The year was 1992, and I would have been 22 years old at that time. I loved hunting coyotes. Now, where I grew up in the Kootenays of British Columbia, there were a lot of coyotes. We had an abundance of coyotes. Shooting coyotes was never any kind of harm to their population. Let me tell you that now. I was just a young, very young man, more of a kid, really, and growing up in the bush there. This is before YouTube. This is before anything like that. The only coyote hunting that I knew to do is if you’ve seen one, you could blast the sucker or if maybe you came across a kill somewhere. One time I came across an elk that had actually gotten trapped in the mud and died there. And then there were coyotes coming around. So we’d look for these opportunistic times we didn’t have at the time, and I know they existed, but perhaps they existed, but we didn’t know at the time. And none of us, myself or my friends were using calls, nowadays they even have decoys rattling the tail and making a call, or you can bring these coyotes in. Well, we never had any of that. We were just opportunistic hunters like I said.
One day I was sitting on my porch and I could hear off in the distance a coyote howling, making all those crazy sounds that they make that’s impossible to imitate. But you’ve all heard it before, and he’s not that far away, and it’s in the middle of the day. So I know this coyote. I know exactly what he’s doing. He’s sitting over there on the mountainside, about half a mile away, and he’s squawking away, and he’s trying to draw dogs out to him, right? I got a little dog and had neighbours about a mile down the road. They got a couple of dogs, and I knew this coyote. He’s trying to draw those dogs out, get them to the edge of the bush, come on out and attack them and eat them, right? So I thought, I’m going to spoil his plans. I’m up to his game. So I had a little dog myself, and it was a little hunting dog. Although it’s a small dog, it’s a smooth-haired fox terrier. It’s got to be my favourite breed of dog. This story is one of my favourites because this dog ended up being the best hunting partner I ever had. And this is how it all started.
So with this little dog, a smooth-haired fox terrier, weighing in at about 14 pounds. And we all know that coyotes are going to easily weigh twice that much. Not much for a coyote hunting dog. But this dog wanted to come with me everywhere I went. I grabbed my rifle and I headed on out towards where I could hear the sounds of that coyote howling with my little dog with me. So we got kind of close to the mountainside, and there was a bit of an old road that went in, and it kind of went along the mountainside, and the mountainside was quite steep, and it was quite forested back in here, and that’s where that coyote was hiding. I got it set up in a spot there, and I was hoping that he’d come out. But like I said, we didn’t have any game calls or anything like that. So there’s nothing. There’s nothing. My little dog is there, and I’m holding her back, and she’s just going crazy. She wants to get after that coyote. So I figured, well, you know, what the heck? I’ll let her go, and we’ll see what happens. Maybe not the best idea, but it all worked out fine. Let the dog go. It went. I said, “Sheba, get them.” And she went out about, maybe about 20 yards away from me. She barks and then comes back to me. Perfect. But nothing. No coyotes coming out anywhere. I’m keeping a sharp eye, watching, watching. So I tell the dog again, I say, “Sheba.” She catches right onto this. I couldn’t believe it. These became commands that I told her. Then from then on in the future, when we repeated this kind of operation, I told her to go out again. Sure enough, she goes out again. This time, she’ll go about twice the distance away. She goes out to about 40 yards away from me. Ra she starts barking at that coyote and then comes back to me. I’m watching, and I’m waiting, and I’m waiting and watching, but no coyote comes out. But I can hear him there. I can hear him. Yep, yep, yep. And then a little bit later. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. And a little bit closer, and I know he’s coming, but he wants her to get into the bush before he comes out. And I don’t want that. That’s for sure.
