I had just fired the last 39 gr. Sierra reload from cartridges I had reloaded back in June of 2008. I broke out a new box of 50 rounds I had reloaded on April 26, 2009. I wanted to check and make sure they were shooting to the same POI, so I shot two shots at an abandoned fence post. Fortunately, they were shooting to the same POI as the loads from 2008. I was out at the west end of the PD town, so I started heading back to the pickup, shooting targets of opportunity as I went along.
I did find a few flowers and a bright, white-colored mushroom shooting up out of the edge of an old dried up cow pie.
Here are a couple photos of some of the blossoms visible out in the dog town.
Here’s a little pup whose head got separated from his body. The body was about 6 feet from his head.
The body photo:
A photo of the location of the head and body:
Total count for this part of the hunt was 5 missed shots, 37 singles and 9 doubles for 55 dead prairie dogs for 51 shots. I decided to drive to the next dog town before taking a break for lunch.
I took time out for a bite to eat when I got to my parking place in the shade of a huge old box elder tree. After lunch I uncased my Pac-Nor barreled .17 Remington and two boxes of ammo loaded with 27.8 gr. BTHP Hammett bullets. I left the pickup at 3:13 p.m. and decided to hike along the creek and out of sight of the dog town to get to the extreme east end of the dog town. This dog town is set up so I can sneak along the creek out of sight and then pop up over the bank every couple hundred yards and have a whole new bunch of unwary prairie dogs to shoot at. The east end of this town is one place where I usually find some prairie dogs with very dark brown fur. This trip was no exception. Here’s the obligatory hero photo with me posing with my Pac-Nor barreled .17 Remington and the dark brown furred prairie dog. Below this photo is a close-up of that prairie dog so you can see the dark brown fur along with other body parts!!!
It was 4:45 p.m. and I had only shot 15 shots to this point. I was kind curious about the lack of prairie dogs. Usually, I would have shot at least two times as many shots in an hour and a half. I began to wonder if the plague was responsible for the lack of prairie dogs. There was lots of vegetation all around and lots of mounds with no sign that any prairie dog had inhabited them. Spider webs were covering lots of mound openings. Still, there were plenty of prairie dogs for me to shoot, so I was happy, but I had to move around the town a little more and couldn’t sit in one spot and melt the barrel off my rifle. I needed the exercise anyway, so all was good.
I continued my journey along the edge of the creek and scared up another reptile. This one wasn’t quite as menacing as the one I encountered in the tree grove earlier in the day. All this toad wanted was to get back to the water, so I herded him around trying to get him in a good spot to take photos and then let him get into the water and swim away.
At 5:45 p.m., I stopped to let the barrel cool and then after about 10 minutes I heated the barrel up again. By 6:00 p.m., the box of 34 cartridges was empty and I had killed 36 prairie dogs with those 34 shots. I was finding that some of the adults were now coming up out of the dens and the young would gather close to the adult and that was giving me the opportunity to wait until a young one was right in front of the adult and then I would attempt to hit the young pup in front and have bullet fragments hit the adult behind. It worked on many occasions. Here’s a photo of one such double. The pup was facing the adult with its back to me and the bullet hit the pup somewhere around the right shoulder and flipped him about four feet to the left of the mound. The bullet continued on through and hit the adult and flipped her about four feet behind the mound and completely gutted her. I brought them up onto the mound for the photo op with my awesome prairie dog killing Pac-Nor barreled .17 Remington.
The photo below gives you a little closer look at the exit wound on the pup and the entrance wound on the adult. The bullet must have exploded like a hand grenade after passing through the pup. I noticed that on just about every hit with the 27.8 gr. BTHP Hammetts that I could hear a very distinct and loud POP. I thought sometimes, that on the doubles I got, I could hear two separate POPs, but can’t be sure.
I hiked to the north up to the top of a little ridge that reveals another part of the dog town in a tiny valley that runs east and west. This spot usually produces lots of prairie dog kills and it did not disappoint me today either. I was shooting shells out of the new box of 50 cartridges. I stopped shooting frequently to let the barrel cool down. Over the next 45 minutes I took 15 shots, spacing out my shooting to attempt to keep the barrel from getting too hot. Out of those 15 shots I got 12 singles and 3 doubles. It was 7:15 and I decided it was time to head back to the pickup and start for home. I shot 4 more shots on my walk back to the pickup and got 4 more singles. Total shots with the Pac-Nor barreled .17 Remington were 59. With those 59 shots I got 51 singles, 7 doubles and missed on one shot for a total of 65 prairie dogs eliminated.
Total count for the day was 120 prairie dogs with 110 shots. Not a bad day. The weather was very nice, with the temperature getting up slightly above 80 degrees and the winds were very favorable, never getting much above 5 mph when I checked with my Caldwell wind meter. This had been a very pleasant day indeed. While I did run into a rattle snake, I did not step in or back into and cow pies, but my pickup tires hit many freshly planted cow pies. It is very odiferous now!!
I got back to my pickup and stored my rifle and other gear and fastened my Igloo cooler down tight in the back of the pickup and got headed out of the dog town at 7:56 p.m. I was parked in my garage and began mowing my lawn by about 9:40 p.m. I love a green lawn, but really don’t appreciate mowing it.
I apologize for taking so long to get "the rest of the story" posted, but it sure was nice to get away on an extended vacation. The wife and I have not had more than a 3-day weekend vacation for over 18 years. We liked this 10-day vacation so much we may have to do this every year from now on!!!
