Shortest hunt ever..
So Gunner410 was working today (you know where this is going), My72Jeep is tagged out and his wife QHPenny, had taken their daughter out of town shopping and to see a movie. I have a list of things I wanted to get done (including fixing the toilet in my wife's en-suite bathroom) before I have to have my knee surgery next week, but M72J really wanted to go out even if he couldn't hunt.
So we met up this morning and walked down the road to the power line we usually hunt. I had taken a drive out yesterday and there were all kinds of fresh tracks made from the previous days snow.
As we get to the line, we peek around the trees and low and behold, there is a wolf munching on the cowhides that M72J and QHP put out on "their" side. We stoop down, drop the packs and seats, and move down the road to where there was a rut in the bank made by a snowmachine. Now we are both about 6" 4" and the bloody snow banks on the road are so high, we didnt have to bend over very far to remain hidden to the wolf.
I crawled up the snowmobile track, over the bank and popped out the bipod, lay on my stomach and got the scope on the wolf. It was still standing there, 150 yards away broadside, so I looked it over for a few seconds to make sure it didn't have any visible mange. Put the crosshairs on the chest, pulled the trigger, it spun once and landed on its back, with its 4 paws in the air. First wolf I have killed with the .22-250 Ruger rifle. I was using a 55 grain Ballistic Silvertip handload.Total elapsed time, 4 minutes of which 3 minutes were loading up and walking down the road. Then off to Tim's to show hunting partner Wayne who is having a hard time tearing himself away from a warm cup of coffee to go hunting. And of course, Gunner410 at work!
Nice female, weighed between 65 and 70 lbs on the game scale. What is really neat is that she was standing in front of M72J's trail camera as I shot her, and you can see her as she spins from getting hit:
When we picked her up, first thing we noticed was a relatively fresh puncture wound in her hind quarter. Didn't make sense as wasn't close enough to where I shot her to be a bullet fragment, and was about 1 1/2" long - if you look in this trail camera picture you can see the puncture was there before she was shot:
When we skinned her, there was a fair amount of bloodshot tissue on the hind leg and M72J was able to stick a (gloved) finger well into the puncture. As I kept skinning I started finding small birdshot pellets in the chest, neck and head - someone dusted her at some point with a shotgun but they were all healed over and no bruising so I think it was done a while ago. Was a very nice pelt (hoping M72J will post a pick of it)
Got her skinned out, disposed of the carcass, showed a few friends who are in town for the fish derby the pelt, and by the time i got home the day was pretty much over.
Last hurrah for me till next fall.
And yes I got the toilet fixed....
AND M72J has promised QHP that he will go out with her tomorrow AM .....