I was just wondering what everyone's thoughts were on using full metal jackets for coyotes, prbably less pelt damage, but are they still lethal. Calibers in question are a .22-250 and .22 mag.

7mm. guy

I shot a few with a 95 grain Speer FMJ in my 243 when i lived in Idaho. One was a solid lung hit at about 300 yards that made it into the deep woods and was lost. The pelts that I did recover had tiny in and out holes but every coyote ran a good distance after chest shot so I gave up on the solids.

My personal sentiment is that there is possibly no poorer choice of bullet for any purpose save for warfare to shoot anything with. I have never found them to be particularly accurate, they ricochet forever, they notoriously wound far better than they kill, there are even more reasons they are illegal to hunt game animals with....but thats enough for me.

Illegal in New Hampshire for Hunting

quote:

prbably less pelt damage

You'd think so, but in practice it ain't really true. Hit a shoulder and you'll have a large exit wound, been there, done that.

In my experience the highly frangible bullets are the most pelt friendly, like Berger MEF, in the 22 centerfires. But they'll still exit some of the time.

If you hunt coyotes and bobcats for pelts for the fur market get a .17 Remington.

FMJs are a poor, poor choice, as several others have already stated.

We have tried them in the .223 & .22-250 with poor results. Pass-throughs but still damage to the pelts in some cases. Running off most of the time even with solid hits, they had to be followed till they piled up.

I get less fur damage with Speer 52gr fbhp in the .223 and have tried several different ones in the .22-250. Again the Speer 52gr fbhp is pretty good but the slower twist allows for some of the more frangible bullets to be used. I really liked the Hornady sx for soft points, but the hp Sierras shoot better. Nate

FMJ's are great wounders. Even for target work there are much better choices. If you drill anything through the head or the heart, you can kill it, but as coyotes are most often seen and taken on the run, you can't count on being as pinpoint accurate as you can on a motionless paper target. With a small bore size like .224, you need as much expansion as you can get for big dogs. As Mau Mau said, they're illegal to hunt with here anyway. In your .22-250, the Sierra 55gr SBT's or HPBT's are much more humane, reliable, and accurate. The 55gr Blitz do the job well, too, though you don't always get an exit wound at longer ranges, but they still turn everything inside of the chest cavity to mush. IF you can call them in close, then the .22mag is an option, but only with hollow points and only within 100yds. It doesn't say where you are writing from, but coyotes up here aren't "small game" and can run over 100lbs for a mature male, though most do average around 70-80lbs. They aren't anything you want to be using a pea shooter on.

You have some big Yotes there. Ours probably average 30-40 lbs, if that.

Im with Fjold on this one 30-40 lbs is about as big as they get. At least here in Utah and Colorado.

I've not even come close to that size in Oregon. We'd get what we considered to be big but figured them to be no more than 60 lbs. tops, a good one was 50 or so.

Down here in Ca. the biggest so far was still barely heavier than a bag of dog food. Nate

P.S. the Speer rarely exits & I've even had similar results with 75gr.Hornady HP's out of my .257 Roberts when pushed fast.

The biologists say that they were not native to the area, but moved in after the last of the wolves were killed in the early 1800's. Current theory is that they have been increasing in size here over that time to fill the niche. Our red and gray foxes are normal sized, and the only other canids in the woods/raiding stock have collars. Folk "wisdom" has it that they interbreed, but the more I learn about them, the more I doubt it. They do pack hunt, and it takes some size and muscle to bring down a moose when the snow is too deep to find mice and voles. I suspect that the smaller ones were less likely to survive those conditions over time, and the larger ones were able to dominate and breed. I don't think that there has been enough study of their pack structure and behavior to do more than speculate at this point. I wonder how big they get when habitat overlap brings them into direct competition with wolves.