I had first hunted in this dog town on October 20, 2010. There wasn’t much vegetation that was higher than a few inches back then as evidenced in the first photo below.
Today, my pickup, in the photo below, is sitting a few yards northwest of where the yellow arrow is pointing in the first photo from last October.
As you can see by the photos, it was totally different today. Yellow clover was standing tall where they hadn’t been much of anything growing last fall. It seemed like there were a lot more prairie dogs in this town last fall than there were today too. There were several PDs that had mounds out in the farmer’s wheat field and he likes to have those shot if possible. There was so much tall clover that I needed to employ my secret shooting aid to be able to see over the clover.
I got my chair and home-made sticks set up, sat down and got the crosshairs on a PD that was 135 yards away and squeezed off the shot. I could see a little red mist through the scope and heard the distinctive WHAP as the bullet hit the PD. All the other PDs headed down their holes. I sat in my chair for about 10 minutes after that shot and not one PD came back up, so I folded up my sticks and chair and put them back in the pickup box and began to hike around the dog town. I did manage to shoot a couple more PDs out in the wheat field later on.
By 9:25 I had taken only 6 shots, but had bagged a prairie dog with each one. By 9:45, I had shot 5 more times and had one miss and got 4 singles. By 10:10 I had shot another 6 shots, so in an hour and 25 minutes I had only taken 17 shots. The dogs were extremely wary and most shots were in the 150 yard range or longer. Just before I stopped for a snack and a drink of water, I shot a great big male prairie dog and took a “Hero” photo with that guy and my .17 Remington with the .1946" neck in a 26" super match grade stainless steel Pac-Nor barrel.
During my snack break, I had 3 very rude prairie dogs barking at me. I took time to give each of them an hBN coated 27.8 gr. BTHP Hammett bullet for disturbing my snack break.
Immediately after my break, I found a nice pocket of PDs where I was positioned up on a side hill and could shoot over about a 180º area. I shot 6 prairie dogs with 6 shots and here are two photos of a great big old dark one. This first photo shows the entrance wound side:
The photo below shows the exit wound side.
I started back to the pickup around 11:00 a.m. and at about 11:10 I happened on another pocket of PDs. I crawled up to the crest of a little rise and was able to shoot 6 prairie dogs in about 3 minutes. I got back to the pickup, loaded up my gear and was headed for my next PD town by 11:45 a.m. (By the way, if you have a topper on your pickup, don’t leave the topper rear window open as you drive along 13 miles of gravel and scoria roads!!!!) Don’t ask me how I know this!!!
I arrived at the next dog town a little after 12 noon and stopped to eat lunch. I was out and shooting prairie dogs by 12:35. This is a very small dog town, stretching maybe 3/4 mile southeast to northwest and maybe a half mile wide. I was back at the pickup by 1:38 p.m. I had taken 13 shots and killed 12 prairie dogs. Most of the shots were 135 yards to 175 until I got to the northwest end of the dog town. I had to set up on a little side hill and the shots there ranged from 189 to 230 yards. The one shot I missed was one at 189 yards, and I made the 210 to 230 yard shots. Go Figure!!! When I started shooting the tight neck .17 Remington this morning, I had 46 cartridges in my plastic box. When I finished, I had one cartridge left and was begging the prairie dogs to pop their heads up so I could finish off the box, but that never happened.
I left that dog town at 1:58 p.m. and headed for a dog town I had never shot in before. I arrived at the dog town and drove on the road that is on the west side of the town just checking out the lay of the land. I parked the pickup and got started walking towards the north end of the town around 2:30. This dog town covers the better part of a section of land and the land is very hilly so there are lots of places to sneak up to the crest of a rise and surprise some prairie dogs. Unfortunately, these prairie dogs had been visited by hunters many, many times this summer. I could see pickup tracks, ATV tracks and even motorcycle tracks all over the town. There were empty shell casings lying around ranging from .22 rimfire shorts, to .17 HMR, to .223, all the way up to .30-06 and there were even some .45 caliber pistol casings lying around.
This time I had my .17 Remington with a Stiller Predator repeater action and a 26" stainless steel Lilja barrel in #6 contour with a 1 in 9 twist and 4 grooves. Some of you may remember this is the rifle for which I took WW .204 Ruger casings and formed them down to .17 Remington. I usually shoot hBN coated 25 gr. V-Max bullets, but when I ran out of those last fall, I decided to use up the 29 gr. FB HP VLD Genco bullets I had on hand. I got a load worked up for those and this was the first time out with that load. I had cleaned the barrel and treated it with Graphoil after I had done load testing with on my last PD hunt back on July 28 and had not fired it since. I rested the rifle on the top of a fencepost and pointed the rifle at a prairie dog and took a fouling shot—I missed the PD and couldn’t really tell where the bullet hit. On the next 6 shots I hit 5 singles and had one double. All of these prairie dogs were standing up when I shot them. These shots were with brass that had been fired one time before and I only had 7 of those.
For the folks who like to see the pictures of blossoms, here’s a photo of a bull thistle blossom for you.
The next box of shells had 19 cartridges that were new and had not been fire formed yet. My first shot with those was at a prairie dog I had ranged at 169 yards. This prairie dog was on all fours, but his belly was up off the ground and he was broadside to me. Since my scope “was supposed to be adjusted” so it hits 1.3" high at 150 yards and 1.2" high at 175 yards, I held the horizontal crosshair just above the bottom of his chest and squeezed off the shot. He jumped in the air, came down and proceeded to run about 10 yards to another den and disappeared down the hole. I could see that is off-side front leg had been hit so I know the bullet hit lower than my point of aim!!! WHAT THE HECK IS WITH THAT??? I shot a few more shots and on PDs that were standing up, I was hitting them, but on those that were horizontal I was missing low. Then I remembered that I HAD NOT adjusted my scope’s point of impact for this new bullet and load. What a bonehead stunt!!! (Actually, I’m chalking it up to Old-Timer’s Disease.) I found a post that wasn’t part of the fence and got the scope adjusted properly. It was hitting right on for windage, but about 1 inch low for vertical. After that adjustment, I didn’t miss any more prairie dogs whether they were horizontal or standing vertically.
The prairie dogs weren’t out in great numbers and when I got back to the pickup at 5:05 p.m., I had shot 26 shots at prairie dogs (one of which was a fouling shot) and got 21 singles and 1 double. I had also shot 7 shots at the wooden post to get the scope adjusted. I had fired a total of 71 shots at prairie dogs today and had a good time. I headed home, vacuumed the dust out of my topper and washed the outside of the pickup as well!!!
