While I was getting my junk together to take along on my hike, I had one ornery prairie dog barking and barking at me to the west of where I parked my pickup. I chambered a 40 gr. Nosler BT and put an end to his incessant chatter. When I looked at where I had my pickup parked, I decided to move it around a bit to take advantage of what little shade the trees there would provide. When I got that out of the way I began to get my elbow pads on and was going to put on my backpack when another prairie dog about 125 yards to the east of me began his annoying barking. I took time out to anchor him and end his nasty talk before venturing out into the prairie dog town.
I had a partial box of 40 gr. Nosler BTs that I had reloaded back on October 5, 2008. There were only 20 rounds left in that box, so that’s the ammo I began to use first. When I had shot the 20th cartridge from that box, I had hit on 19 of those 20 shots. Most of the shots were of the 100 to 184 yard variety.
Here’s a photo of one of the prairie dogs I shot at a mound that was 184 yards away from my shooting position. Devastating action was the order of the day for the .204 Ruger using the 40 gr. Nosler BTs. This bullet literally turns them inside out!!! This little guy felt no pain as he lay on his back with his insides sticking out for the entire world to see.
Of course, no prairie dog outing by me would be complete without the hero photo. The black objects on the barrel are my ASICS brand volleyball knee pads that I use to cushion my elbows from the grinding they can take from resting your elbows on the dirt on the prairie dog mounds.
Around 12:45 p.m., I stopped in the shade of some trees to have a picnic lunch and maybe catch a short power-nap. Old guys like me need our rest you know!!! I finished lunch and used my backpack as a pillow and dozed off for a bit. About 5 minutes into my nap, the barking of a very inconsiderate prairie dog woke me up. I got up and put him to sleep with a 40 gr. Nosler BT sleeping pill. I resumed my nap, but 5 minutes later another prairie dog interrupted my peaceful rest. He too was given the same sleeping pill as the first prairie dog.
I woke up from my twice-interrupted nap and was ready to continue my walk-about; however, there was one noisy prairie dog west of me that needed a dirt nap. I backed up out of the little depression I had been in and tried to gain a little altitude so I could get the butt end of my rifle down low enough to get the crosshairs on this critter. I backed up and backed up and finally got the crosshairs on him. I could see him barking as I squeezed the trigger and witnessed the red mist as the 40 gr. Nosler BT made him explode!!! Here’s a photo of the damage and one of my 40 gr. Nosler BT cartridges is resting against a dirt clump. Some shooters can’t seem to get the 40 gr. Nosler to shoot accurately for them, but it sure has been an accurate bullet for me. Not quite as accurate as the 39 gr. Sierra BlitzKing is in my Savage, but darn close. The 40 gr. Nosler seems to give me way more devastation and higher and more spectacular helicopter action on prairie dogs as well.
While I did manage to scoot back on that little rise successfully and wipe out that noisy prairie dog, I have to warn you all that one should ALWAYS LOOK WHERE YOU ARE GOING!!! When I scrambled to my feet after the shot, I could smell an unpleasant odor. I looked down at my boots and there was some pretty fresh cow manure covering the toes on both boots and up onto the bottom laces on my left boot. I also had inadvertently rubbed the left knee of my pants on the side of one of my boots as I was getting up from the ground and there was a load of wet, stinky manure on my left pants leg too!! I found some grass and tried to rub most of the manure off with that and also rubbed my boots in the loose dirt around a couple of prairie dog mounds. As for my pants, I took out my handy roll of TP I always carry with and wiped the manure off as good as I could. YUCK!!! It is a good thing I always bring a wet washcloth with so I could clean off my hands before I ate my cookies on my next break!!!
Here’s a photo of the cow pie that sneaked up on me from behind and pounced all over my boots!!! I still can’t get the thought of that smell out of my mind even today as I sit here and type about the event. I am usually pretty careful and watch where I step, but my rear view mirror didn’t alert me to this impending danger.
There were a lot more young pups out now and the opportunities for getting doubles and triples with one shot raced through my mind. I managed to get two doubles and one triple. The triple included one adult and two pups. The pups were right around the adult. One of the pups is in the foreground on the left of the photo below, the adult up and to the left of that pup and the other pup is visible at the end of the dead adult’s right rear foot. The pup is only partially out of the den in the photo below. The other adult, to the right near the butt of the rifle, had so much curiosity about the commotion on top of the mound, that she came up out of the mound and her curiosity killed her, with the help of a suicide pill from my Savage 12VLP.
I was almost to the east end of the dog town when I noticed my ammo supply was getting, so I began the walk back to the pickup. I ran out of ammo long before I got back to the pickup, so I took out the camera and began shooting photos of a few of the flowers that were blooming. This country seems extremely dry and I’ll bet the farmers and ranchers would jump for joy if they could get a substantial amount of rain. I’ll insert a few photos of some of the plants that were blooming. I could see no yucca plants around the dog town, and there used to be a lot of those around. Same story for cactusâ€â€there used to be lots of cactus around and I didn’t see any cactus plants at all.
