As I've written, we and everyone else in Taylor County have a coyote problem. We used to raise chickens, but a heifer pushed the door to the chicken house open one night, and the coyotes apparently dispatched our poor fowl (except maybe Blackie, who we think has been cavorting at the trailer next door) while they slept. We used to have ducks, but the coyotes picked them off one-by-one. I found the last poor Peking stuck in the crotch of a tree one morning while walking to the fish house with my morning coffee, and in fairness that one probably fell victim to a bobcat. We used to have lady geese to roll in the hay with Gus and Other Gus, but they apparently died defending their eggs one night. We just found a couple piles of grey and white feathers.
So there's not a lot of love for coyotes at Wyldswood, not at all. We gave a professional coyote hunter permission to hunt the property at night with a spotlight last year, but the nasty canines were apparently a little too wily for him. They just walk past my fox trap and snicker.
One Sunday during the pandemic I was sitting on the front porch with P talking to my mother on the speaker phone, when I spied a black coyote skulking in broad daylight down a fence line and toward the pond. At that point I asked P to keep talking to my mom, reached inside the door for my deer rifle, and scrambled down the steps to take an errant free-hand shot at the coyote, which spooked and ran from the property. Mom asked, "What's going on there"" when she heard the crack of the shot. "Oh, it's just your son, shooting at a coyote." Just another day at Wyldswood.
In my defense, that was a 120-130 yard free-hand shot, with adrenaline pumping. It's damned hard to hit a moving target the size of a coyote at that range.
But not too hard for George.
We've known for a while that George is a crack shot. Not long after we arrived full-time at the farm, early in the pandemic, Peg spied a couple large water moccasins sunning themselves on the rocks out in the pond. George happened to be on the property that day, and she rather anxiously dashed to his truck and asked that he do something about these poisonous nuisance critters (note that she didn't ask me to do anything about it--there was a reason the military put me behind the trigger of a weapon that fired 6000 rounds a minute. I've never been much of a shot). Of course George was carrying a semiautomatic pistol in the cab of his truck, which he produced and unceremoniously dispatched the two snakes from maybe fifty yards away, never missing even once. All I could offer was a respectful golf clap.
Maybe word got out among the coyotes that I was a bad shot and therefore presented no danger while they were roaming the farm, because yesterday morning George spotted one trotting across the east pasture in broad daylight, apparently thinking it was safe at over 200 yards from the truck.
Well, that was a mistake. Yesterday George was carrying a .243 deer rifle, and he drew a bead on the coyote and dropped him with a shot to the haunch.
So, I guess Gus and O.G. might have rested a little easier last night, but for the fact that there are more varmints where this one came from. But if the pack talks among themselves, maybe word will get out among them that roaming Wyldswood is now a risky proposition while George is in the neighborhood.
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