Tuesday, June 22nd:
I didn't get on the road until about 9am due to being up until 2am dealing with work trouble. It was about an 8 hour drive to the area I wanted to shoot, but with stops for gas and a small game license at Cabelas in Mitchell, I didn't arrive at the first ranch I had mapped out to ask permission until 7:30pm. I had used Google Earth to map out the most remote places that looked like they had large dogtowns. I figured getting as far off the highways as possible would increase the chances I found dogtowns that hadn't been shot as much. Well I chose the most remote spot first, hoping that if I got permission to hunt and camp on site there, the dogtown looked big enough to shoot for a week according to the satellite photo. When I arrived at the most prime looking spot (about 30 miles off the highway), the owner told me there was already 3 guys out shooting, and there had been 11 during the previous weekend. He said they had all been coming for years so he couldn't let a rookie out there with them. When asked if he could recommend any neighbors to stop and ask, he mentioned a couple names of area ranchers who might let me shoot, but we didn't have a plat map. He also mentioned most ranchers charge to shoot prairie dogs nowadays. Not very encouraging. I stopped at one more ranch that had an 8 mile driveway from their mailbox, only to find the wife home alone, and not able to give me permission to set up and shoot. I told her I'd try to stop back Wednesday. I called Karl and told him there was a thunder storm coming in so we better just meet up in Murdo and get a motel room. It then proceeded to rain about 2 inches in the next hour. Making it back to the highway was a challenge, as it rained so hard, the GPS didn't work accurately. I found this area's "gravel" roads to be mixed with about half dirt, which felt like driving on ice in the pouring rain. Before it started raining, I was asking myself who it was that made these 4"-8" ruts right down the center of the road. Since I've been driving, especially running heavy equipment, it seems nobody drives in the ruts, because that only makes them deeper. If you use the whole road, you avoid making ruts in the first place. Well I found out soon enough why the ruts were there. When those SD roads got wet, you better stay in the ruts, because they're the only thing keeping you on the road it gets so slippery. It was a totally new driving experience for me, as our gravel roads here, made with crushed limestone, get sticky when wet. The only time they're slippery is when there's a lot of dry rock on them. The roads in SD were like a mix of half clay and half round river rock.
So I could tell you about my vehicle problems, but let's just say I had already had a problem with the cooling system in my Jeep before this trip. I'm sure most of you will tell me it was stupid to take a vehicle with trouble out in such remote territory, but the coolant problem is that I'm on the 2nd overflow bottle since I bought it used. The replacement bottles are made in China and the cap and bottle both have plastic threads. When the pressure builds, instead of having a pressure relief, the cap just blows off, stripping the threads. I thought my Jeep would be fine, as I usually drive it 3-4 days around home before having to top off the water. It only boils over when I'm stopped, because the cap won't hold the pressure, allowing the water to boil at a lower temperature. Granted, with a 500 mile one way trip, carrying a heavy load, with off road driving mixed in, I should have figured out the problem before leaving, but nothing was going to stop me from going when the weather was right. When I got to Murdo, I used a hose at a church to top off the radiator, I then went to get something to eat, find my buddy, and get a motel room.
Wednesday, June 23rd:
We decided Karl would follow me, and if we had to go off road to scout a dogtown he could park it and get in with me. I told him I had to stop on the way out of town and make sure my radiator was topped off. I had 4 gallons of water with me too, but didn't want to have to use that. He told me to meet him on my way out of town at a gas station. As I sat there with the hose running, waiting for the thermostat to open up as it sat running, I noticed white smoke coming from the back of the motor near the firewall. Upon closer inspection, I noticed gas running out of the front two, and most rearward fuel injectors, onto the exhaust manifold. I don't know if it was too many times getting hot, or overworking something carrying so much gear, but I couldn't drive it this way.
