Leopold 4X Scope, Not Enough??

[oldhammy1]

So I bought a 700 BDL in 30-06 off of a friend last week, and went out Saturday to try it out. On the way there we were passing a cattle ranch that a friend of mine owns, and noticed a coyote munching on a dead cow in the middle of the field. We jumped out, and my friend put a soft point through his vitals at 150 yards. 1 down. We proceeded to go on and do our target shooting, and I found that my new 30-06, with a fixed 4X Leopold scope, hit everything I pointed at up to about 200 yards. I couldn't be happier. On the way back we stopped and glassed the field where the dead cow was, and sure enough there was another coyote bedded down about 70 yards past the cow. We got out of the truck, and I walked over towards the edge of the field to set up for a shot, but the coyote started to run away from us. He would stop every 15 yards or so to look at us. I didn't have time to set up my bipod, so I just shouldered it and let em rip. On the fourth shot I either gut shot him, or hit him in the back hip, because he spun around 3 times. He then ran off away from us (on 3 legs and clearly wounded heavily) toward a thick area of trees and grass. We measured the shot at about 300 yards. My buddy could see him in is 10x binoculars, and was trying to tell me where he was as he continued to run, but I couldn't spot him with the fixed 4X scope I had. The question is, should I keep the 4X, or bite the bullet and upgrade to a 3 X 9? I plan on hunting mule and whitetail deer, and coyotes.


By the way, we did go to the Ranchers house and let them know they had a cow down, and that we had shot two coyotes on their land. They were thrilled, and told us if we ever wanted to come shoot more that they would be very grateful. Also they said we could hunt on their land anytime. This is good, because we happened across a monster javelina while we were searching for the second dog that was wounded