I arrived back at the pickup around 3:35 p.m. I had shot 70 rounds of Nosler BTs. I connected on 61 singles, two doubles, and one triple for a prairie dog body count of 68 prairie dogs with 70 shots. I cased my Savage 12VLP and drove about a half mile east along the prairie trail and parked my pickup again. I replenished my water supply and picked up a couple more cookies for a snack. Then uncased my newly rebarreled .17 Remington and took out the box of 50 Danzac coated 27.8 gr. BTHP Hammett rounds that were loaded with 23.0 gr. of N-540 and seated approximately .005" off the lands and also out the box of 43 uncoated 27.8 gr. BTHP Hammett rounds that were loaded with 22.74 gr. of Varget and also seated at approximately .005" off the lands. I was tempted to use only the Danzac coated rounds, but I also knew I needed to shoot those rounds with the bare bullets so I could keep that brass in the rotation. After all, I only have about 625 of those neck-turned casings left and I need to keep all of them in service. Once again, there were prairie dogs barking at me as I prepared to continue on my hunt and I took time out before I went on my walk-about to put them to sleep. I used several of my rounds that had Danzac coated bullets on these loud-mouthed prairie dogs.
I knew I needed to see where the uncoated bullets were hitting since I hadn’t shot the uncoated bullets since I changed out my Sightron II 6.5-20x50mm side focus scope for my inspected and repaired (good as new) Leupold VX-III 6.5-20x40mm Long Range scope on May 28, 2009, so I found a dead tree stump to shoot at, got myself set up 100 yards away and fired three shots to see where the POI was. To my surprise and pleasure, these rounds with uncoated bullets and a different powder were hitting at almost the exact same POI as the rounds with the Danzac coated bullets. Miracles do happen.
I continued my walk-about on the east end of the dog town and noticed there were very few adults up feeding, but there sure were lots of pups. There were so many young pups on the tops of some mounds that it almost looked like there was a prairie dog pup convention going on. When the smoke cleared and the dust settled down, I had used the 40 rounds with bare bullets I had left after sighting in the rifle. I looked at my watch and it was already 7:40 p.m. I had been having so much fun I didn’t realize how late it was. I decided to start walking back to the pickup for the trip home. I had shot 37 singles, one double, and had 2 missed shots with those 40 bare bullets for a total of 39 dead prairie dogs for my 40 shots. As I continued to walk back to the pickup, I couldn’t keep myself from shooting a few more prairie dogs with the Danzac coated rounds. I wound up shooting 13 of the Danzac coated rounds in the late afternoon and hit on 11 singles and one double with one miss for a total of 13 prairie dogs for 13 shots. So now I have a total of 329 rounds through the new barrel on my .17 Remington. I think it is well broken in now. I apologize for not having any photos of the late afternoon shoot with the .17 Remington, but I was pretty busy with my prairie dog eradication program. I’ll try to do better next time. Photos of this rifle are in the report I posted about my May 26, 2009, prairie dog hunt on this board.
I got back to the pickup a bit before 8:00 p.m. and put my rifle away, got out the other half of my sandwich and a cold can of Caffeine Free Diet Coke and couple cookies and headed back for Williston at exactly 8:05 p.m. I got back into my driveway at 9:13 p.m. and I was one tired old man. However, I could not go to bed yet because I had two rifles that I needed to begin cleaning. I had fired 13 shots through the barrel of the Savage 12VLP in .204 Ruger at targets before I went on this prairie dog hunt, so I had shot a total of 83 total shots through the barrel since I last cleaned itâ€â€that’s a total of 2,461 shots down the tube since the gun was new. It still shoots pretty good, so I’ll keep using the factory barrel a while longer as my new super match grade stainless steel 1 in 11" twist 3-groove Pac-Nor barrel sits in my reloading room waiting to be chambered and installed.
The Pac-Nor barreled .17 Remington had a total of 66 rounds down the tube since I last cleaned it and it too was still shooting great. I suspect the .204 Ruger Savage barrel will take quite a bit more work than the .17 Remington Pac-Nor barrel before it gets clean, but the Savage still usually cleans up fairly easy.
Total shots at prairie dogs for the day was 123 shots. Dead prairie dog count for the day was 120. Most of the shots were at distances from 100 yards to 184 yards and with what little wind there was today, I probably should not have missed any shots. However, I get too lazy to get out the Leica 1200 range finder once in awhile and I do “guess†wrong on the distances sometimes. It isn’t very often you have to hold off the fur with either of these rifles, especially when they prairie dogs are standing straight up. It’s a little different story when they are out in the grass or on their mound and lying or standing in horizontal position. Once in awhile I’ll misjudge and shoot low, but most of the time, my misses go right over the top of the prairie dogs.
I hope you enjoyed the hunt.
sounds like you know how to shoot them irons too! great shooting! 
It's very cool the way you are able to bring it all together for us. Thank You for sharing. 
