I got a late start this morning and didn’t arrive at the first prairie dog town until few minutes after 8:00 a.m. It had rained down here during the night and the grass was real wet and I didn’t see many prairie dogs out. I had loaded my target boxes, shooting chair, rear rabbit-ear rest and a bunch of test loads for the Savage target action in .204 Ruger and more test loads for my Predator action .17 Remington in my pickup for just such a scenario. I use IMR 8208 XBR in both of those rifles, but had run out of the first batch of powder I bought and needed to see how the .204 Ruger worked with the new lot of powder. Both rifles have stainless steel 26" Lilja #6 contour barrels. The .204 Ruger has a 1 in 12 twist and the .17 Remington has a 1 in 9 twist. Ordinarily, I shoot test loads over my chronograph, but today I didn’t have the Beta Master Chrony with me. I just wanted to test these loads for accuracy.
I parked my pickup so I could shoot off the tailgate and would be shooting almost with the wind. I set my target boxes up at 100 yards from the end of where the barrels would be and got my shooting chair and other paraphernalia set up:
I started shooting test loads at a little bit before 9:00 a.m. and finished up around 11:15. I got all my target shooting stuff back in the pickup and parked the pickup in the tree grove behind a little hill and decided to eat lunch. By now, the wind was almost completely calm. I ate lunch and got started shooting prairie dogs at about 12:10 p.m. Since it was still wet in the grass, I used a shooting mat I had purchased from Midway USA a few years ago. That sure helped keep me dry and it was much better than lying on the rocks and in the wet grass.
I had 98 shells loaded with 25 gr. V-Max for the Predator action .17 Remington and decided to use that rifle today. I wanted to make sure of the POI, so I had shot three shots with that load and it was hitting 1/2" high and for my trajectory charts I needed to click it up one click so that’s what I did. The next shot was right where it needed to be for my trajectory chart. It shot great all day. Remember, I had fired 27 test loads out of this rifle before setting out to shoot prairie dogs. I fired 91 more shots for a total of 118 shots without cleaning the barrel. It was every bit as accurate on the 118th shot as it was on the earlier shots. The longest shot of the day was 212 yards and I had one shot at about 35 yards, but most shots were in the 100 to 175 yard range today.
On my first stand I shot 6 prairie dogs for 7 shots. I had my camo jacket on and it was too warm so I took that off and took it back to the pickup. At 1:30 p.m. I stopped for a snack and a drink of water. On the last shot before I stopped for a snack, I had two young prairie dogs lined up at 147 yards and hurried the shot and jerked the trigger and missed. To this point I had killed 24 prairie dogs out of 27 shots.
I had spotted a real dark prairie dog out at 178 yards and popped him. I decided I needed to take a hero photo with the dark dog and here it is:
Here’s a closer view of the Predator .17 Remington and the dark prairie dog.
I got back to shooting at about 1:45 p.m. and popped a double on the first shot. Most of the shots in this area were from 135 yards on out to 212 yards on a NE facing hillside. I got another double and also hit a 3rd prairie dog with that shot that took a big chunk out of his left rear ham, but he got down the hole. From 1:45 to 2:20 I had shot 14 shots and stopped for another snack and a drink. By now, the temperature was 87º, the wind was only blowing at about 2 mph and it was HOT!!! I don’t know what the humidity level was, but it had to be up awfully high because when I was getting the crosshairs on prairie dogs and exhaled, my glasses were fogging up!!! I kept walking to the northwest and planned to circle around and eventually head back SE towards my pickup.
I had some excellent shooting to the west of where I parked my pickup. By 3:00 p.m. I had taken 51 shots. It began clouding up and cooling off again around 3:30. I worked my way back towards the pickup and found some prickly pear cactus plants blossoming so I did a photo shoot.
There were some other blossoms up on this hill and here are some photos of them:
Down closer to the tree grove, there were other flowers blooming:
I got back to my pickup at 4:15 and loaded my stuff into the vehicle and headed south to the other prairie dog town at 4:25 p.m. The grass and weeds were extremely high and it didn’t appear that there had been anyone who had driven down this road for a long, long time. There were a couple of muddy spots, but I sailed through those. When I got to the creek I have to walk/wade across to get to the prairie dog town, it was way higher than I have ever seen it!!! I had my chest waders along, but there was no way I was going to attempt a crossing because of the speed at which the water was flowing. I was disappointed because this little dog town usually gives me some excellent opportunities for shooting. I climbed back in my pickup and headed back to the north dog town.
When I got back to the north dog town, I decided to eat the other half of my sandwich before heading out to shoot. I had only hunted the west side of this dog town and had the whole east side left to try. Unfortunately, the tall grass all over the dog town made it impossible to get shots at many of these prairie dogs. If I would have had a shooting bench or a stepladder along, I think I could have gotten some shots at some of these dogs. Instead, I had to try to figure out where I could set up on a tall prairie dog mound that afforded me lots of shots at prairie dogs. I got back to hunting the east side of the dog town at 5:20 p.m. I only had 28 rounds of 25 gr. V-Max loads left when I started out. I had good shooting when I did find a spot to shoot from, but there were lots of prairie dogs that were in areas that I just couldn’t get an open shot on them because of the tall grass. When I got down to having only 6 rounds left, I started walking back towards the pickup. I shot 3 more rounds on the way back and decided to keep 3 rounds to use as foulers when I did more load testing in the future. Like I mentioned at the beginning, the 91 shots at prairie dogs all came out of a barrel that had 27 bullets shot out of it in the morning BEFORE I started shooting at prairie dogs. When I cleaned the barrel this evening, I used the BoreTech C4 carbon treatment regimen two times and then used the BoreTech Eliminator regimen two times to get any remaining copper out. The barrel cleaned up easily. I also cleaned the barrel on my Savage target action in .204 Ruger and that got the same treatment and cleaned up real easy.
I left the prairie dog town at about 7:00 p.m. and got into Williston around 8:40 p.m. I filled on gasoline and only made 17.8 mpg, but I had driven a wee bit too fast on this trip. Next time I’ll try to keep it around 60 mph. Gasoline prices have gone up 20¢ here in the last week or so and we are now paying $3.799. Every mile per gallon I can gain saves me some money.
When I got back to the house, I cranked up the lawn mower and mowed the lawn before taking my hunting gear into the house and cleaning my rifles. My wife and daughter played in a golf tournament today and they took second place in their flight and won some very nice prizes. So, it had been a very good day for my wife and daughter as well as for me.
That's when it's time to stay home and prep cases in the A/C...... 
