Yeah.... here's my favorite of this winter so far. Bugger made us work for it, as it got on the trail of a cat that was closeby when we started calling. The coyote must have been about 20 yards from us just sitting there opposite of where we were scanning.... snuck up an empty drain ditch that ran the length of the field to our right on the edge of a bunch of equipment that the farmer had gathered there. We were sitting in that right hand corner looking out to the left. So this cat starting hissing and yowling... was like 5 yards from that coyote, in the middle of all that junk. By the time I turned to grab my rifle to get on that mutt, the coyote had disappeared.... while I could see through my night vision that the cat had now started moving straight away from us through the adjacent field, headed towards a house about 500 yards beyond. My brother and I couldn't believe that mutt had just disappeared... and the cat kept low... looking back over it's shoulder about every 15 steps. After about 5 minutes trying to find that mutt, we finally stood up... because we thought perhaps it worked it's way behind us as we were butted up against a small hill at the edge of the field. NOTHING. We were pretty dumbfounded. So I decided to scan the entire field we were in from left to right as well as the field off to our right before I called it. There... about 500 yards off to our right.... was that coyote.... moving right towards that cat! The cat took off hard..... The freaking thing was right between us and the barn at the back of the house... so I couldn't shoot. It ran right up to where it crossed that cat's path (cat had made it to the house now)... and it stopped, house directly on the other side. I could see it clearly in my night vision. It looked directly at us.... at the house... and back at us. I think the track was fresh enough that it wasn't sure which way to go. Unfortunately for it, it started tracking in our direction.... at a slow trot right towards us. I still couldn't take the shot.... house just on the other side. This guy was coming right at me, oblivious getting on 200 yards now. I could see it behind some metal gating that was piled up there with all the other junk. For no apparent reason... it cut a 45 degree angle back to our left and moving towards the ditch it originally snuck in on. I kept catching glints of his eyes through the junk and then he broke the debris and was in plain view. We didn't want him to duck away down the drainage and I was just about to break a shot as he was getting close, when he just stopped, 127 yards away, just the other side of that ditch. I touched off a shot and that was the end of this mutt's cat chasing days. It was our first stand of the night. The funny thing is that when I first saw the mutt... and right after told my brother there was a mutt off to our right... that's when that cat went nuts. He asked me... "Are you sure it was a coyote you saw?" LOL... So now, when I see a mutt... I tell him he'd better double check it for me so that I don't waste the kitties in the area! HA!!
