I put the sun shield up in the windshield and hung the old bed sheet over the passenger side door, which was on the side the sun would be shining through to keep the temperature down inside the cab. I loaded 4 of my 25 gr. V-Max cartridges in the magazine and placed one in the chamber, closed the bolt, and put the safety on. I am using 22.8 gr. of IMR 8208 XBR powder, Remington 7½ primers, and I use hBN to coat my bullets. I worked up this load using a different lot of powder than what I used for the cartridges I shot today. I was getting 3,986 fps with the old load, but with this new lot of powder I'm getting 4,064 fps. I spent about two months trying to find a little slower load with 8208, but 22.8 is what I found works the best even though the powder is a bit faster. The strange thing is that 22.8 gr. of this new lot of powder has the same point of impact horizontally as the old lot and hit the paper just .175" higher than the old lot of powder. PLEASE REMEMBER that if you want to try IMR 8208 XBR in your .17 Remington check Hodgdon's "Cartridge Load Recipes" and start out with a mild powder charge weight.
If any of you take a look at the Hodgdon Powder Company Load Recipe Report, please note that my load of 22.8 gr. of 8208 is just 1/10 of a grain over their starting load recommendation for the 25 gr. HP Hornady bullet. They list the velocity for 22.7 gr. at 3,882 fps from a 24 inch barrel. I'm getting 4,064 fps from 22.8 gr. in a 26 inch barrel. Keep in mind, my .204 Ruger brass formed to .17 Remington holds only 29.5 gr. of Big Game powder compared to the .17 Remington brass holding 30.2 gr. of Big Game powder. So, I'm generating a lot more pressure (and resulting increase in velocity) with the 22.8 gr. load because the casings have less volume. I sure am glad I didn't just drop down a half grain from Hodgdon's max load and begin testing there!!!
I diddled around and got into the pickup box and got my sandwich, a couple bottles of ice water, my cookies for dessert out of my portable cooler and put those into my backpack. I could hear some prairie dogs behind me, which is the opposite direction from where the prairie dog town is located, but I imagine these noisy prairie dogs are pioneers and homesteading in uncharted territory. I figured I would make their lives a little more dangerous so I set up about 25 yards west of the pickup and shot 1 prairie dog at 100 yards and got three more at 150 yards. The rest of the colony disappeared so I went back to the pickup, locked it up, and headed east into the PD town.
There weren’t many prairie dogs out and about. The ones that presented themselves for a shot were mainly between 150 and 300 yards. After nailing several in the 175 to 220 yard range I was feeling up to taking a 300 yard shot. There was a right-to-left quartering wind and I missed the prairie dog. I think I shot over him. I finally found a good spot with target animals in several directions. I missed a shot at 220 yards and again, I think I was missing high. I spotted a very dark colored prairie dog at 140 yards and shot that one. I got up and walked over to that one and took some photos.
Here’s a close-up of his fur on his rear end:
Here's a photo of his whole body (or should I say what's left of his body?!?! Even his fur on his belly is extremely dark compared to normal colored prairie dogs.
I stopped for lunch at 12:45 p.m. I was down in a little low area to get out of what wind there was and had only eaten 1/4 of my sandwich when I looked out to the east of where I was sitting and spotted a fat prairie dog sitting on his mound. He was only 25 yards away!!! Since only my head was up out of the low spot I don’t think the PD really sensed any danger. I moved over to my rifle and slithered up out of the low spot enough so I could draw a bead on the PD and WHAP!!! He was toast.
I finished my lunch and noticed that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The wind was blowing about 2 to 5 mph with some gusts up to 8 to 10 mph. I checked the temperature at 1:15 p.m. and it read 63º, but with the tiny breeze it felt good to have a jacket on. I had stepped in a fairly fresh cow pie about a half hour before lunch and decided to see if there was any manure left under my boot. There was a little bit, so I cleaned the lugs of my boot. I settled down for a nap.
