I worked real hard at finishing up some projects around the yard this past week and decided that if the weather cooperated I would treat myself to a day of prairie dog hunting. As it turned out the weather forecast was for temperatures in the mid 70’s and winds from calm to 7 mph for Friday, March 30. For once the weather forecast was spot on. I left Williston around 6:30 a.m. with the temperature sitting at 50º. The traffic jam at the intersection of US Highway 2 and ND Highway 85 was not too bad and it only took me 10 minutes to go 4 miles. Road work is continuing on ND Highway 85 all the way from Williston on down through Alexander and on into Watford City. I guess the road construction will be going on all summer and maybe on into next summer too. They are planning to build a 4-lane bridge across the Missouri River south of Williston and they haven’t even started work on that project, but I digress!!!
There had been over an inch of rain that fell in my prairie dog town location earlier in the week, so some of the prairie trails were a bit wet, but not bad. The pastures are real green and there’s some water in some of the stock dams and creeks. I parked my pickup and started to get my gear ready. Before I left the pickup, I placed old bed sheets over the doors so they were hanging inside the pickup and gave protection from the sun’s rays to the inside of the pickup. I also put up the commercial sun shield in the windshield. I left the pickup at 8:52 a.m. There were some clouds gathering to the south and west and I thought that I might get wet, but in an hour or so the clouds had disappeared, the sun was shining, and all was well with the world.
There were about 40 head of cow/calf pairs lounging in the prairie dog town I wanted to start shooting in, but there was an open area of the dog town with no cow/calf pairs in it so I got a chance to shoot my first PD of the day. I scoped it out with my rangefinder and got a reading of 136 yards. The prairie dog looked like it had just stepped out of a swimming pool. Its fur was very wet, which I could understand because there was lots of dew on the prairie grass. Here’s a view of that prairie dog. I apologize about the fact there isn’t much wet fur to view, but if you look close at his hind legs and what’s left of his belly fur, you can see the fur is very wet.
When I shot, the cattle to the north part of the dog town put their tails up in the air and ran to the cattle over in the south part of the dog town. That left the north two-thirds of the dog town open for some prairie dog shooting mayhem. By 9:30 I stopped to fill my ammo band on my rifle stock and while I was filling that I had to shoot 3 more PDs. So by 9:35 I had shot 12 times and nailed 12 prairie dogs.
By 9:44 I had shot 5 more shots and my fifth shot rewarded me with a double on pups. I had taken 17 shots and killed 18 prairie dogs. Here’s a photo of my Savage 12VLP in .204 Ruger with a 25 inch long stainless steel super match grade Pac-Nor barrel with a 1 in 11 twist, three grooves and topped off with my Leupold VX-III 6-20x40mm long range scope with a fine duplex reticle along with one of the pups I nailed earlier.
The part of this pup that was visible to me was from the top of his head to the space slightly below his front legs. I held the crosshairs intending to hit him right between the front legs and here’s what was left of him. The red chunk of meat and bone at the bottom of the photo below is where the 40 gr. V-Max blew the top part of his body off his backbone.
At 10:03 I stopped to refill my ammo band and spotted a mound to the north of me that had 7 pups on it. I finished filling my ammo band, got into shooting position and waited until I had two pups lined up one in front of the other and squeezed off shot #1. Two pups went flying off the mound and while I could only see one of them lying dead, I was pretty certain I had nailed a double. The other pups scattered a bit and then returned to the top of the mound where I watched through my scope until two more were lined up and squeezed off shot #2. This time the front pup went flying in the air and a second pup was thrust off the mound to the left and did the leg kicking of the death throes. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and walked over to view the carnage. I saw four dead pups. Two of them were shattered pretty badly and two of them were not torn up quite as bad, except they were dead too. So after shot #2, I had taken 25 shots and had 28 dead prairie dogs. I think that may have been the first time I scored two doubles off the same mound.
At 10:13 a.m. I decided to break out my trail mix and ice cold water and take a little rest. Ten minutes later I was walking off in a northwesterly direction to the next small prairie dog settlement. At 10:45 a.m. I spotted a nice PD mound to shoot off of and belly crawled up to it and got in position to shoot. I took 3 shots and nailed 3 prairie dogs, but all the other prairie dogs disappeared down into their dens. I waited about 5 minutes and no PDs came out so at about 10:54 I headed further west.
While walking west a baby bird flushed out of its hiding place and did a poor imitation of flying for about 15 feet and landed. It was camouflaged fairly well but since I saw it land I knew right where it was. I got a little closer and snapped a couple of photos while it sat there motionless.
There was a colony of prairie dogs that had a settlement north across the creek and up onto a nice plateau. The first time I spotted that dog town, hadn’t bothered to try to get to those prairie dogs because there were about 100 plus head of cattle grazing up there. On another visit I had been unable to find a place to cross the creek without getting sopping wet. This time, I was intent on making across the creek and thinning out the population of that prairie dog suburb. I found a few more blossoms and took a few photos which I will share here.
I walked along the side of the creek and at 11:10 I finally found a place that had fairly large clumps of grass spaced fairly close together and the clumps had enough hard soil in them to be very solid stepping places to wend my way across the creek. Recent rains had made the level of the creek considerably higher than it was when I was at this dog town on May 15, 2014.
