy was so full of sheit. And, a lot of guys here believe everything he said.

Shot a small buck on a deer drive while hunting with my B-I-L and his family. It was loping through thick stuff heading across a narrow woods road. I swung my rifle with him like a bird gun and touched it off when he hit the road. The buck didn't even make it across the road. When I walked up to it, there seemed to be no bullet hole. I finally noticed its eye was blood shot and there was a half moon bite out of the lower eye lid. When I picked up his head, I found the off side pretty much missing and the antlers pretty loosey-goosey. Of course, I told my B-I-L that I was aiming for his eye....

Another quirky thing about that shot was that, as soon as it was made, my legs locked up on me. It took me several minutes before I could take a single step to check out the deer. I had killed scores of deer before then, and scores more since but that is the only time something like that has happened. Some of those kills were made under much more dramatic circumstances and on much bigger deer, but no freeze or lockup! No idea why that one impacted me that way.

What was the last thing that went through that yotes mind? A nightmare.

Ok so who can get one in the left nostril?

I've shot 10'000 of coyotes calling over the years there's two that I poke them not leaving a blow out.....one at the house in the UP we were going to leave in the morning so I figured I would try some calling before leaving.....went to the Bear Blind just at day light gave a couple calls over sitting a half hour....looked out the side window then the front and in comes a white coyote sits at around 150 yard facing me put the cross hairs a little below the face and pulled the trigger down it went....walk out to pick it up the jaw was broken and no other mark on it what I had done the coyote yawned and I put the bullet in its mouthing down its through the bullet went....
Second coyote was a all black one with a white star on its chest called it at the Farm across the field walking right at me at around 200 yards put the bullet in its right eye it dropped at the shot...bullet never exited and made a very nice full mount....

Shot and killed a young fork horn whitetail buck several years ago. Climbed down from my tree stand and walked over to tag it saw that my bullet (150 grain 30/06) struck it mid-neck and exited but also saw that it's right eye ball was missing leaving just a fresh bloody eye socket. Wondering if my bullet might've came apart and somehow a piece of it could've traveled that far through neck muscle and took out the eye...?

As I went to attach my tag to one of it's antlers I noticed a tiny bit of blood at the base of it's skull directly behind the animal's empty eye socket. Brushed the fur back and looked closer and saw what looked like a entrance bullet hole. Since I only shot the one round to the neck dropping the deer I knew it wasn't mine.

Found out later that a young boy hunting several hundred yards away on his granddads farm had shot the same deer before me. He said he dozed off, woke up and saw the little buck eating fallen acorns beneath the tree he was in and shot the deer in the back of the head(.44 magnum out of a Ruger carbine) and down it went.

Boy said he climbed down out of tree, holding animal's head up by antlers, admiring his first ever deer kill, when all of a sudden it comes back to life, shakes lose, runs off into the woods, ending up getting shot and put down for good by me on next property over.

His bullet entered right at the rear base of deer's skull, traveled beneath the brain pan, exited the eye socket, and apparently only knocking deer unconscious temporarily.

(I gave the boy the fork horn rack from the deer so he could have the memory.)

I was deer hunting about ten years ago and I was watching over a green field that’s right at 200 yards long. There’s a little rise on the right side of the field about 100 yards out and a lower spot at around 150 or so.

That day I was hunting with a Winchester 1885, 38/55 zeroed for 150 yards shooting a Hornady 220 FP.

Late in the afternoon a coyote popped out at the end of the field on the left side trotting L-R. I gave him a “WOOF” and he stopped, looking toward me. Then he started toward me and he disappeared behind the little rise. When he reappeared he stopped with just his head visible trying to figure out what it had heard.

By the time he stopped, I had my rifle up. I just aimed at his head figuring if he was a little farther than I thought the bullet would hit him in the chest. He dropped at the shot. I left him there ‘til dark hoping to see a good deer. No luck.

I walked out to get the ‘yote, checked the body to see where the shot hit and initially didn’t see any blood. I looked closer and found a 1/4” bullet hole perfectly centered between the eyes and the exit at the back of the head was about 1/2”. I guess the bullet didn’t meet enough resistance to expand fully.

Dunno if Elmer said that or not but somehow, I wouldn't was to call him a liar, not to his face. My shot was however a shot of a lifetime. Probably, given the chance I'd miss the whole damn rabbit. I have shot the .44 in anything for over a year and was too damn shaky to even get a group. However, that rabbit was the unlucky target and the witness is still alive to back me up. I'd be the first to admit that os was probably the luckiest shot I've ever taken. But then again, shoot a gun long enough and lucky shots start happening more often. Back then I was shooting probably 50 or more rounds of full power .44 Mag. ammo a day. Shoot them up, go home and reload them and shoot them up the next day whenever that rotating shift schedule allowed. On day shift a bit before work and again a bit on the way hose. Swing shift not much during the afternoon heat but some on the way home. Same with the graveyard shift. Try a bit on the way to work and more on the way home. Rather that take the paved road to work I took a back trail two track and drove slowly so as to pot off an unlucky jackrabbit or two. When coyote hides were bring in cash money I'd stop off after the midnight shift and try calling a "yote or two. Not always successful but every once in a while fortune smiled on me. I do miss those days.
PJ

Actually, I'd rather kill a coyote than most other critters, including a buck. I prefer to hunt them during the day even though I know I'd get more at night with night vision.

My cousin and I were stalking a couple of does years ago, I was using an SKS with some ballistic tips in the magazine. So two does jump up in front of us, and bounded up a steep hill away from us. I threw up the rifle, following the bigger doe up the hill, aiming between the shoulders. As she crest the hill, I fired. She was in mid jump, and dropped out of sight at the shot.

We went to look and found her where she had fallen. My bullet had hit at the base of her skull as she was dropping at the end of a jump when I fired. The top of the head was gone from ear to ear, and the cavity was empty. My cousin thought then, and still does, that I shot a running deer in the back of the head at 75 yards and a steep angle, with an SKS, on purpose. I did shoot her on purpose, but the head shot was more the work of gravity than any outrageous level of skill on my part.