About 40 minutes into my nap, I heard a prairie dog barking sharply and sat up to see where he was. Just then, I saw a Golden Eagle fly over the trees to the east of me and landed by a prairie dog mound where I had shot a prairie dog about an hour before. I rolled over to my rifle and put my eye up to the scope to watch the eagle. I thought I had better get some photos of this, so I got my camera out of my backpack. I put my little butt rest bean bag on top of my scope to rest the camera on and zoomed in on the eagle. My camera has a 12X optical and 4X digital zoom, so I was up at 48X. It was difficult to hold the camera still and there were a couple tree branches between the eagle and me and the camera wanted to focus on the branches. I knew I had to sneak around to a spot to get closer to the eagle and where there were no trees in the road. I got to within about 75 yards to get some photos. Unfortunately, when the camera is zoomed in at 48X, the photos get rather pixilated.
Here's my attempt to photograph the eagle with tree limbs between the eagle and me.
The eagle had been eating for a little while when a magpie decided to try to join him for dinner. The eagle would move just a tiny bit toward the magpie when it got close and the magpie would back up.
Then a second magpie joined in for a meal, but the eagle kept them at bay.
I wanted to get closer to get better quality photos so I tried sneaking closer and the eagle spotted me and took off with the dead prairie dog in his talons. If you look real close you can see the carcass held by the eagle and trailing behind him.
It was 2:15 p.m. when I got done photographing the eagle and magpies.
There had been some good spots in this PD town with a fair number of prairie dogs out and while there weren’t enough PDs out in one spot to burn up your barrel, I got some fairly decent shooting. Since I forgot to put a "Hero Photo" in with my report on my last prairie dog hunt, I made sure I got that picture and include it here now:
The cows and their calves had migrated down to the east end of the dog town where I was trying to shoot. I figured that rather than try to shoot around the cattle, I would just head back to my pickup and shoot prairie dogs on the way there.
The temperature had reached 70 degrees and there wasn’t much more than a whisper of wind so I shed my jacket. At this point, I had shot 48 shots and nailed 45 prairie dogs out of this box of 50 shells. That meant I had two shots left for the walk back to the pickup. I had another 118 loaded rounds in my backpack, but figured I’d save those for another prairie dog shoot yet this fall.
I started back toward my pickup and snapped a photo of the stock dam with the cattle quenching their thirst. Sorry it isn't a very good photo, but take my word for it, there were cattle there and that is a stock dam!!
I hadn’t walked very far before I had shot the last two shells from that box of 50. There were prairie dogs to shoot yet, so I dragged out a box of 20 shells. This box of 20 shells had casings that were shorter than the 1.7865" length I usually trim them to. There were a couple casings that measured 1.7825", one that was 1.784", but the majority of them measured 1.7835". I thought they should work OK, but wasn’t 100% sure. I managed to hit on 8 out of 9 shots with these shorter casings. The one miss was at 230 yards and once again, I think I shot high. I nailed a prairie dog at 220 yards on the very next shotâ€â€GO FIGURE!!!!
I spotted a few blossoms today so I'll share those with you too.
I was about 200 yards from my pickup when I spotted another prairie dog by his mound. I shot that one and figured that would be the last prairie dog of the day so I took the photo below to commemorate the last shot of the day and victim number 54.
I began walking to the pickup again and when I was about 75 yards from it, a prairie dog barked at me from west of my pickup. I could see the prairie dog about 50 yards west of my pickup, but when I went to go prone to shoot, I couldn’t see the PD because of a little rise between me and the PD. I plopped my backpack down, rested my bipod on top of it and made a nice shot on what was REALLY the last PD of the day. He really got splattered all over the mouth of the den as you can see in the close-up below this next photo. It was 4:30, but I decided to take another photo of the rifle and victim number 55.
I had spent about 6 hours out in the dog town, but had a 40 minute nap and spent 30 to 40 minutes photographing the Golden Eagle. I took a total of 59 shots and hit on 55 of them. There weren’t any prairie dogs that were huddled close to one another so there were no chances to get doubles. I left the PD town at 4:57 p.m. and while I was tired, it was a HAPPY KIND OF TIRED!
Thanks Silverfox for another great report. It feels like were right there with you. Thanks for sharing and great job being a walk about exterminator.