Stormy weather shouldn't keep you home.

Pre-storm and post-storm weather are some of the best times to get out after predators. While not always the most comfortable (i.e. cold, windy, and crappy) predators are often out and on the hunt, eager to come to the call.

I had to do a skinning demo last night for a group of youth, and so despite the stormy weather, I headed out yesterday afternoon in pursuit of predators. While the first 3 stands were a bust, mostly thanks to gail force winds, I soon discovered a nice big canyon hidden from the casual observer. I knew this was my ticket to success, even though it was about a mile hike to get into the canyon. The wind had died down a bit, but the casual rain drop was still falling every now and then.

I setup on the first stand with a good view of my downwind, and in less than 2 minutes I had a fox on stand right in my downwind. Bang, flop, and the skinning demo was on for sure. Not wanting to quit, I headed farther into the canyon and setup again. And this is when things got interesting.

My stand was overlooking a large rocky wash so that I could see both ends of the canyon coming into where I was calling from. Just a few minutes in I get a hard charging fox. The wind had picked up and I was getting darn cold by this point . . . . but those are just excuses for what comes next - I shot low in my excitement to have two animals for the kids to skin! But the fox casually hopped behind a rock, and I was sure he was still around so I stuck it out. Sure enough, he pops up on my right, looking around. But as I move for the shot, he disappears again. I know he's behind me, so I decide to throw caution to the wind and go tactical on this fox. I turn and low-crawl over a couple of rocks, and as I come up over the last boulder, there he stands, not 20 feet away, looking right at me. He's in front of a small bush, so he must've felt hidden and safe, because he didn't run. Either way, my rifle comes up and I smash a 55gr VMAX into his chest, he flips over backwards, but he's still kicking around so I smash another round into him. I think he was dead after the first round, but I've seen enough animals run away to know that you shoot until they stop moving.

He was a bit of a small fox, and the rounds did some terrible damage, so he didn't come back for the skinning and I didn't feel that a picture was warranted. But here's the picture of the one that got skinned last night by a very excited group of kids:



The young ladies were especially excited to participate, and it was a lot of fun as after he was skinned the kids wanted to dissect him and help me prep the skull for cleaning. Good times were had by all.

And a couple of lessons were re-learned:

1) Just 'cause the weather isn't perfect, doesn't mean the animals won't come in.

2) Everyone still gets excited about making the shot, even after shooting lots of animals!

Happy Hunting!