AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!! I had my new POF Revolution AR-308 let me down tonight for the first time. It's been flawless up until now. It failed to extract right in the heat of battle when I was calling coyotes. Try as I might, I could not get the round extracted so I could give a finishing shot to a coyote I popped. Maybe one of you AR guru's can tell me what to look at. But first, let me share all of tonights excitement.
The rancher has been getting hit hard with coyotes killing their angora goats. So, I have a few days free after my cataract surgery and headed down to thin the pigs and coyotes at the 2700 acre lease in the TX hill country. I popped 3 pigs yesterday and a coon last night with the same rifle.
Today, I scouted a couple of good "stands" for hunting coyotes tonight. I started at the first stand at 7:30pm, 30 minutes after solid dark. I'm using my AR-308 with my thermal scope and I sit under/against a couple of shrubs growing up at the base of a pond dam (stock tank for you fellow Texans) and had my game call set up about 60 yards away (Foxpro Shockwave with a woodpecker decoy). Things started slow, no sooner had I settled in, then the herd of cattle decided it was drink time. It took them about 45 minutes to get their fill, they left and I got to work.
I started my FoxCast sequence, but no action. I hadn't heard any coyotes yipping yet, so figured it was still early. I gave a good pause, then started again. Part way through the call sequence, in swoops an owl and yanks the decoy off the caller and gives it a good thrashing on the ground before he/she realizes it isn't edible. It leaves the decoy in shreds and flies to the top of a nearby dead tree. I can see it with the thermal and I'm convinced it's settled in to watch this idiot for the night.
I hit another sequence and I hear some coyotes yip and howl. But they're in the "bull pasture" that's on the back side of the tank dam I'm sitting against. Just to be sure, I keep scanning at the opposite end of the tank dam, just in case the coyotes decide to come all that distance and come around the far end of the dam. About the 4-5 time scanning the end of the dam, I catch the slightest glimpse of something through the thermal. It turns out it's a coyote walking along the top of the dam and walking right towards me. I get the rifle up, safety off and wait to get a clear shot through the mesquite growing on the dam. It walks into a clearing and I pop it. It yelps/howls/ cries and falls down the backside of the earthen dam. I spring from my cover, scramble up through the prickly pear/turkey pear growing on the dam and get to the top of the dam. It's pitch black, so I can only see with the thermal binoculars or scope. I see the coyote 20' below me trying to clamber to it's feet. I've hit the rear abdomen/hip as it was quartering towards me, with the first shot. He's still yelping, so I raise the gun to finish it and....
The first shot failed to extract, so I drop the mag, grab the charging handle and rack it hard. It still fails to grab and extract the spent case, so I rack it again, slamming it into battery as hard as I can, smack the forward assist, still fails to grab the case. I try again and again. I pull the rear tackdown pin, pop it open, but I can't get my knife on the case lip. Slamming the AR hard on the buttstock to see if the case might pop loose isn't an option with a $4K thermal scope mounted, so my options spent.
By this time, the crippled coyote has clawed his way further away through the prickly and turkey pear, beyond the distance I'm willing to go to bash him with a tree limb in the pitch dark. I'll go out at first light and see if he died or is laid up nearby.
Anyway, what's up with the AR not grabbing that case rim? I would have thought slamming it into battery would have allowed the extractor to get over the rim, so I could have got the case out.