I've driven this Jeep for nearly 2 years now, and have about $900 into it, including new exhaust, brakes, front hubs/wheel bearings, and tires about 10,000 miles ago. I called around to salvage yards for motors, figuring I should try and get a whole motor rather than work on this one that had been overheating for a while now. There wasn't a salvage motor for this Jeep in the whole state. I then found Mikes Automotive in Draper SD. He said if I could get it to him he'd check it out that day and let me know if he thought I should fix it. I drive it the 10 miles over there and left it. We loaded all the gear into Karl's mini-van and got back out looking for prairie dogs around 11:30am.
We found the mini-van to be quite a hindrance, as they'd had so much rain in that area, the ditches were flooded, and there were deep ruts on all but the major roads. I had 60+ locations that showed large prairie dog towns saved in my GPS. It gave us turn-by-turn directions to each one, even when to turn off the road into a field to get to the exact spot. The problem with this, was we found the dogtown, but had no way to know where the owners building site was. We could drive for 10 miles on gravel without seeing a single mailbox. There wasn't even anybody working in the fields to stop and ask, because everything was so water logged. There was machinery parked all over, but not a soul in sight.
It must have been 4:00, and we had found a couple ranchers to talk to who both wanted $100/gun per day to shoot at their prairie dogs. I don't mind someone making a buck, and truly believe that if they can get it from somebody they should take it, but I really didn't want to pay, and couldn't afford $100 per day, to shoot something most people wish they could exterminate. After the second rancher that wanted to charge us $100/day, we just stopped at the next house we saw. They turned out to be Indians. Very friendly Indians at that. When I walked up to the door, the man called out to Karl to come in too. They offered us a glass of water, and we sat for over an hour at their kitchen table as he showed us his guns, introduced us to a few of their children and grandchildren, and talked about hunting. They offered to let us camp in their lawn, even use their shower. They also had a fiend who was a guide on the Rosebud reservation. They set it up for us to meet him in Wood, SD. The guide's name was Paul Joseph. We had him take us to a couple dogtowns to show us before we made up our mind on whether to pay him $50/day each. We followed him to 2 dogtowns that looked large enough. He said he had many dogtowns we could shoot, but we really missed the good time of year, as most of his towns had been shot quite a bit starting in April. After much discussion, Karl and I decided if we could shoot the rest of Wednesday night, and Thursday and Friday, we'd offer him $75/pc for shooting through Friday night. It took a while, but he finally accepted.
So we had already bought a state license. I think that was around $48 at Cabelas. Now we'd have to pay $55 for the tribal license, and $75 for the guide through Friday. $130 more than we planned, and I was also looking at a repair bill only my Jeep before I could head home. We spent the rest of Wednesday night at a dogtown, mostly shooting paper doing final sighting of rifles, but there were a few prairie dogs to shoot. We shot until absolute dark, about 10pm, and realized we hadn't found a place to camp, and couldn't camp on reservation land, so we headed all the way back to Murdo.
Thursday, June 24th:
The "computer was down" at Cenex in White River, so it took until 8:45am to buy our tribal licenses. We went directly to the first dogtown Paul Joseph had told us to meet him at. We didn't see any dogs up, but since Karl's .223 was still being broken in, we figured we'd do a thorough cleaning of that and maybe the dogs would start to come out. Karl had just taken 10 shots with his Ruger M77/22LR when a black Dodge pickup with a light bar came driving in and straight to us. It was the tribal game warden. 2 of them actually, but one was from another territory just riding along. They asked to see our licenses. We were warned when we bought them to keep them in our wallet, because if you left them even 10 feet away in the vehicle, you would be ticketed for no license. They asked who our guide was, and why he wasn't with us. They seemed more upset with the guide for for not telling us the rules, than us hunting without him. Paul had told us to start shooting this dogtown and he would arrive sometime in the morning. The game warden said he had to be with us at all times, and they'd had this problem with Paul before, having too many groups at once to stay within sight of them. They didn't care if he was 4 miles away as long as they could see his pickup through the binoculars, but he had to be within sight of us. They actually said at one point we'd have to get Paul to pay our $100 fine, but left without mentioning it again. They called Paul and said he'd meet us in Wood to go to a different town where he could stay with us longer. Can you see this isn't working out quite as planned?
