Milestone just before deer this year!
Lots has been changing for me lately, for the good! (Finally!)
Recently found a beautiful someone to pick up the pieces and move on with, so I married her last weekend! In that process, I'm relocating from the Olympic Peninsula to Selah.
A couple weekends ago (I've been too insanely busy to post) I took my two sons out to check the zeros of our deer guns, the day before we were to drive to deer camp. First time I've been out, here in Selah. There's a very well known backroad here, so I headed up it.
It was getting late in the day so I just found the first turn-off in that road and followed it. Looking for a simple spot to shoot a few times at 100, just to make sure the guns were on. Lo and behold, first spot I turn into ended in 300 yards with shooting benches and marked ranges. Perfect established place to shoot.
I had promised the boys we'd do a coyote stand before we shot, and I didn't have time to find a separate location, so we just hiked through the heavily used shooting area, and off to the side for a few hundred yards, found a lone sage bush in the open grassy plain and set up.
I set myself to the left, covering down and back to the shooting area, I set my younger son David to the center, looking down and right, and I set my older son Alex to the right, looking right, and up behind us.
I started calling with a hollow bell fawn bleat of my own concoction, then switched to a raspy jackrabbit I got as a gift from Kerry Carver.
About 10 minutes in, after a particularly panicked and frantic series, a coyote came bouncing through the high grass and stopped almost directly in front of David. From Alex's side, but he never saw it.
David didn't see it either, I said, "D! Right in front of you!"
He said, "What? Where?"
I grabbed his shoulders and pivoted him about 10 degrees right and he said, "OHHHH!!!!"
The coyote hopped a couple more times to see us over the grass.
I said, "Get him! Right in the chest!"
David said, "BLAM!"
Coyote was dead before it hit the ground, 243 center chest at about 65 yards.
David's first called coyote kill!
I got an approach video on FB, I'll try to load up here....
https://www.facebook.com/steve.tormala/videos/10210918183620942/I'm excited about living here now! Some logistics to work out, and lots of driving because I'm still co-parenting in Sequim week to week, but the hunting here on the East slope is a little bit amazing! This was just the beginning! Hopefully we'll be getting out a LOT more now that life is coming around for us!
