First Blood for Remington 788 30-30

Well, Old man winter finally made his presence known for real this past week way down here on the blue ridge. It may sound like a heat wave to a lot of folks on here most of the time but lows each night have been in the mid to low 20s and the highs for most days are about 20 degrees warmer. The last three days it rained most of the time, not any great down pours just a fairly soft steady but cold rain. I decided since the weather had turned cooler and there was much more precipitation than there had been I stood a pretty good chance of having a good size chunk(technical term) of national forest to myself as most “hunters” around here just don’t seem to like the nasty weather. I decided to take the Remington 788 in 30-30 I picked up not long ago for its first trip afield with me anyway. I described the rifle in a post before but for those new here it’s a 788 in carbine length(18” barrel) wearing an older Weaver fixed 4 power scope, not sure how old the scope is but it’s steel, made in USA with the El Paso address. This trip was mainly focused on late season whitetail, season runs till 31 December here, but it was also just to get out of the house and back into the woods where I feel most at home away from the silly season! I decided to visit one of my favorite spots on this trip, a place called Dick’s ridge. As the name implies the place I like to hunt from is really steep terrain and forms a good sized ridge line that measures a good two miles give or take from end to end. When I was finally parked with my Jeep tucked out of sight and all secure it was about ten minutes till 5:00am, that gave me a good two hours and 15 minutes to get to where I wanted with another half hour till sunrise once I got there. It was 27 degrees and misting rain with the wind blowing from the northeast at about 5mph. I’m not sure why but once I get to this point of most of my trips I’m almost as happy as I was all those years ago when I was a kid! I suppose it’s still just the excitement of being in the woods, all the new and different smells and sounds attacking my senses all at once, it’s fantastic! I started out on my long climb knowing I had plenty of time to get to the spot where I wanted to hunt that day. Walking the ridge I was surprised that I didn’t need to use the flashlight near as much as I thought I would have, especially with it being all cloudy and overcast, no moonlight to help at all. I suppose being that dark and with the rain it seemed extra quiet this morning, not much of the usual hurried activity you normally hear. I suppose most of the critters just chose to be smarter than Rob on this fine morning and stay in their nice warm bed. I finally reached the spot I was looking for atop the ridge. I was shocked when I looked at my watch to see it had taken me a little over an hour and a half to get where I wanted. I first thought I must just be getting older but instead I chose to believe I just took my time so I could enjoy the trip and the scenery even more! My spot on top is part of a rocky outcropping with most of the boulders being say, Volkswagen size and a little bigger for the most part. I like hunting this spot because from up top you look down into a good sized valley, on one side it’s private land used mainly for farming and on the other side is part of a state owned managed wildlife area they plant food plots in most of the year, mostly sorghum and corn. The dividing line for these two areas is a larger than average stream from the mountain called crow creek. Normally I like to use the boulders to set up on and use them as a hide and then I can glass on either side of the creek. This morning wasn’t going to be ideal for how I normally did things so I decided to try and be Mcgyver and do something different. In my daypack I always seem to carry more than I need but on a day like this I was glad I do. I took an old Army poncho, this one is the heavier variety, we called them winter ponchos cause they were so much thicker. I found a couple of rocks big enough and close enough to the edge of the ridge I could use and took my poncho and made myself a little “hootch” or shelter to keep the rain and most of the wind off of me. Inside my little shelter I could look out over the valley and had a decent view of the food plot side but not a great view of the farm side and not nearly as good a view as when I can get on top of the rocks. Still I was happy to be out in the woods doing what I wanted and more than a little pleased with my Boy Scout engineering. I sat in my shelter and glassed those two fields for about an hour before I saw the first group of deer. There were a group of four does that basically appeared out of nowhere it would seem, they just munched along without a care in the world and slowly worked their way down by the creek to get a drink before continuing their journey munching away. Not much more was happening, I know the weather had to play a major factor but the rut being all but done probably played a large part as well. I stayed in my hide till about a quarter till ten and by that time it was starting to rain just a bit harder than it had been so I decided I’d give myself till about 10:30 and if I hadn’t seen something with antlers I could legally shoot I’d call it a day. About 20 minutes later while glassing over the private land I saw some kind of black form moving my way, I couldn’t really make out what exactly it was but I knew it wasn’t a deer and I knew it wasn’t a bear even though we have a larger and larger crop of black bears around here each year. I kept watching and the figure was probably 400 or so yards from me, I kept looking and had just about convinced myself it was a black dog I was watching. I’m not sure why I kept on watching, 99 percent of the time if I had thought it was a dog I would of just ignored it but something about the way this one moved made me keep watching. Looking at him thru the glass was almost surreal because he just seemed to be headed right for me, on occasion he would pause for a moment, look over his left shoulder and then pick up his little short choppy trot again. Once I saw him move this same way a couple of times I knew it was a coyote and not even a wild dog, to me anyway, dogs seem to have more of a lope when they move any faster than a walk. I kept watching and watching him to see if he would continue toward me to see if I could get a shot on him. I knew once he got to the base of the ridge and into the trees I wouldn’t have a chance. I had the 788 rested on top of my daypack and I was stretched out in the prone watching him and wishing I had a rangefinder! He got closer and closer to the base of the ridge and I figured if I was going to make a move now was the time to make it. When he got to where I estimated him to be right at 200 yards I placed the fine crosshairs of the old weaver right at the top of his right shoulder and squeezed the trigger! The shot actually took me by surprise, I supposed I was so caught up in watching him through the scope I was shocked at the report of the rifle. I’m not sure if it was a great shot or a lucky shot but I’ll take it either way, it hit him just below where I was aiming and just flat rolled him up into a ball! He never took another step! I was using a Hornandy 160gr FTX over 35.5 Hogdon lever revolution powder and man did it do the trick. I couldn’t believe how dark his coat was, upon closer inspection it wasn’t totally black like charcoal but it was darker than a deep brown also if that makes any sense. I hope my friend won’t cringe too bad but I didn’t do anything with his hide, one because he was really mangy looking I thought and that FTX tore a good size hole where the hide for his shoulder used to be! It ended up being a good “therapy” day in the woods for me anyway! I didn’t go out varmit hunting it just happened to end that way. I’m just very happy the lord blessed me with another opportunity to get out in the woods to do the thing I love to do!