Annual prairie dog hunt!
Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 5:38 am
well the annual prairie dog hunt is over, this year I took my dad along with me, so it was my boy and my dad and me, 5hr drive to dumas, when we got there we found that the plague had killed off most of the prairie dogs, with very few to shoot it got boring and frustrating very quickly, spent about 3hrs of fruitless attempts at locating some active prairie dogs, had one dog pop up about 65yds in front of my shooting table, .204 at 65yds will launch a prairie dog about 15ft in the air! this shoot was turning into a bust, the next day about noon, the Rancher came and found us, said he show me one small dog town that was in the back of his property, so after driving about three miles on dirt roads we found a small dog town of a dozen or so mounds, very active but still disappointing, the rancher also stated that we could shoot all the jackrabbits we saw, now I'd seen about 2 dozen on the way to this location, the Rancher took me about a 1000yds to a field that had previously been a huge prairie dog town, this field was approx. 500yds by 800yds, after the dogs had died out from the plague the weeds had taken over, as we are driving across this field, the jackrabbits are leaping up one after another! I have hunted west Texas all my life, I have never seen that many jacks in one place! jackrabbits by the dozen! he told me they moved into his wheat fields and ate there fill, well guess what became the subject of our hunt? yep jackrabbits became the targets! at first we sat about 100yds from the prairie dog town and shot at the dogs that did pop up, while at the same time watching the wheat fields for the jackrabbits, one of the first rabbits I shot was 220yds away grazing in this wheat field! my dad managed to get a couple of prairie dogs, but the real killer of jackrabbits was my boy! holy cow no rabbit within 400yds was safe, he dropped one out at 240yds, so we go walking out to see what a 40gr v-max will do to a rabbit, about half way there another jack jumps up and heads for the weed field, my boy snap shoots this jack, he hits it with his first shot, rolls it, and a .204 at 40yds does really bad things to a jackrabbit! after about an hour the jack population in this field was non-existant, so we took to driving through the weed field and scaring them up! we all had a ball, was loads of fun, the rabbits would take off running, we'd wait until the rabbits stopped running, when they paused any where from 100yds to 300yds, we'd take the shot! some got away but not many! hopefully I'll get pictures posted soon!
Can't wait to see the pictures from your trip. We love pictures! 
Glad you had a good time.