Not sure why we stuck with Paul after this, but Karl had to leave Friday night for home, and I still wasn't sure about my Jeep getting me home. Once Karl left, I wasn't planning on doing any extra sight seeing by myself if my Jeep could be made operational. Mike the mechanic called and said he ordered (2 x $80) fuel injectors to be overnighted. He'd put them in the next day and he thought that should get me home.
The dogtown Paul put us on next was just OK I thought. It was convenient for him, since it was in view of his house about a mile away. The dogs seemed very wary, even when shooting a 22LR. Paul talked about how he liked to use 22 shorts to keep the noise down, and I did explain that really wasn't what I came for. The longest shot we could get on this town was about 280 yards, but we figured that was good enough for our first real time spent shooting them. It was fun, although the sparsity of dogs, and their wariness, made me decide it wasn't worth setting up the bench. We had better luck sitting in the tall grass using a bipod. I had the only 26" bipod so we switched it between Karl's and my rifle. When one would get hot, we'd switch it. One would spot and the other would shoot. We figured we had shot a total of about 40 dogs at the end of Thursday. About half of this dogtown wasn't shootable due to Paul's cattle wandering into it. Paul said they like the new young grass that comes up after the prairie dogs eat it down.
Friday, June 25th:
Paul took us to a dogtown he said had been shot only 3 times yet this year, and only by his kids.
The heat Friday was nasty (95 and humid), so we stayed under the sun shade on the bench most of the day, but went and shot from the tall grass after 5pm. I think we probably shot 60+ dogs Friday. In the morning, I hit one at 98 yards with my 1941 Marlin 100, single shot bolt action 22LR, brass bead sight, standing freehand... On the 24th shot! 
The longest shot possible here was about 400 yards. There was basically two thirds of this town we could shoot, because there was a herd of cattle here too that stayed in or near the pond right in the middle of it all day. We found this to work pretty well. Shoot one way for a while, then when those dogs stayed down, shoot the other way for a while. We went back and forth all day, but it was still pretty slow waiting for the dogs to come back up.We took a break around 4pm to go to where I got cell signal, and call Mike the mechanic about my Jeep. He said they had shipped the injectors to the wrong shop, but he dug through a junk drawer and found 3 used injectors. One was for a Chevy, one Mazda, and one Ford, but they all fit, and it seemed to run OK with them. He also noticed the electric fan wasn't kicking in so he wired it up so I could turn it on/off from the cab. He said he and his wife also operate the bar on the front side of his shop, so they'd be there until midnight at least. I told him we'd be there to settle up on the Jeep before 10pm.
The wind died down to nothing near dusk both Thursday and Friday, and the big adult dogs started coming out to feed. The best shooting was 5-9pm. It was funny after shooting juveniles most of the day to all of a sudden see a big one in the binoculars and say "Oh my god, there's a huge fat one!". I got so excited a couple times I missed, and couldn't believe it. It was really weird to watch the dust fly 2" from a prairie dog's feet and not even have it flinch. We both made a couple shots around 385 yards on average size dogs, and a few around 300 only very small pups. Sorry I have no pics of the carnage, but I figure there's plenty of that around here already. We got to see some pretty major aerobatics, especially since our scopes were usually on the lowest zoom settings.
We arrived just before 10pm to pick up my Jeep. I couldn't believe it never occurred to me to ask the mechanic where to find prairie dogs, since he pretty much knows every rancher in the area. His wife actually pulled a couple guys out of the bar to come back and give us their phone numbers. They said they'd love to have us come out and shoot for free. We'd also be welcome to camp. Mike's bill was a total of $125, but when I get back out there I think I'll try and figure out something special to give him for saving my butt like that and getting my Jeep back on the road so cheap. Most mechanics I know aren't willing to do that, especially for someone stuck away from home.
