marineimaging
LSB Member
I was visiting my daughter and son-in-law in Crockett area. We went hunting at night on private property for rabbit and nuisance beaver so all I had was a .22 mag. Saw a coyote in the spotlight on a ridge were we knew some black angus were about to drop their calves. Figured it knew it and was going to wait for one to drop so I laid my Savage across the hood and popped it once. It was like a carnival gallery target and turned 180 degrees so I hit it again. Repeated the turn again so I hit it again wondering why the .22 magnum wasn't putting it down. The 4th shot it disappeared out of the light so we took our headlamps and took off to see if we could find it. After crossing a creek (where we were looking for the beavers) and getting to the other side I have to admit that in the light I had grossly misjudged the distance because the coyote was twice the size I expected. When we got to the top of the ridge I started one way and my buds went the other. My son-in-law found the yote laying about 10-15 yards off of where we last saw it. All 4 shots had hit, but low to where I was shooting. As we walked back I paced it off to almost 150 yards as the bullet flies. I had set the scope at 75 yards because I didn't want to use the .22 any further away on anything. That said I started paying closer attention to judging distance at night under a Q-Beam. No matter what it is if I go hunting I want to make a clean kill without causing the critter to suffer just because I couldn't do a better job with the tools I have.