I figure I’m going to send the dog out one more time. I told the dog, “Go.” And she goes out there, and this time she goes out 60, 70 yards away. And in fact, she’s getting a little too far away because this road, as it goes up, kind of has a slight incline to it like this. And then it dips over like that. So as she crests that hill, she gets onto the other side where I can’t see. Well, I’ll be darned if that coyote didn’t know what was going on, too. He waited till she got over the top. He come out of the bush all of a sudden, the next thing I hear is kiai (crying) like you never heard. Man, that little dog of mine could kick up a stink when she’s getting killed by a coyote. So I grab my rifle, I’m just running for all I’m worth. And I run up to the top of that hill. And sure enough, there on the other side, on the bottom of the hill, is my dog and that coyote fighting. While it wasn’t much of a fight, that coyote’s bearing down on my dog and grabbing it by the back, right by the back here and trying to lift it and run away with it while it’s still alive. But she’d fight so hard that he’d have to put her back down and try to try to get another better grip, another better bite. And trying to run away from me. They’re only maybe 20 yards away. And I bring my gun up and I’m like, holy smokes. They’re moving around so much and they’re so darn close. All I can see in my scope is coyote dog, coyote dog. Coyote dog. Coyote dog. I’m like, I have to take a shot, but sure as heck, there’s a good chance I could shoot my dog. But it’s picking her up the last time, it bears down hard and it lifts her, and I could tell, whoa. He’s going to make the bush line with her this time. Brought up the gun. Coyote dog. Coyote dog. No choice. I pulled the trigger at what I thought’s got to be the rest. Best time. Kaboom. Not going to believe it. Not a word of a lie. I shot that my dog was in that coyote’s mouth, right like this, in its mouth as it was running away. And I shot that coyote dead. Straight through the head. Yes, I’m not kidding. No BS in these stories. That coyote dropped like a sack of hammers, dead as can be. My dog hit the ground in a full run out of there. And that’s how me and my dog. Sheba got our very first coyote. And that was just the first of many. That hunt didn’t go so well. From then on, I was a little more cautious about not letting her ever get out of my sight. Having her on a leash, having her within 40 yards or where I could always see very well.
But that was one brave little dog because even getting mauled by that Coyote did not discourage her one bit. And, I mean, she was mauled that. She had a lot of puncture wounds all along her back and her side. I took her to the vet. A lot of the skin had been pulled right off of the meat. And this is kind of in the old days. This old vet was an old retired guy, and we didn’t do a lot of operations and stuff on dogs. He’d sew them up, right? So he sewed up a few holes, and he, you know, he says, leave her here for the night and call me in the morning and I’ll tell you if she’s still alive. That’s about all I can do. So I said, okay. I Phoned him the next morning. He says you wouldn’t believe it. I walk in there, and that dog’s standing there wagging its tail, happy as can be. I went home and got Sheba. It took her about two, or three weeks to heal up. She was good to go. And like I said, never even phased her for how much she wanted to hunt coyotes. That was just one of many hunts to come. All right, let’s talk about the thunder stick that I used right here. That’s what Shiva would have called it. She finally figured out that when pack leader me“God”, has the thunderstick and it makes a big boom, something’s going to be bleeding and dead. And she loved that. Being a little hunting dog, that’s all she wanted to do. She just loved killing stuff, no matter what it was. So this was my 243. I was 21 years old. I said when I bought it, I bought it secondhand. And I just fell in love with this gun. Is this nice or what? This is a Remington Model 660. It’s not one that I’ve seen before. One of the reasons I like it so much is the length of this barrel. You see, it’s got an 18-and-a-half-inch barrel length on it. That’s the shortest length of barrel that we’re allowed to have in Canada. And it doesn’t have a clip. It has the shells in here and you can fit five of them, which again, is another law that we have in Canada of only five shots. So it was a perfect rifle for me in 243 caliber. I love 243, don’t you? I’d love to know in the comments what you think about 243. In my mind, this has got to be one of the most perfect calibers ever. It doesn’t have much kick. It’s got a fairly good punch for the size of the bullet that it is. And I’ve used this thing for hunting deer. Well, coyotes and small game like that, like coyotes and whatever, gophers and that kind of thing. It’s a bit overkill for that. But I’ve also used it for deer and I’ve even used it for black bear. And I believe that this is a great all-around calibre. It’s got reach. It will just really reach out there. And it’s been an absolute joy to have. I think 243 is one of my very favourites.