We left for home right away and left all the gear in Karl's mini-van until he had to go North, figuring we could transfer it into the Jeep later, and driving through the night would be cooler for it. We ended up getting a motel around 1am, but the Jeep never overheated the next morning or since. I have a suspicion the bad injectors may have been causing the engine to run lean, and hotter, from the start, because with that electric fan running, and the injectors working right, it runs much cooler.
Here's some of what I learned this trip:
- Take a better vehicle next time.
- I brought way too much stuff, but would have used more of it if the shooting was better. I brought (2) camcorders planning on placing them both out in amongst the dogs, but had more to worry about this trip. I would have used most of the stuff if we had been able to camp like I planned. I really felt on this first trip I wanted to be prepared for anything, and I still wasn't.
- Walking and sitting on the ground with a bipod will produce more shots than setting up a small city with a bench and sun shelter.
- Most of the people you talk to in South Dakota will refer you to a guide they know, but I still believe it's possible to find free shooting/camping.
- Don't believe everything the Indian guide says. He said the tribal game warden would confiscate any hollow points bullets I had if he had seen them. I told him most of what I had loaded up were actually called "dogtown" bullets, but he insisted they were illegal.
- I made a point to ask the tribal game warden if it was legal to shoot pistols from the vehicle window. He said you must have both feet on the ground, but could shoot from any unpaved road, if your guide was in sight of you. He said on or off road. Both feet have to be on the ground, at least on tribal land.
- Another thing the tribal game warden said was they have an upper end size limit on the cartridge you can use for prairie dogs of .25 caliber. Between regulations we learned of from our guide and the game warden, we were a bit frustrated, because when we asked for a regulations book/pamphlet at the Cenex where we bought our tribal licenses, they said they had "never seen one". This makes me think the rules could change at any time, or depend on who you're talking to. I wouldn't want to have to discuss the regs with a judge. Not good.
- The 34gr Dogtown bullets are not as reactive on impact as the V-Max. If it costs $60/1000 more to load the V-Max or Blitzkings, that's what I'll load from now on. The Dogtown's could give a good show, but not quite like the V-Max.
- The Murdo drive-in has great chocolate shakes, old school pizza burgers, cheddar cheese curds, and excellent, friendly service and atmosphere. I had that exact meal twice there (in 2 separate visits!).
- Starting out shooting a skiddish dogtown with 22's helps, but when the 22LR puts them all back in their holes for 20 minutes, you may not get much shooting in. I went through a total of about 150 rounds out there, including the ones I shot at paper for a last minute sight-in.
- South Dakota has a very unique beauty, and I look forward to getting back there.
Wood, SD
Panorama of the dogtown we shot Friday. The far side of this pond was about 425 yards from our bench, not in this pic but off to the right.
Panorama of our bench setup Friday.
Karl shooting from the tall grass. Sometimes you could tell they didn't see us, and had no idea where the shot came from.
Me on the left. Karl on the right. After the shooting was over.
What's wrong with this picture?
These are the .223 rounds that Karl's brother sent with him. They were in a 500 round box branded "Rough Rider Reloads" made in North Dakota in the early 90's. They were 55gr soft points using a few different military brass. We threw some out right away because you could see the primer was deformed. On those you could tell they never took the crimp out. I hadn't looked at any of Karl's spent cases until he told me he had a case head separation. I then looked at the rest of them and saw the flattest, and most cratered primers I'd ever seen. I told Karl I couldn't stand next to him shooting those. "If there's an action that could stand up to loads that hot it's probably that 700 you're shooting. I wouldn't shoot em, but hey, if you want to, go ahead. It's your face." I did end up shooting a few. I hope it was just because of cheap primers from the 80's, but he had at least 3 case head separations, and I can't believe he didn't have any get stuck in the chamber.
Tue June 29 - Edited for spelling.
