Any rimfire, even a .22 short, will kill a coyote under ideal conditions. But ideal conditions are seldom encountered in the field. The big question is how many coyotes are you willing to educate? With a rimfire, you will have to pass on a lot of shots, and once that coyote comes in and figures out what's going on, he's not going to come back to that call anytime soon. And he's going to be a little more coming in to the next call. I have to pass on more shots than I'd like to with a .223 and a 25-06. It's not many, but I hate to get a coyote up and not get a shot off. If I had to be picky about my shot placement AND do so within 100 yards, I'd be educating about twice as many coyotes as I was shooting.