Ladobe,,,That is good information...I think I said this morning was dead still that was unusual for Wy. in the winter...I have went over this shot in my head several times, and as I said the first hit was in the back legs... this prevented him from getting off on me...When I thought about the second shot, and I have done it a hundred times, he was slightly quartered away from me...that little bullet may have hit a rib going in, and thus the larger exit hole...I was surprised at the knock down of the bullets and exit...I f I had been going to try this shot knowingly, I would have had my target .300, but I got by this time...
Bigvarmit, your comment about shooting the chuck made me think of how lucky I am to be here...All of my life I have lived with in a short drive or walk of hunting..When I was young, I hunted something almost everyday, from chucks to crows to foxes...something of course game when in season...one of the things that attracted me to Wy. was the large amt. of varmit hunting...by luck, I landed in the Platte Valley..the first 20 years I lived here killing a coyote was an event...due to high fur prices, and predator control efforts...but the slack was taken up with gophers, prairie dogs, and jackrabbits...the varmit shooting was unreal in those days...mostly I shot gophers with various .22 rifles, simply because there were sooooooo many....and the prairie dogs were also good..one rancher offered to buy my .22 shells to shoot on his place, but I told him I would use my .222 and .22-250....they numbers were fantastic...the whitetail dogs are easier shooting than blacktails...and the gophers wow...the first morning I shot the ranch I just mentioned , I took a brick of Remingtion 22 LRHP ammo and some extras, maybe a 100..when I pulled into the fields, it was a drizzly morning in May...not great for gophers, but I figured I would try, I was teaching so only had the weekend...I opened the gate, and drove in I think I had a Remington 521T...I would drive a ways and park and shoot..(it was legal) before I went a quarter mile, I had shot up all my ammo!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I shot thousands of gophers in that field over the next years, but about the time I retired, the forman died suddenly...his step son took over the ranch, now they charge a mere $275 per day to shoot...As for coyotes, in the early 90's the population took off..Some where around the middle 90's we began to kill them regularly, on most hunts a guy could count on seeing some...that has held til now...lucky for me I do have a permit to hunt coyotes on the big ranch with all the gophers...At present my girl friend and I are considering a move to the northern part of the state, more isolated, and hopefully more shooting...good luck...time is short, hunt hard...
