This is my hunting partner's video. I thought he did well with it and so I thought I would share it here.
This is only our 2nd time on this property and first time getting to hunt anything in this field. It runs right at 1000 yards N-S and 300 yards wide at the north end where we are and 600 yards wide at the south end. Last week, the hay was cut and bailed. The only landmarks are along the perimeter. Mostly, it is just a big, flat, open space.
I usually hunt smaller properties, more confined areas, or at least have some landmarks by which to help assess distance better. On top of this, viewing through a thermal scope only provides the shooter with a very flat 2D image of what is going on, as compared to daylight optics. Being able to zoom isn't always a benefit to range estimation either as it can give you the wrong impression of distance. Unlike daylight, it wasn't like we could lift up from the scopes and get a naked eye assessment of just how far away the coyote was. All we could see was darkness, LOL.
We saw coyotes early on wayyyyy down at the other end of the field, but we were there for hogs...but no hogs showed up. So we thought we would get out the E-caller and see if we could bring in the coyotes we had been hearing all night. Eventually, a coyote came in.
Ed will explain some of this in the video. Needless to say, we estimated the range incorrectly. Ed was able to go back and analyze the video and the landmarks seen along the fence line and compare that with an aerial map to determine approximate distance.
I will later post how far Ed and I thought the coyote was (not the same distance, either). Even though this was a hunting failure, it was a good learning experience for both of us. We need to be looking at a lot more clues for assessing distance...which we will try to do next week when we return.
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