The layout of this little PD suburb was such that I could creep up to the edge of the plateau without being spotted by the prairie dogs. I got to the place where I would leave my back pack and decided to have a little snack of trail mix and some ice cold water. I took out my insect repellant spray and sprayed around my face, neck and my hands. Then I took out two boxes of ammo and headed up the slope to the dog town. I crept up to the rim of the plateau and found a spot where I could lay prone and had prairie dogs as close as 25 yards and as far away as 400+ yards. Since I don’t like to miss any shots, I restricted my shots to 25 yards to 200 yards. I was in position to start shooting at 11:29 a.m. and found 6 prairie dogs at fairly close range and dispatched them. At 11:40 a.m. I heard the sound of rifle shots coming from the direction where I had parked my pickup. There was a small dog town located about a half mile east of where my pickup was parked. That dog town is a bit higher in elevation than where my pickup was parked so I’m sure those shooters didn’t see it and probably didn’t know I was west of them. However, I figured they should have been alert enough to see my fresh pickup tracks in some of the slightly muddy spots on the prairie trail wheel tracks. And they certainly should have heard the sound of my rifle shots unless they were deaf or had headphones on. However, maybe they were just some greenhorns who couldn’t tell a fresh pickup track from a fresh cow pie??? I was a bit concerned that a ricochet might hit me or my pickup. I kept shooting prairie dogs hoping that these folks would hear my shots and maybe not shoot in my direction. I shot a total of 18 shots in that part of the dog town and hit on all 18 shots. I walked down the hillside to where I had my back pack and at 12:00 noon I started to wend my way back to my pickup. I had taken 52 shots to this point and had killed 55 prairie dogs. I shot a few prairie dogs on my way back to the pickup and when I got back to the pickup at 12:50 p.m. my total shots taken was 54 and PDs killed was at 57. I spent a few minutes treating the barrel of the .204 Ruger with BoreTech C4 Carbon remover and then cased it up and put it into the pickup. It was already 1:30 so I cleaned up and took a lunch break. After lunch, I decided it was time for a little nap. It was 2:35 when I woke up from the little nap.
I started the pickup and headed east towards where the shooting noise had been coming from. There was a pickup from Minnesota with one of those slide-in campers you load into the pickup box. Two fellows were packing up their stuff from lunch. I didn’t bother to stop but I did wave. I headed north on the oil field road and wound up heading west on a little prairie trail so I could do a little more shooting. I glassed the area. There were plenty of PDs up so I gathered my “stuff” and this time I got out my Predator action .17 Remington. I took the thread guard off the muzzle and threaded the suppressor in place, put the bed sheets over the windows to keep out the sun, locked the doors on the pickup and at 3:48 p.m. I was on my way for some more fun shooting time.
I found a few more blossoms to photograph and I’ll share those with you right here:
I had about 80+ rounds of ammo loaded with 29 gr. Genco FBHP bullets coated with hBN. Once these 80 rounds get shot I’ll be out of the 29 gr. Gencos and will probably load up some of my 30 gr. FBHP Red Prairie Varmint bullets that I bought from Clint Starke many, many years ago. The Starke bullets don’t have a super high BC, but they have been very effective on coyotes for me and they really make the prairie dogs do fancy acrobatic stunts!!! Most of the PDs went underground as I approached the dog town, but I got off a couple shots over on the east end of the dog town and hit on both of those. There weren’t any pups out and about. It was probably about 75º out so maybe it was too hot for the little fellows. When I got to the middle of the dog town I managed to shoot 4 more prairie dogs. As I got close to the SW end of this dog town I ranged a couple of prairie dogs that looked pretty big. One of them was almost a black as coal—well, not quite that black, but VERY dark!!! He was out at 180 yards and standing straight up with his back to me. I managed to drill him dead center. Here’s a look at the mound, the dark colored prairie dog, the rifle that did the dirty deed, and the brave shooter who held off dozens of vicious, charging prairie dogs.
There was still one prairie dog up after I shot this dark prairie dog. I ranged that one and my Leica 1200 range finder said the distance was 196 yards. There was hardly and wind at all. The prairie dog was facing almost straight my way. I got my little bean bag butt rest in place, had the scope up at 20 power, did about one inch of hold-off to the left of the center of the PD's chest for the wind, and when I was comfortable with my sight picture I squeezed off the shot. The prairie dog was pushed off the mound a millisecond before I could hear the bullet hit the prairie dog. The photos below show the entrance wound and the exit wound. The bullet hit about a half inch right of center.
I shot two more prairie dogs on my way back to the pickup so I had shot 12 shots with the .17 Remington and hit on all 12. Total shots taken for the day was 66 with 69 prairie dogs lying dead on the prairie. After shooting one more PD on the walk back to the pickup I spotted something white about 25 yards from my shooting spot. I walked over there and found something I have seen before and photographed. I love the beautiful blossoms I photograph, but today I got confirmation that even a turd can bring beauty into the world. Here’s the photos showing that there really can be “Beauty in the Cow Pie”!!!
I got back to the pickup at 6:10 p.m. and started back towards Williston at 6:20. I was in my garage at 7:38 p.m. I couldn’t have asked for a nicer day and a day of hunting beats a day of work any time of the year. I hope you enjoyed the hunt and the photos.
