geordieh Posted January 23, 2013 Report Share Posted January 23, 2013 HI All I have been meaning to write this since before christmas and been too busy doing other stuff.I go out to visit one of my mates on a fairly regular basis who lives about an hour and a half south west of Chicago.About 18 months or so ago i noticed a post from Coyotemaster(Tim)on here,noticed he lived in Illinois so out of sent him a PM to find out where he was exactly in relation to my mate,it turned out that they were only about an hour apart.I was invited over to Tim's the next time i was in the US.First trip was in March last year,I drove west to Kewanee and Tim and i had an afternoon fishing,well an afternoon sitting in his boat drowning worms because the fish were not playing ball.While we were cruising up and down the river Tim was pointing out various stuff he pointed out some holes in the trees and said they were raccoon dens and that it was excellent sport hunting them when they were in season.So a plan was made and i said i would be be back in December to have a go at them.We then returned to Tim and Nancy's(Tim's wife)home for dinner a superbly cooked plate of whitetail deer and veggies washed downn with Tim's homemade wine.Flash forward to December and i was back at Tim's again, first thing we had to do was to go down to Walmart to get a 5 day visitors hunting license which cost $42.50(about £27)then picked up guns and off we went.The plan was to see if we could call in and shoot some coyotes first,so Tim set up the foxpro caller about 100metres away from us and gave me his .17 centrefire rifle and fired up the caller. We could hear coyotes calling and yipping fairly close to us probably within 2-300 metres.Boy does that coyote howl make your hair stand stand on end.Tim said they always circle round you to get downwind and they don't give you a second chance but alas they didn't want to play with us.We then swapped rifles and Tim gave me his Ruger 1022 and we set off to try and find some raccoons. We headed for a copse of trees and as we got a bit closer Tim set off the foxpro on the raccoons fight call, bloody hell,i jumped out of my skin it was so loud.Tim had a red headlight on and i had a red torch mounted to the scope we walked along the treeline scanning for eyes reflecting in the branches eventually we spotted the first set of eyes.Iput the crosshairs on the head of the raccoon and pulled the trigger and it fell or kicked its way in to its den in a hollow tree i was gutted not to be able to retrieve it,i had promised the girls in my bank that i would be wearing the tails when i got back home.Tim said he would come back the next day with his climbing gear and get it out(which he did).Anyway we moved on lamping and calling as we went.Eventually we spotted more eyes up a much taller tree and saw a big coon lying out on a branch about 30ft up, two bullets behind the right ear and down it came.I went and picked it up and got Tim to take some pics of my first definite raccon kill.We set off again and walked a fair distance but didn't see any more we did see a group of whitetail deer and apparently it is a $250 fine if you get caught shining a lamp on deer and if you hit one in the car and injure it you are not even allowed to put it out of its misery you have to call the cops or wildlife rangers.We decided to head back to the truck a nice stroll in the bright moonlight and about -6-7c.As we were driving home we stopped at another copse and put the lamp around and found another raccoon which i also shot.We got back to Tims and i decided to keep the tails, as i was removing them i noticed how much fat they had it was about an inch thick.Tim had a few more raccoons at home waiting to be collected by the fur dealer at $10-$20 each.I would like to thank Tim and Nancy for being such good hosts.And a word or two for the coyotes "I'll be back".A few days later i got my first permission in the US only 200 acres but it does have coyotes on it Geordie PS pictures to follow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
secretagentmole Posted January 23, 2013 Report Share Posted January 23, 2013 Tried eating coon yet? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
geordieh Posted January 23, 2013 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2013 (edited) Hi secretagentmole Took coyotemasters advice he said it was rank and he was sick for 4 days when he tried it Geordie Edited January 23, 2013 by geordieh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smokinggun Posted January 24, 2013 Report Share Posted January 24, 2013 Nice write up mate I enjoyed that, i bet hunting in America is great fun, my dad has been squirrel shooting there with family years ago but i haven't yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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