I thought the readers might be interested in the "background" of the Kills. The red fox was killed using a Bee's O'Brien Super Birdie mouth call. It came in on a string after about 2 minutes of calling. He never stopped until the 17 hornet struck him in the head at about 50 yards. I was using one of Ernie Wilsons headlights and one of his Carnivore shoot lights. The gun was sitting on a Tri X shooting rest. As stated prior, I was using a Savage 17 hornet with factory Hornady 20 gr ammo.
I made a second set at a diffrent location using what I considered red fox bird distress sounds. After about 20 minutes of no eyes, I gave up on any red fox coming in. I knew I was in an area that held coyotes, so I turned on the Fox Pro and left out a female coyote submissive howel. I immediately got a howel back from about 150 yards out. I waited for about 10 minutes, scanning with a red light the entire time. After no further response, I sounded off with some female whimpers for about 10 seconds.....and waited. About another 10 minutes went by and I left out another female submissive howel from the Fox Pro. Immediately after that last howel, I picked up the eyes of a coyote about 80 yards away. I was hunting a powerline, and the yote was inside the woods about 30 yards standing at an angle quartering towards me. I turned on the Carnivore Shoot light, looked throught the Leupold VX II and had no problems identifying my target as a coyote. The shot wasn't ideal due to all the thick brush from the edge of the powerline, but it was the only one I had. It looked like I had a small hole I could shoot through, but I knew it was going to be tight. Still using the Savage 17 hornet, I knew I had to take a head shot. I leveled the cross heirs right between his eyes and squeezed. The gun went off, and the front of the gun filled with a cloud of smoke.....The suspense was killing me. It seemed like an eturnity until the smoke finally cleared. When it did, I looked through the scope again, and comfirmed......Coyote Down! It was a perfect head shot. The female coyote never took a step. She dropped in her tracks and never knew what hit her.
Many thanks to our sponsors, Bee's O'Brien and Ernie Wilson for the hunting gear and calls I used to make this hunt a success.
