No crane, no swan, and few ducks.

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   The clock is ticking on crane, ends the end of the month. We have 4 tag to fill. Swan starts the 11th, still not one spotted. There is mostly no water in my area. Great Falls is fine on water in fact I think we are a little over norm. Our big duck area is Freezout lake ands it's dry and dusty. The big irrigation revisors are mostly just puddles. We went on a scouting trip yesterday, drove 250 miles near the "front" looking. Bear is open as well as grouse season we didn't see any of them either. It was a bluebird kind of day but along the mountains the wind was blowing, go figure. We went armed for coyotes per say, the boy was braking in his wife's new rifle a Ruger AM gen 2 in 300 win mag, and I had my 8mm rem mag. Its not that they won't kill coyotes but, you know, there plenty of gun...We did stop and give it a try. We called one in, in 25 mph wind but it would not get closer than 400 yards ish. We were sitting is short prairie grass about 3" tall. The boy gave it a "shot" and missed. We found a place that just cried raccoon, we called it for around 25 minutes nothing so we started to gather up our stuff to go elsewhere. Standing next to my bright red truck we spotted a coyote coming in. We had to put our shotguns in and get a rifle. This time it was my turn I set the 8 up and tried. We were shooting across a lake, the bullet fell quite short in to the lake. But the wind is so strong the coyote didn't here it. It went to the waters edge and took a drink, bad mistake for him. The boy ranged it this time 474 wow that's a lot in the wind. I'm on bipods and had a good hold, I dialed up 475. Let my breath out and hutched it off. JUST as the coyote started to turn. The 200 gr Hammer hit about mid dog. It jumped flipped and started to spin. Then disappears in the shore grass and reeds. WOW. it took about a half hour for us to drive around the lake. The lake is a seep lake down hill from one of our Major irrigation canal, the dog was in the swamp that keeps the lake full. What a disaster to be looking for a dead coyote we slogged around for most of an hour looking never to find it DANG. Fun day to bad we did not find any game we were looking for.      

Edited by d4570 - 05 October 2025 at 19:07