Coyote John

A recent blog by Desert Rat “Predators Killing Pets” reminded me of an incident I had a couple of years ago.

I was sitting out on the patio cleaning my Ruger 1B (http://www.rugerfirearms.com/index.html) when I heard all this screaming and yelling coming from the neighbors backyard.  They are good neighbors, mind their own business, and are just very nice people.  The only drawback is that she is kinda opposed to hunting, not a bleeding heart type and not vocal about it, but she is opposed to it.  She also raises chickens, ducks, and has three little dogs, very little dogs.  I joke with her all the time that I would like to use them for catfish bait, she doesn’t think it’s funny.  Anyhow I look over to see what all the screaming is about and to my surprise I see a coyote trotting out of her backyard headed in my general direction but going up the hillside, not running hard, just kind of an easy trot.  Now I’m not surprised to see a coyote as they visit our place on a fairly regular basis, but what surprised me was this this one had a little white mutt clamped firmly in his jaws.  I quickly slapped a 117 grain 25.06 Sierra Game King BTSP (http://sierrabullets.com) round into the chamber and placed the crosshair of my Weaver GrandSlam 6-20×40 (http://weaveroptics.com) on an opening I thought he would be coming through.  As he came through I touched off a round thinking that if nothing else it would cause him to drop the dog and run off.  Much to my surprise he did drop the dog as he tumbled ass over teakettle dead as a doornail.  When I finally got to the dog he was covered in blood and had several deep puncture wounds and I’m thinking he isn’t going to make it, should I just him out of his misery.  I look back down the hillside and see our neighbor running up toward us, stumbling and crying for her little dog.  She is in a real frenzy by the time she reaches us and wants to get the dog to the vet in a hurry.  I was going to tell her that the poor thing didn’t have a snowballs chance in hell but thought better of it.  We picked up the poor ragged, bloody little thing and headed to the vets office.  Well that was about two years ago and that pesky little mutt is still around, much to my surprise.  She still thanks me every chance she gets and has told me on several times how much she appreciated me saving her dogs life - then she added “Did you really have to kill the coyote, couldn’t you just have scared him into dropping my dog.”  Some people just don’t get it.