Perfect bullet placement probably will drop one "instantly", but any thing else will probably be a lost cause. A coyote could easliy be hit by a .22lr and run off like you missed, and you'd never know you hit it.

When I was teenager, I lived on the farm in KS. We had a "snow day" so I was home frmo school. I got my .22lr Marlin out to go rabbit hunting. I was walking our shelter belt around the farm when I spotted a coyote running by at about 50 yards. I got three shots at it, had no idea if I had hit it, but I got on its tracks to follow it. I found it dead about 200 yards later. First coyote that I got to take to the fur buyers. When he skinned it, we found that I had hit it once, in the lungs. It never dropped a single drop of blood in 200 yards, even though I had hit it in the lungs. ANd that's where theproblem lies with the .22lr, a tiny entrace with no exit = no blood trail. I even cringe when I here guys spouting to take "head shots" only. If you can't hit an egg, then that's not the shot to take, because the brain is the only part of the head that will kill the coyote. Anything else, is a wounded coyote.