Hey there. You look tired. Take a load off and sit down, I'm gonna tell you a story.
Today I went over to the Shed, where I film all my content, just to zero 2 guns, put some new supplies away, then leave. A simple trip, an hour at most. When I arrived I saw my dad had trapped a squirrel in his chipmunk trap on the porch, so knowing I'd have to dispatch the squirrel I pulled one of the two guns I brought, a .22 caliber brand new Air Venturi Avenge X Classic in the standard synthetic stock (
https://myhighpressureair.com/avenge-x-classic/?aff=2), out of my Dulce double gun case (
https://amzn.to/407FGST) and loaded a mag up for it. I then decided, with my freshly filled mag, that I wanted to zero the guns first so I left the trapped squirrel alone for the time being and headed down to the Shed with some supplies I needed to stash as well as the uncased Avenge X in hand. Normally I'd carry my unloaded and cased (and therefore useless) guns to the Shed in their bags and then take them to the shooting shack before even uncasing them....
First stop: the Shed to drop my supplies off. As soon as I had opened the door and walked into the Shed to put my supplies away I hear the crunching of leaves seemingly coming from extremely close to the south side of the Shed. Crunch crunch... a squirrel? CRUNCH! No way, that's bigger than a squirrel. A skunk, perhaps? I grabbed the Avenge X that I had leaned against the doorframe, which was already loaded from me initially wanting to dispatch the trapped squirrel, and I swiveled out the door toward the direction of the leaf crunching sounds. What I saw next was both shocking and not shocking at the same time, since it was something I'd been after for months, and even shot at several times (and almost certainly had actually hit once) - but I'll be damned if it wasn't right under my Shed!
A mangy coyote that, in the colder weather which just rolled in, had moved from his den near the river and was apparently trying to shack up under my Shed. He was probably lonely, as I had killed his only litter-mate earlier this season with my FX Panthera Hunter Compact .30 (
https://myhighpressureair.com/fx-panthera-hunter-compact/?aff=2) topped with the DNT Optics ThermNight (
https://myhighpressureair.com/dnt-optics-tnc225r-thermal-nightvision-w-laser-rangefinder/?aff=2). Anyway, I had spooked the little nesting chupacabra by stepping on the hollow floor, causing if to creak loudly, and he vacated.
Upon exiting the Shed our eyes met and he jetted off in an unsafe direction to shoot, and although I probably could have got him on the run there within 20 yards without incident; I passed on the hasty shot and ran up front where I thought he was going to go. About 30 yards of running later I got a glimpse of him through the forest and whistled to get his attention. That's when he made the fatal mistake of taking just a moment to look at me. No sooner did he turn his head to look, I raised my Avenge X up, got him in the reticle of my Element Optics Helix APR-2D MRAD (
https://myhighpressureair.com/element-helix-ffp-30mm-6-24x50-apr-2d-mrad/?aff=2) scope and broke the shot from an unsupported standing position about 25 yards away from the critter. My 18gr JSB pellet sailed directly between his eyes, and he dropped like a marionette suddenly abandoned by the hands of its master.
Here is the visual part of the story, well, the aftermath, at least:
And while I didn't get it on film, since it was very unexpected, I did have the thought to capture this video even with my heart a thumpin' from the excitement:
And here is his brother who I sniped about 2 months ago, sporting a similar degree of insanely disgusting mange:
Now oddly enough, when these two were springborn pups, fur fully intact, I happened to be practicing with my Panthera NRL22 rig and noticed them in the meadow. I watched them both playing innocently, as puppies do, with exceptional clarity through my Element Titan 5-25x56 scope (
https://myhighpressureair.com/titan-5-25x56-ffp-ehr-2d-moa-pre-order/?aff2) but in a moment of extremely rare (for me) mercy, my 34gr H&N slugs did not leave my barrel at 1000fps in their direction - I simply did not shoot them. Normally I would have dumped on them both instantly in a very robotic and automatic way, as I am pretty much programmed for pest control with zero exceptions. In any case, I knew I'd kill them both eventually. But I did let them enjoy that day in the sun, only to eventually bring permanent night to them both.
This has been an Air Shootist short story. Hope ya liked it!
